On the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Hillary Rodham Clinton flew to Memphis, Tenn., where she called for the appointment of a cabinet-level "poverty czar" to cope with the economic downturn.

Shortly thereafter -- at the bury-the-news hour of 4:05 p.m. on a Friday -- staffers released Bill and Hillary Clinton's 2000-2006 tax returns showing that the couple earned a not very working-class $109 million.

Clinton, a member of the gilded class clinging to a Rust Belt base, had long delayed disclosing details of her fortune, for fear of driving blue-collar and low-income voters to Barack Obama. The Illinois senator and his wife have earned about 4 percent of the Clintons' income during the past seven years.