WASHINGTON POST: LAST MONTH, Hurricane Irene forced the indefinite postponement of the official dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. The delay could prove fortuitous if the people in charge use the added time to do some erasure and re-inscription of the quotation on the side of the main sculpture — and this time get it right.

The quotation reads: “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.” On first reading, it seems an odd choice, both for its obscurity — “I have a dream,” for example, is nowhere in the monument — but also its inscrutability. What did Dr. King mean by “drum major”? Without context, this part of the monument is baffling.

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This is on a level with Jim Marshall’s infamous “wrong way” touchdown run into the wrong endzone

But the difference between Marshall’s “wrong way” touchdown run and the misquote on the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial is that Marshall’s mistake was a momentary lapse — the result of confusion in the midst of chaos. The Martin Luther King Memorial was decades in the making. How can you get the quote wrong that you are engraving permanently in stone?

They had decades to check this quote, to make sure it’s right? Was this quote not run past historians? Didn’t a committee need to approve the gigantic quote to be engraved in stone until the end of time?

Incredibly, the quote they have on the memorial means just about the exact opposite of what MLK Jr intended if you read the entire quote in context. It’s like omitting “not” from a statement.

And why no mention on the Memorial of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech? Would not a quote from that have been far more appropriate than this weird misquote that literally makes no sense at all?

This is stupidity on a truly cosmic scale.

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