It has been reported that Al Sharpton may get that empty talk show host spot at MSNBC. Personally, I'd prefer that Melissa Harris-Perry babe that is filling in now. She is easy on the eyes unlike that other "babe", the Tim Geithner look-a-like Rachel Maddow. Oh, she's just as liberal, but I can always hit the mute button and just look at her.
But I digress; we are talking about Al Sharpton. A lot of folks are criticizing the idea claiming that Sharpton is not fit to fill the position. I disagree.
Sharpton's detractors point out that he has been involved in a number of controversies during his career as a civil rights activist. He sure has.
Sharpton, you may recall, jumped into the 1987 Tawana Brawley hoax backing up the teenage girl's claims that a group of white cops had sexually assaulted her. He was later successfully sued for libel.
During the 1991 Crown Heights riots, Sharpton was quoted as saying during a demonstration,"If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house" and referring to Jews as "diamond merchants." The riots began after a car driven by a Jew struck and killed a small Guyanese boy. During the riots, several Jews were beaten on the streets and an Australian Jew was stabbed to death. Yet, after the riots, Sharpton led another demonstraion shouting, "Whose streets? Our streets!" and "No justice-no peace."
Also in 1991, Sharpton led a black boycot of a Korean store owner in Brooklyn.
In 1995, Sharpton involved himself in the protests of Freddie's Fashion Mart, when a Jewish tenant evicted his sub-tenant, a black-owned record store per the request of the owners of the building, a black Pentacostal church. During the demonstrations against the store, Sharpton said this to the crowd; "We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business". In December of 1995, one of the protesters, entered Freddie's Fashion Mart and shot several customers while setting the store on fire. Seven employees died of smoke inhalation, and the gunman shot himself.
In 1998, Sharpton was hit with a delinquent tax bill of some 1.5 million dollars to the IRS and New York State. He claimed discrimination.
And don't forget that famous undercover video of Al negotiating a cocaine deal.
Also don't forget that Sharpton publicly stated that he would not criticize President Obama.
So the verdict is clear. Al Sharpton is a perfect fit for MSNBC. And even better, you know that MSNBC won't ever suspend or fire him like they do with all the other talking heads. They wouldn't dare.
Just think; Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Larry O'Donnell and Al Sharpton. The Fab Five.
9 comments:
Sorry F. I just cannot put that up. Last night I went to a conservative event and saw Larry Elder there. (I didn't meet him.) People like Elder are the hope of the future.
Gary, Larry is the exception to the rule. The majority of Blacks are anti-Semitic, fueled by their mothers and good "Reverends" like Al Sharpton. "Rev" Al has the blood of 9 people on his hands from the 2 pogroms he instigated.
Findalis is obviously a few generations removed from a real pogrom. (So am I). When regiments of armed Cossacks go rampaging through the suburbs of Chicago with impunity, be sure to tell us all about it.
While there are many reasons I don't respect Al Sharpton, I would have to see some specific references, evidence, and documentation, to believe that he set a mob to run off chanting "Kill the Jew." That a half-baked gang of semi-illiterate thugs might have done so not long after a Sharpton speech is credible. You refer to the riots in Crown Heights, I presume?
Now, look at my original comment, and respond directly to it please. And don't try to tell me that one riot in Crown Heights constitutes a national culture of pogroms with impunity.
The Crown Heights Riot was a three-day riot that occurred in August 1991 in the Crown Heights neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn.
Crown Heights was and currently remains a primarily West Indian and African American community; however, it has a large minority of Jews. The riots began on August 19, 1991 after the child of two Guyanese immigrants was accidentally struck and killed by an automobile in the motorcade of a prominent Hasidic rabbi. During the riot, an Orthodox Jew was killed. The riot unveiled long simmering tensions between the Crown Heights' black and Jewish communities. It also had an impact on the 1993 mayoral race, and ultimately led to a successful outreach program between black and Jewish leaders that helped improve race relations in the city.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Heights_riot
I can provide more.
Freddie's Fashion Mart
In 1995, a black Pentecostal Church, the United House of Prayer, which owned a retail property on 125th Street, asked Fred Harari, a Jewish tenant who operated Freddie's Fashion Mart, to evict his longtime subtenant, a black-owned record store called The Record Shack. Sharpton led a protest in Harlem against the planned eviction of The Record Shack.[32][33][34] Sharpton told the protesters, "We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business."[35]
On December 8, 1995, Roland J. Smith Jr., one of the protesters, entered Harari's store with a gun and flammable liquid, shot several customers and set the store on fire. The gunman fatally shot himself, and seven store employees died of smoke inhalation.[36][37] Fire Department officials discovered that the store's sprinkler had been shut down, in violation of the local fire code.[38] Sharpton claimed that the perpetrator was an open critic of himself and his nonviolent tactics. Sharpton later expressed regret for making the racial remark, "white interloper," and denied responsibility for inflaming or provoking the violence.[13][39]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Sharpton#Freddie.27s_Fashion_Mart
I'm sure he will cause more now that he is on TV.
Findalis, you have told me nothing about Crown Heights that I didn't already know. You also didn't make a case that America is dominated by pogroms.
As to The Record Shack, what you outline is credible. Sharpton undoubtedly wanted to distance himself from the arsonist. I take his denials with a grain of salt. In many instance, no matter what the ideology, the "respectable" purveyor of militant nonviolence will secretly applaud the violent act of someone half inspired by, half reacting against, the public agitator.
The big question is why the pastor of United House of Prayer wasn't out on the street with a megaphone, and calling all the newspapers and TV stations, to announced "WE wanted The Record Shack out of here. We don't want that filth in our black neighborhood."
But none of this amounts to a general pogrom by Americans of African descent against Americans of Jewish descent.
I never said that the US is dominated by pogroms. I said that Al Sharpton has led pogroms. He has. Now MSNBC has given him a platform for his hatred. Who next? David Duke?
David Duke... he's the man who listened to Newt Gingrich and smirked "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." He also came darn close to getting himself elected governor of Louisiana, and Al Sharpton couldn't get himself elected dog catcher in Harlem, not when everyone gets to vote.
Al Sharpton may have sparked a few street rumbles, and that's not something to admire, it is in fact something to suppress. But it doesn't rise to the level of a calvalry regiment riding into town to kill, rape, loot, and burn, followed by a mob consisting of half the people in town. Americans of many stripes apply the terms of mass atrocity to rather minor crimes, simply because we have read about the big stuff happening in other decades or on other continents, and we haven't experience the real thing. So a scratch strikes us as an amputation, a fractured bone strikes us as an auto-da-fe, etc.
I make the same criticism of people who get upset over an effigy hanging from a tree. It really isn't the same as living with the knowledge that any day, you could be snatched off the street and burned alive by a grinning crowd of your neighbors, customers, etc. We all need a sense of proportion about these things.
Post a Comment