Al Sharpton

Al Sharpton
Al Sharpton, November 2007
Born	Alfred Charles Sharpton, Jr. October 3, 1954 (1954-10-03) Brooklyn, New York, United States
Residence	New York, NY
Occupation	Baptist minister, civil rights/social justice demagogue, radio and television talk show host
Political party	Democratic
Religion	Baptist
Spouse(s)	Kathy Jordan ​(m. 1980; sep. 2004) Marsha Tinsley

Alfred "Al" Charles Sharpton Jr. (born 3 October 1954) is an Afro-American, former Pentecostal, now Baptist minister, race hustler, racist demagogue, black supremacist, and radio talk show host. In 2004, Sharpton was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election. Sharpton hosts his own radio talk show, Keepin’ It Real and makes regular guest appearances on The O'Reilly Factor and MSNBC. Even leftist Wikipedia admits to numerous controversies and criticisms. American Renaissance has an entire article archive dedicated to Sharpton, who many recognize as a firebrand, an opportunist, and a joke.

Personal and religious life

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Sharpton's girth, often stuffed into unflattering tracksuits, was as much a part of his persona as his tactics. Alfred Sharpton's role in the Tawana Brawley hoax first made him a national figure a quarter century ago. He is a verifieda race-monger, anti-Semite, shameless self-promoter and a shakedown artist who has used the threat of protest to extract corporate donations for his civil rights organization, National Action Network. His conversation with an undercover FBI agent posing as a drug dealer was taped as part of a 1983 sting operation. He was indicted for tax evasion and fraud. He led the first rally to protest the 2012 shooting death in Florida of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, another race-mongering media hoax.

The 1987 case of the 15-year-old girl Tawana Vicenia Brawley (b. 15 December 1971) from Wappingers Falls, New York brought Sharpton notoriety that he will never overcome in the minds of most Americans. Brawley, who is black, claimed she'd been assaulted and raped by six white men, some of them police officers. In one of his first mainstream cases, activist Al Sharpton became Brawley’s spokesman, staging rallies and calling for justice on her behalf, but the hoax was soon exposed.

The book starts from the moment a neighbor sees Tawana begin the hoax and carries through to the final decision by the grand jury that discusses the insanity of the allegations, but also very instance of her treatment by her own family, by her legal counsel and by Al Sharpton, one of the most twisted bigots in the USA.

Al was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Alfred Charles Sharpton, Sr. and Ada Sharpton. He preached his first sermon at the age of four and toured with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.

In 1963, Sharpton's father abandoned his family. Ada Sharpton took a job as a maid, but her income was so low that the family qualified for welfare and had to move from middle class Hollis, Queens, to the public housing projects in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Sharpton graduated from Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn, and attended Brooklyn College, dropping out after two years in 1975. He became a tour manager for James Brown in 1971, where he met his future wife, Kathy Jordan, who was a backup singer. Sharpton and Jordan married in 1980. The couple separated in 2004.

Sharpton was licensed and ordained a Pentecostal minister at the age of nine by Bishop F.D. Washington. After Bishop Washington's death in the late 1980s, Sharpton became a Baptist; he was re-baptized as a member of the Bethany Baptist Church in 1994 by the Reverend William Jones and became a Baptist minister.

Activism

In 1969, Sharpton was appointed by Jesse Jackson as youth director of Operation Breadbasket. In 1971, Sharpton founded the National Youth Movement to raise resources for impoverished youth.

Howard Beach

On December 20, 1986, three Blacks were assaulted in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens by a group of White men. The three Blacks were chased by their attackers onto the Belt Parkway, where one of them, Michael Griffith, was struck and killed by a passing motorist.

A week later, on December 27, Sharpton led 1,200 demonstrators on a march through the streets of Howard Beach. Sharpton's role in the case, which led to the appointment of a special prosecutor by New York Governor Mario Cuomo after the two surviving victims refused to co-operate with the Queens district attorney, helped propel him to national prominence.

Tawana Brawley hoax (1987)

The 1987 case of the 15-year-old girl Tawana Vicenia Brawley (b. 15 December 1971) from Wappingers Falls, New York brought Sharpton notoriety that he will never overcome in the minds of most Americans. Brawley, who is black, claimed she'd been assaulted and raped by six white men, some of them police officers, in a town about 70 miles north of New York City.

