America's very very close friends in the Saudi government arrested and detained a young blogger named Fouad Farhan, shut down his site, detained him for four months without charges, and finally released him on Saturday. Thankfully, they have a very very good explanation for all that: "'We have ... what we call electronic crimes—any kind of violation related to computer and technology and so on,' Interior Ministry spokesman Gen. Mansour Al Turki told the Monitor when asked why Fouad Farhan had been jailed. [...]'And I believe his main case was like violating personal rights.... Like when I go for example on the Internet or I go on any electronic media and I use your name and your personality and I criticize ... or offend you without being able to introduce evidence of what I'm saying.'" So. He was arrested for electronic crimes. Farhan could still be prosecuted for his "electronic crimes" despite the release. Farhan's worst electronic crime against the government?

Mike Lacey, the pugnacious chief of Village Voice Media and overlord of alt-weeklies across America, is known to be a man not afraid to speak his mind. In fact, he's the self-proclaimed "asshole in charge." So attendees at a Phoenix Society of Professional Journalists awards dinner last Friday might have expected Lacey to say something interesting when he accepted an award on behalf of one of his papers [East Valley Tribune]. But they were less than amused when (the white man) Lacey referred to his deceased friend, Pulitzer Prize-winning [UPDATE: also white] journalist Tom Fitzpatrick, as "my nigger."

Today, you must have heard, is the 40th anniversary of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. He was shot to death while standing on the balcony of a Memphis hotel at 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968. The night before, he had given his last speech—the prophetic "I've been to the Mountaintop" sermon—in which he told the crowd, "Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now." King was tired, and had to be specially cajoled to go to the church that night; he ended up delivering his own eulogy. Considering the circumstances, it was his most moving speech of all. Were he alive today, King would be nearing his 80th birthday. A full clip of the speech is below. Have we reached the promised land yet?

Are you working today? We are! But it's ok—The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. would've wanted it this way. As an unnamed partner at "a large accounting firm" notes in an inspirational letter forwarded to us by a fellow freedom-fighter, MLK knew that "the efforts around basic human rights could never take a holiday." Which is why they are expected to come into the office today. (Click to enlarge, brothers and sisters.)

One can only hope there were j-school-trained reporters around to adequately reflect the racists' views.

One of the problems with spending all day focused on media news and amusing ephemera is that we don't actually flip through the real, print Times till we're on the train heading out at night. And so, somehow, it wasn't until after we'd finished Gawking for the day that we discovered William Sloane Coffin had died. Coffin was Yale's chaplain from 1958 to 1976, and he was a leading voice in the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam struggles. We're neither Yalies nor of the Vietnam generation, but we know of Coffin as one of the great liberal heroes of the last half-century. He was our kind of guy, as we understand it — a smart, tough New Yorker who fought the good fight. It'd be nice to have more of those these days.

Did you think we'd let Black History Month go unmentioned? No way, not us. OK, well, actually, we did. But now that February is over we thought it'd be a good time to look back on the month that was. Then we realized we had no idea how to do so. Time to call in Gawker's Special Correspondent for Brown-People Issues, The Assimilated Negro.

The only way a publicist knows how:

Coretta Scott King died last night. The widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., she was a civil-rights legend and an American icon. Her death should be noted, and her life remembered, even here. And so it seemed a good time to turn to Gawker's Special Correspondent for Brown-People Issues, the blogger who calls himself The Assimilated Negro and who we prefer to call TAN, for his thoughts.

Some late-breaking but very important MLK news moved on the AP wire last night, and we feel we must interrupt our regular, post-MLK Day programming to bring it to you:

Everyone enjoys Google's tradition of modifying its logo in honor of various holidays and anniversaries, and today's simple and elegant tribute to Martin Luther King is no exception.

Spotted today in the elevator bank at the Manhattan VA Hospital:

Yesterday was the fiftieth anniversary of Rosa Parks's famous civil disobedience, and, in an a Elijah-like tribute, the MTA joined with transit systems across the country to ask passengers to leave the seat immediately behind the driver empty in Parks's honor. The Times reports today that the vast majority of MTA riders, even those on packed rush-hour buses, were happy to comply.

See, they tried to warn her.

This requires noting: Rosa Parks died yesterday. We have little commentary on the fact, as, except inasmuch as Rosa Parks affected nearly every aspect of the world we live in today — and, of course, she did — she wasn't a New Yorker and she wasn't in media, and these are the things we write about. (Also, we're white, Northern, and we sort of like sitting in the back of MTA buses — it's where the door is.) But there's this: She was — she is, she will always be — a woman who galvanized a movement that changed the country, and we remember always being amazed during Black History Month in elementary school that such a world-historical figure was actually breathing the same air we were. Attention, as Mrs. Loman says, must be paid. Even by us.