IMUS AND THE RACE HUSTLERS

The Objectivist
RACE-HUSTLING FOR FUN AND PROFIT
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
Monday, April 17, 2007

In American politics, the recent firestorm over comments by Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and radio host Imus show how low the public discussion of race has sunk. In contrast to their minimal comments, the forceful presence of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are a thumb in the eye to race relations.

Reverend Al Sharpton is a disgusting presence on the political scene and a clear indication of how low the Democratic Party will sink to get black votes. Jay Nordlinger of the National Review does a nice job of summarizing Sharpton’s greatest hits.

In 1987, teenager Tawana Brawley, after staying home for a few days, smeared herself in dog feces, scrawled racial epithets on her body, and put a garbage bag over herself. She then claimed that six white men raped her. Sharpton jumped at the chance to turn this troubled teen’s false charges into ground zero of race hatred. Sharpton, along with attorneys Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, very publicly accused a number of people, including assistant district attorney Steven Pagones even after Pagones was cleared. After suffering death threats and illnesses, Pagones sued Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason for defamation and won $345,000. Maddox and Mason were later disbarred over the incident.

In 1989, after the Central Park “wilding” in which there was a brutal rape and horrific beating of a young white woman, Al Sharpton burst onto the scene. He and his group charged that the jogger’s boyfriend had raped and beaten her. He and his supporters publicly chanted this ridiculous charge, denounced the victim as a “whore,” and suggested that a psychiatrist should examine her. In addition, they screamed her name over and over again because most publications refused to do so. His behavior became farcical when he brought Tawana Brawley to the trial to show the difference between white and black justice and had her meet the jogger’s alleged attackers (which she did in a friendly manner).

In 1991, a car driven by a Hasidic Jew struck and killed a 7 year old black child. Sharpton rushed forward to help whip the crowd into a frenzy. An example of his Jew-baiting comments included the following, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” The “Crown Height” riots then broke out and a rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, was stabbed to death and over a hundred others were injured.

In 1995 in Harlem, a Jewish store owner (who owned Freddy’s Fashion Mart) was alleged to have driven a black sore owner out of business. Reverend Al held many rallies designed to scare the Jewish owner away. He made comments such as “[W]e will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Three months later one of the protesters stormed Freddy’s, ordered all blacks out, and fired a pistol and burned the place down. Eight people died.

Baptist Minister Jesse Jackson is slicker and less obvious than Sharpton, but also corrupt and vicious. Kenneth Timmerman in Shakedown does a nice job of exposing his race-hustling innovations.

Jackson had a business of threatening boycotts of major U.S. corporations if they did not adopt quotas across a wide range of corporate activities. In response this threat, the companies then gave distributorships and other valuable contracts to black business owners who in turn kicked money back to Jackson’s organization. His brother also received a number of these distributorships. Among the corporations he shook down in the 1980’s were Coca-Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and 7-Eleven. His scam in part involved black organizations paying annual dues to his nonprofit in return for being put on a list of minority subcontractors that he provided to his shakedown targets. His boycott of Coors got the company to donate $600,000 to boycotting parties, including, of course, Jackson’s non-profit (Operation PUSH). In addition, according to Judicial Watch, he lobbied the Federal Communications Commission to block companies seeking government approval to merge with the goal of forcing them to donate money to his nonprofit.

Reverend Jackson treats his nonprofit as his personal piggy bank. As Timmerman points out, Jackson repeatedly and illegally diverted funds from his nonprofits to pay for personal and political expenses. He also used nonprofit funds to pay some of the expenses related to his out-of-wedlock child he had as a result of a four-year affair. Oddly, his mistress was pregnant when he was very publicly counseling President Bill Clinton on his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.

The enlightened Sharpton refused to criticize Nation of Islam member Khalid Abdul Muhammad with whom Sharpton appeared in Harlem and who is famous for his anti-Semitic rants (e.g., “Who’s pimping the world? The hairy hands of the Zionist in the world.”). The hyper-sensitive Jackson in a 1984 interview with a black Washington Post reporter in which he said he wanted to “talk black talk” called New York City “Hymietown” (a derogatory term for Jews) and refused to distance himself from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who was making campaign appearances and raising money for Jackson. Farrakhan is famous for anti-Semitic diatribes (for example, calling Adolph Hitler “a great man”).

Senator Joseph Biden caused an uproar when he said the following to a reporter about Senator Barack Obama to the New York Observer, “I mean, you’ve got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a story book, man.” He effusively and repeatedly apologized for his comments. In recent times, there were two obscure black candidates (Shirley Chisholm in 1972 and Carol Moseley Braun in 2004) who didn’t attract much attention and probably weren’t who Biden had in mind. Instead, he was thinking of Sharpton and Jackson. While Reverends Sharpton and Jackson are articulate and Jackson was arguably nice-looking when he was younger, Biden is right that Obama provides a clear contrast to these dirty and mean-spirited men.

Imus was trying to make light of the Rutgers Women’s basketball team’s rough appearance (for example, tattoos) and their gritty defensive style of play. His comments clearly indicate this (he first called them “rough girls from Rutgers” and noted “they’ve got tattoos” before being prompted to joke that they were “nappy-headed hos”). People can argue over whether Imus’s comments were funny, but the notion that his show should be cancelled and he should be publicly scorned by major politicians and nearly every public commentator, while the media carried Jackson’s comments and CBS executives met with Sharpton hours before firing Imus is a case study of absurdity. And it’s not just the executives who pander to such con men. In recent years, Democratic Presidential candidates Bill Bradley, Al Gore, and Hilary Clinton also made pilgrimages to Al Sharpton in a pathetic show of deference.

Race hustling has arrived.