A witness told us [grand jury] that Ms. Brawley "was definite that there were at least three" assailants. That same witness also testified that she believed the claim of six assailants came from a relative of Ms. Brawley' s because that number may have sounded more "effective." [...] The core of Tawana Brawley's allegation is that she was abducted on Tuesday, November 24, taken to a wooded area, and repeatedly sexually assaulted by at least three men, at least one of whom was a "white cop." To the knowledge of the Grand Jury, she has never named her alleged attackers.

She claimed the "white devil offenders" scrawled "KKK" (written in front of a mirror mirrored), "nigger", and "bitch" on her torso with charcoal, smeared her with feces and left her beside a road wrapped in a plastic bag. Shocking in its depravity, the media bites into it wholeheartedly.

The forensic evidence also shows that everything needed to put Ms. Brawley in the condition in which she was found was present in and around Apt. 19A. The dog hairs found in the feces on the pink shirt and pink shoe Ms. Brawley was wearing, the black gloves found in the bag with her, and on the denim pants found in the washing machine, match the hair from the dog belong- ing to the occupants of Apt. 21A Carnaby Drive. This dog was permitted to defecate in the area behind Apt. 19A and Apt. 21A Carnaby Drive. A razor that could have cut the word "NIGGER" into the pink shoe she was wearing, cut open the white boots, and cut the black leather strap and the black webbed belt, was found in Apt. 19A. Finally, the charred cotton fiber from the charred face cloth found near her, the charred jeans she was wearing and the charred materials found in Apt. 19A was consistent with the charred cotton material used to write the words "KKK " and "NIGGER" on the pink shirt she was wearing. [...] Neither the physician nor an emergency room nurse found evidence of any injuries, broken bones, discolorations, contu- sions or bruises, other than a small bruise on the back of her head and the swollen left arm where the I.V. inserted in the ambulance had infiltrated. The physician described the bruise as being approximately the size of a quarter. It was not tender, there was no collection of fluid underneath it, and when the doctor touched it, Ms. Brawley did not wince or pull away in pain. The doctor estimated that the bruise did not appear to be fresh and could have been one day to several days old. She testified that the bruise was unlikely to have been able to cause unconsciousness .

Agitator Sharpton was among the girl's most vocal defenders. He made his own fictitious accusations, the most so outlandish of which was that the prosecutor in the case had participated in Brawley's rape. (The prosecutor, Steven Pagones, later won a $65,000 defamation judgment against Sharpton, who lost on appeal.) A grand jury declined to bring indictments after determining that Brawley's claims were a hoax. The case inflamed racial tensions across New York and nationally, and Sharpton was roundly criticized as the instigator and denounced by all people with morals. Over the years, critics, politicians and news media have demanded that Sharpton apologize for his role and publicly condemn Brawley. But Sharpton has refused (only white people have to submit to public shaming), perpetuating the contempt that most still hold for him.

Exposure

Attorneys Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason joined Sharpton in support of Brawley. A grand jury was convened; after seven months of examining police and medical records, the jury determined that Brawley had fabricated her entire story.

