The Obama administration announced this weekend that it will be sending not one, but three, officials to attend the funeral of Michael Brown on Monday.
President Barack Obama is sending three White House officials to the funeral service of the Missouri teenager whose death in a police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, has sparked days of racial unrest.Leading the group for Monday's service will be the chairman of the My Brother's Keeper Task Force, Broderick Johnson. My Brother's Keeper is an Obama initiative that aims to empower young minorities. Johnson is also the secretary for the Cabinet.
Also attending will be the deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, Marlon Marshall, and an adviser for the office, Heather Foster.
The decision would be highly questionable as is, but when compared to the White House’s presence at, say, the funerals of Maj. Gen. Harold Greene or British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, it’s deplorable.
The White House has been selective in sending representatives to funerals — recall that only a low-level delegation was sent to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s service last year. More recently,President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden skipped the funeral ofMajor General Harold Greene, the 2-star general killed in Afghanistan on Aug. 5.
(In case you were wondering, Obama was golfing during Greene’s funeral.)
Quite predictably, neither close friends nor family will be delivering the 18-year-old’s eulogy; it will be Rev. Al Sharpton.