Examining the King

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
That was Martin Luther King Jr. The purpose of this post is not to criticize the good doctor, nor the poetics of his poetically beautiful quote, but to use his quote as a springboard to question a vague and thus (in its vague state)untruthful perspective. It is not untruth in the ideal, but it is in the practical, but the practical has such a rare influence in this particular case that the ideal is for once actually too ideal, not too ideal in comparison to pragmatics, or what can actually happen, but too ideal in that it bears so little relation to how people in our day really think, and to the extent that even asking if they should think the in the way Dr. King prescribes does not have to jump through so many hoops, hoops which are close to an infinite number.
What I mean practically is that the quote does not make clear, (to say nothing about Dr. King's speech, for it may itself make clear) what exactly he is trying to have the street sweeper do. Are street sweeper's lazy? Not in my city. My streets are clean. Are they ashamed that they are street sweepers? This is a possibility. But it is an equal possibility that they are ecstatic to have the job, and it is another equal possibility that they would much rather be drinking and begging with their friends. This is the honest to God truth of the matter.
So then if the goal is trying to lift the street sweeper from the shame of his vocation then it only falls on the dull ears folks who have decent vocations. And it assumes the very problem that is trying to be remedied. It seems you Dr. King are more ashamed of being a street sweeper than a street sweeper is. The rich, by virtue that they are rich are in proportion to their wealth probably more ashamed of street sweeping, and the street sweeper in proportion to his wealth less ashamed of it. If it is not something to be ashamed of, and if our streets are clean, then what would want do we want them to think by this quote? Or forget "them", the street sweepers, but how should all of us apply this quote?
If Dr. King, (again it doesn't matter who the author is, and I am no doubt taking this quote out of context, but already taken out of context, this does present a worldview which many people mistakenly have, and so this is in no disrespect to Dr. King, whose name in this post merely gives nomenclature to the ideal expressed)is merely saying all work is worth the effort, regardless of what society says it's worth. This is an ideal that is worth the individual internalizing and applying. But the quote, unless I'm mistaken, doesn't seem to realize that the statement is actually an indictment on society such as ours which does see street sweeping as a lower profession, a profession necessary for the rich to benefit from Capitalism, but a profession in which Capitalists look down upon because they cannot understand the individual who would not have ambitions to capitalize, an individual who is much less ashamed of himself then they are of him, an individual who, for all anyone knew already internalized Dr. King's message, and thus didn't even need to hear it in the same way in which the pure in heart gain practically nothing from Jesus' exhortation that the pure in heart are blessed. They already know that. Only if this is a sly indictment upon snobby capitalists is this a worthy quote, just as Jesus' beatitudes are are sly indictment on the snobby Pharisees whose eyes were blinded to their own indictment. They may even cheer the sermon or the quote like Larry Flint's customers cheered his indictment.