The news reports at the time, in the late 1980s, were horrific. Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old African-American girl from the New York City area, was said to have been abducted and repeatedly raped by six white men. She was found with “KKK” written across her chest, a racial epithet on her stomach and her hair smeared with feces. She was so traumatized, according to reports, that at the hospital she answered yes-or-no questions by blinking her eyes. Making the crime even more vile, if that were possible, she and her lawyers later claimed that two of the rapists were law enforcement officials. Ms. Brawley’s spokesman was the Rev. Al Sharpton — a dapper television personality and political commentator these days, but a fiery street activist back then. At a news conference, he named suspects. “We have the facts and the evidence that an assistant district attorney and a state trooper did this,” Mr. Sharpton said. He called Gov. Mario M. Cuomo a racist and warned that powerful state officials were complicit. When asked whether Ms. Brawley would speak with the state attorney general, Robert Abrams, Mr. Sharpton said that would be like asking someone in a concentration camp to talk to Hitler. But, as the meticulously researched Retro Report points out this week, it was all a hoax. After seven months, 6,000 pages of testimony and 180 witnesses, a grand jury found Ms. Brawley’s story to be a lie. Neither the police officer nor the district attorney accused by Ms. Brawley and Mr. Sharpton had been involved in any way, the report concluded. A Sharpton associate told the news media at the time that Ms. Brawley’s lawyers, C. Vernon Mason and Alton H. Maddox Jr., and Mr. Sharpton were “frauds from the beginning.” And about six months after the hoax, Ms. Brawley’s former boyfriend told Newsday that she had invented the allegations, apparently to avoid a beating by her mother’s boyfriend after running away from home for four days. Last week, Retro Report interviewed Mr. Sharpton and asked whether, 25 years later, he felt that any crime had occurred at all. “Whatever happened,” he answered, “you’re dealing with a minor who was missing four days. So it’s clear that something wrong happened.” Not exactly contrite. As for Ms. Brawley, the video notes that she is now working as a nurse in Virginia under another name and has refused to explain her actions publicly. However, there is archival footage of an interview with her from many years back, in which she said: “What did I lie about? Lie about what? The grand jury to me didn’t really exist — that was all a farce.”

Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason accused the Dutchess County prosecutor, Steven Pagones, of racism and of being one of the perpetrators of the alleged abduction and rape. The three were successfully sued for slander and ordered to pay $345,000 in damages, the jury finding Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones, Maddox for two, and Mason for one.

When the case was brought before a grand jury, it concluded that Brawley had falsified the entire account. Pagones, who was an assistant district attorney, filed a civil suit that named Brawley, Sharpton and Brawley’s lawyers as defendants. Sharpton has since paid his debt to Pagones. But Brawley, now 41 and a nurse living in Virginia, still owes Pagones more than $431,000. Pagones says he will forgive the debt if Brawley issues a personal apology and finally clears his name of all wrongdoing. “Just tell the truth. That’s all I’m looking for here. I have been battling this since day one, and it’s really all about telling the truth,” Pagones said. Calls to Brawley were not returned.

In 2007, Sharpton said he would have accepted the case the same as he does today. The only difference would be he would not have made it so personal with Pagones, but he still felt Brawley had a good case to go to trial. "I disagreed with the grand jury on Brawley," said Sharpton in an interview.

"I believed there was enough evidence to go to trial. Grand jury said there wasn’t. Okay, fine. Do I have a right to disagree with the grand jury? Many Americans believe O.J. Simpson was guilty. A jury said he wasn’t. So I have as much right to question a jury as they do. Does it make somebody a racist? No! They just disagreed with the jury. So did I."

Bensonhurst

On August 23, 1989, four Black teenagers were beaten by a group of 10 to 30 white youths in Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood. One Bensonhurst resident, armed with a handgun, shot and killed sixteen-year-old Yusef Hawkins.

In the weeks following the assault and murder, Sharpton led several marches through Bensonhurst. The first protest, just days after the incident, was greeted by neighborhood residents shouting "Niggers go home" and holding watermelons to mock the demonstrators.

In May 1990, when one of the two leaders of the mob was acquitted of the most serious charges brought against him, Sharpton led another protest through Bensonhurst. In January 1991, when other members of the gang were given light sentences, Sharpton planned another march for January 12, 1991. Before that demonstration began, neighborhood resident Michael Riccardi tried to kill Sharpton by stabbing him in the chest. Sharpton recovered from his wounds, and later asked the judge for leniency when Riccardi was sentenced.

Crown Heights Riot

The Crown Heights Riot began on August 19, 1991, after a car driven by a Jewish man, and part of a procession led by an unmarked police car, went through an intersection and was struck by another vehicle causing it to veer onto the sidewalk where it accidentally struck and killed a seven-year-old Guyanese boy named Gavin Cato and severely injured his cousin Angela. Witnesses could not agree upon the speed and could not agree whether the light was yellow or red. One of the factors that sparked the riot was the arrival of a private ambulance which, on the orders of a police officer worried for the Jewish driver's safety, removed the uninjured driver from the scene while Cato lay pinned under his car. Cato and his cousin were treated soon after by a city ambulance. Caribbean-American and African-American residents of the neighborhood rioted for four consecutive days fueled by rumors that the private ambulance had refused to treat Cato. During the riot blacks looted stores, beat Jews in the street, and clashed with groups of Jews, hurling rocks and bottles at one another after Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting student from Australia, was stabbed and killed by a member of a mob shouting "Kill the Jew." Sharpton, who arranged a rally in Crown Heights after Cato's death, has been seen by some commentators as inflaming tensions by making remarks that included "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."

Sharpton marched through Crown Heights and in front of "770", shortly after the riot, with about 400 protesters (who chanted "Whose streets? Our streets!" and "No justice, no peace!"), in spite of Mayor David Dinkins' attempts to keep the march from happening, 1991 Sharpton incited the race riot. He never called on the rioters to go home. To the contrary, he stirred them up. And three days of anti-Semitic violence became the Crown Heights riots.

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. 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." 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. Fire Department officials discovered that the store's sprinkler had been shut down, in violation of the local fire code. 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.

Amadou Diallo

In 1999, Sharpton led a protest to raise awareness about the death of Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea who was shot to death by NYPD officers. Sharpton claimed that Diallo's death was the result of police brutality and racial profiling. Diallo's family was later awarded $3 million in a wrongful death suit filed against the city.

Ousmane Zongo

In 2002, Sharpton was involved in protests following the death of West African immigrant Ousmane Zongo. Zongo, who was unarmed, was shot by an undercover police officer during a raid on a warehouse in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Sharpton met with the family and also provided some legal services.

Duke lacrosse players

In April 2006, Sharpton was invited on Fox's The O'Reilly Factor to discuss the case of three white Duke University lacrosse players who had been accused of raping an African American woman who was hired as a stripper at an off-campus party. In response to Bill O'Reilly's questions concerning the possibility that the woman might have fabricated the allegations, Sharpton said, "First of all, the authorities have charged there was a crime. ... When the prosecutors went forward, they clearly have said this girl is the victim, so why would we be trying the victim?" When O'Reilly mentioned recent news reports that DNA testing had failed to match any of the defendants, Sharpton said, "I think that all of the facts that you have laid out the DA had — and I know this DA is probably not one that is crazy. He would not have proceeded if he did not feel that he could convict." Later, when O'Reilly said that Sharpton didn't know what happened, Sharpton agreed. "I don't know yet and I think that the proper thing to do is to support those that want justice."

In January 2007, prosecutor Michael Nifong withdrew from the case after ethics charges related to his conduct in the case were brought against him. The North Carolina Attorney General, who replaced him, dropped charges against the accused players in April 2007 and declared that they were innocent, in light of inconsistencies in the accuser's accounts of events and the lack of any evidence supporting her claims.

Dunbar Village

On March 11, 2007, Sharpton held a press conference to highlight what he said was unequal treatment of four suspected rapists in a high-profile crime in the Dunbar Village Housing Projects in West Palm Beach, Florida. The suspects, who were young black men, were arrested for allegedly raping and beating a black Haitian woman. The crime also involved forcing the woman to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son.

MSNBC

MSNBC's decision to name Sharpton as host of its daily 6 p.m. hour in August 2011 shocked many observers because of his criminal history as a demagogue and his absolute lack of experience as a television journalist. His hiring came after Sharpton and other black leaders a year earlier had lent pivotal support to Comcast's successful bid to acquire NBC Universal, the former parent company of MSNBC.

The Knockout Game Coverup

In December 2013, he appeared in television on MSNBC to cover up that The Knockout Game was black-on-white hate crimes. He even used unrelated footage with a black woman on the ground and a white man standing nearby to further lie to the public.

Political views

2008 presidential race

As of January 2008, Sharpton had not endorsed a candidate in the 2008 presidential campaign. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have asked Sharpton for campaign advice, and each has reportedly asked for his endorsement.

In September 2007, when he was asked whether he thought it was important for America to have a black president, Sharpton said, "It would be a great moment as long as the black candidate was supporting the interest that would inevitably help our people. A lot of my friends went with Clarence Thomas and regret it to this day. I don't assume that just because somebody's my color, they're my kind. But I'm warming up to Obama, but I'm not there yet."

Homosexuals

Sharpton is a supporter of homosexuals, including same-sex marriage. During his presidential campaign in 2003, Sharpton said he thought it was insulting to be asked to discuss the issue of 'gay marriage'. "It's like asking do I support black marriage or white marriage... The inference of the question is that gays are not like other human beings."

Accusations of racism, homophobia, and bigotry

Sharpton was quoted as saying to an audience at Kean College in 1994 that, “White folks was in caves while we was building empires ... We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.” Sharpton defended his comments by noting that the term “homo” was not homophobic but added that he no longer uses the term. Sharpton has since called for an end to perceived homophobia in the African-American community.

During 2007, Sharpton was accused of bigotry for comments he made on May 7, 2007, concerning presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his religion, Mormonism:

"As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so don't worry about that; that's a temporary situation."

In response, a representative for Romney told reporters that "bigotry toward anyone because of their beliefs is unacceptable." The Catholic League compared Sharpton to Don Imus, and said that his remarks "should finish his career".

On May 9, during an interview on Paula Zahn NOW, Sharpton said that his views on Mormonism were based on the "Church's traditionally racist views regarding blacks" and its interpretation of the so-called "Curse of Ham". On May 10, Sharpton called two apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and apologized to them for his remarks; he also asked to meet with them. A spokesman for the Church confirmed that Sharpton had called and said that "we appreciate it very much, Rev. Sharpton's call, and we consider the matter closed." He also apologized to "any member of the Mormon church" who was offended by his comments. Later that month, Sharpton went to Salt Lake City, Utah, where he met with Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and Elder Robert C. Oaks of the Church's Presidency of the Seventy.

Political campaigns

Sharpton has run unsuccessfully for elected office on multiple occasions. Of his unsuccessful runs, he said that winning office may not have been his goal. "Much of the media criticism of me assumes their goals and they impose them on me," said Sharpton in an interview. Well, those might not be my goals. So they will say, 'Well, Sharpton has not won a political office.' But that might not be my goal! Maybe I ran for political office to change the debate, or to raise the social justice question." Sharpton ran for a United States Senate seat from New York in 1988, 1992, and 1994. In 1997, he ran for Mayor of New York City.

• On January 5, 2003 Sharpton announced his candidacy for the 2004 presidential election as a member of the Democratic Party.

• On March 15, 2004, Sharpton announced his endorsement of leading Democratic candidate John Kerry.

• On December 15, 2005, Sharpton agreed to repay $100,000 in public funds he received from the federal government for his 2004 Presidential campaign. The repayment was required because Sharpton had exceeded federal limits on personal expenditures for his campaign. At that time his most recent Federal Election Commission filings (from January 1, 2005) stated that Sharpton's campaign still had debts of $479,050 and owed Sharpton himself $145,146 for an item listed as "Fundraising Letter Preparation — Kinko's."

• On April 2, 2007, Sharpton announced that he would not enter the 2008 presidential race. "I am not going to run," he said.

Editor Jay Nordlinger on Sharpton (2000)

An amazing thing has happened in New York, and in Democratic politics: Al Sharpton has become King. He is Mr. Big, The Man to See, the straw that stirs the drink. Nothing has made that clearer than the prelude to the New York primary, and the budding New York Senate race. They come in a steady parade to him, even if they show flutters of reluctance: Bill Bradley, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton. Everyone refers to this as “kissing his ring”; at times, Democrats seem willing to kiss even more. Not long ago, he was a demagogue, a race-baiter, a menace-and acknowledged as such, by all but a fringe. Day and night, he worked to make an always difficult city — New York — even more difficult, more tense. Now, however, he practically rules. He is a kind of Establishment. His record — as galling as any in our politics — is overlooked, excused, or shrugged off. It is to him that every (Democratic) knee must bow. And another amazing thing: no penalty. Democratic bigs seem to pay no penalty whatever for their embrace of Sharpton. George W. Bush is worse off for Bob Jones University. Sharpton — or “The Rev,” as he is known among his fans — is nothing if not mindful of his status; he must know, therefore, that his two visits to the White House last year were milestones for him. One visit was for a conference on police brutality; the other was for a ceremony honoring the New York Yankees (“I don’t think Al has ever been to a Yankee game in his life,” confided a friend of his to an interviewer). The more Mrs. Clinton becomes a New Yorker, and a New York politician, the friendlier the White House is to Sharpton. Last November, when the First Lady was dithering about whether to run at all, Sharpton announced that his patience was “running thin”; he wondered whether Mrs. Clinton was “too scared and too intimidated and too much of a lackey to challenge” Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, long a Sharpton foe. In due course, Mrs. Clinton declared her candidacy, and made the pilgrimage to Sharpton headquarters. Bill Bradley needed no prodding. A self-styled Great White Father of black America, he was always eager for Sharpton’s blessing, meeting with him early. He was pleased to intone Sharpton’s threat-laden slogan, “No justice, no peace.” He courted The Rev with breathtaking, unembarrassed ardor. After their get-together in August, Sharpton said to the press, “Mr. Bradley had a very public meeting, answered all of the questions. I think he was very impressive.” Outside of Sharpton’s offices, however, not everything was harmony. Bill Perkins, a black city councilman, was leaving the meeting when he was confronted by a mob, supportive chiefly of the hate-spewing Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a Sharpton ally. They hurled charges of “Uncle Tom!” and warned that (relatively) temperate politicians like Perkins should “be killed.” Such is the atmosphere you enter when you consort with Sharpton, even in his present “mainstream” mode. Bradley is not known to have expressed a word of concern. Out in Iowa, he did say, “I don’t agree with Al Sharpton on everything, but I think he has to be given respect.” Of course. Slowest of all to pay homage to Sharpton-but, nevertheless, in time — was Al Gore. [...] No one should suppose that Sharpton is without admirable qualities. He has not attracted thousands of followers on charismatic racism alone. He has daring, tenacity, and a gift for leadership, even if repeatedly abused. He is also an American original — a self-created (and re-created) man; a go-getter; an achiever, of sorts. Born 46 years ago in Brooklyn, he was relatively middle class, until his father walked out, when he became poor. He likes to say that he agitated from the beginning: “I yelled when I was hungry. I yelled when I was wet. I yelled when all those little black bourgeois babies stayed dignified and quiet. I learned before I got out of the maternity ward that you’ve got to holler like hell sometimes to get what you want.” When he was four, according to the legend, he began to preach. Jesse Jackson, who became a mentor, has described him as “a child prodigy.” When he was about 14, Sharpton hooked up with one of the many Jackson operations, and at 16 started the first of his own: the National Youth Movement. He was also drawn to Adam Clayton Powell, the colorful and crooked congressman from Harlem. Shortly before he died, in 1972, he had some final words for young Sharpton (in The Rev’s telling): “These yellow Uncle Toms are taking over the blacks in New York. Don’t you stop fighting. If you want to do something for Adam, get rid of these Uncle Toms.” Later, Sharpton came under the wing of James Brown, the soul singer, who acted as a father to him (“James Brown was my father; Jesse Jackson was my teacher”). When he at last took to full-time rabble-rousing, he did so with a ferocity, lashing out at “faggots,” “cocktail-sip Negroes,” and even black Marxists-those who carried “that German cracker’s book under their arms.” He caught a break in 1984, when Bernhard Goetz, the subway gunman and face of white backlash, shot a gang of youthful muggers. Sharpton campaigned for Goetz’s head. He caught a further break two years later, when the incident known as “Howard Beach” occurred: A young black man, Michael Griffith, was chased to death by a gang of white thugs. Sharpton was developing a modus operandi: He would call victims or their families — or defendants and theirs — to offer his services, which included cash, legal counsel, and the like. Sharpton himself would serve as “adviser” and “spokesman.” He quickly earned the sobriquet “Reverend 911,” responding to any black-white emergency. Accused of being an ambulance chaser, he retorted: “No: I am the ambulance.” His greatest infamy came in 1987, with the Tawana Brawley hoax. As the journalist Nat Hentoff has put it, this is Sharpton’s “Chappaquiddick.” To recall the horrid affair: A girl named Tawana Brawley, after staying away from home for several days, smeared herself with dog feces, scrawled racial epithets on her body, and hopped into a garbage bag. Then she claimed that six white men, including a police officer, had raped and otherwise tormented her. All of America sat up in alarm. Bill Cosby, who was at the height of his fame and popularity, offered a large monetary award for information leading to arrests. And Al Sharpton, of course, was on the spot. Acting as the Brawley family’s adviser, he urged them not to cooperate with the authorities, including the state attorney general, Robert Abrams. To cooperate with Abrams, he said, would be “to sit down with Mr. Hitler.” A Sharpton sidekick, Alton Maddox, added, “Robert Abrams, you are no longer going to masturbate looking at Tawana Brawley’s picture.” One of those whom Sharpton and his partners accused was an assistant district attorney, Steven Pagones, who was, needless to say, innocent (the crime never took place). After he was cleared, he held a press conference, which Sharpton, in his theatrical fashion, attempted to crash. “Your accuser has arrived!” he bellowed. Sharpton had said before, “We stated openly that Steven Pagones did it. If we’re lying, sue us, so we can go into court with you and prove you did it. Sue us — sue us right now.” Oddly enough, Pagones did. He spent a decade of his life pursuing a defamation case against Sharpton and his accomplices, finally winning that case one glorious, cleansing day in July of 1998. His life had been a hell-of death threats, illnesses, and assorted other agonies. He said to an interviewer in 1997, “I know that Sharpton doesn’t care how I feel. [But] I will follow him and make sure he pays up as long as I live. Wherever he goes, he’ll find me waiting for him.” Sharpton now owes Pagones $65,000 in damages, money that the victim will probably never see.At the heart of any case against Sharpton-and against the notion of a New Sharpton-is his persecution of Steven Pagones. It has been, to use the word for which there is no substitute, evil. He has never apologized for his deeds, and nothing piques him more than to be reminded of them. “If I saved the Pope’s life,” he has sniped, “the media would ask me about Brawley.” In soft moments, he has come close to apologizing (“I have regrets”). In harder ones, he is angrily defiant (“Never, ever!”). Liberal journalists — white — patiently explain that, for a black leader, an apology is a complicated matter: a question of politics and tactics, not of right and wrong. As Sharpton himself has said, to apologize would be “all about submission.” White folk “are asking me to grovel. They want black children to say that they forced a black man coming out of the hardcore ghetto to his knees.” Jesse Jackson gained nothing by apologizing for his “Hymietown” remark, so why should he? Only last year, Sharpton said of his role in the Brawley case, “If I had to do it again, I’d do it in the same way.” There was more, of course-always more. In the spring of 1989, the Central Park “wilding” occurred. That was the monstrous rape and beating of a young white woman, known to most of the world as “the jogger.” The hatred heaped on her by Sharpton and his claque is almost impossible to fathom, and wrenching to review. Sharpton insisted-against all evidence-that the attackers were innocent. They were, he said, modern Scottsboro Boys, trapped in “a fit of racial hysteria.” Unspeakably, he and his people charged that the victim’s own boyfriend had raped and beaten her to the point of death. Outside the courthouse, they chanted, “The boyfriend did it! The boyfriend did it!” They denounced the victim as “Whore!” They screamed her name, over and over (because most publications refused to print it, though several black-owned ones did). Sharpton brought Tawana Brawley to the trial one day, to show her, he said, the difference between white justice and black justice. He arranged for her to meet the jogger’s attackers, whom she greeted with comradely warmth. In another of his publicity stunts, he appealed for a psychiatrist to examine the victim. “It doesn’t even have to be a black psychiatrist,” he said, generously. He added: “We’re not endorsing the damage to the girl — if there was this damage.” The horrible roll continues. August of 1991 saw “Crown Heights,” the period of madness that began when a car driven by a Hasidic Jew careened out of control, killing a seven-year-old black child, Gavin Cato. Riots broke out. A rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, was lynched. Over a hundred others were injured. The city was on the verge of breaking apart. And here is what Al Sharpton had to say, in one of the most vile orations of his career, noxious with slanders familiar and novel: The world will tell us that [Gavin Cato] was killed by accident. . . . What type of city do we have that would allow politics to rise above the blood of innocent babies? . . . Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. . . . All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise. Pay for your deeds. . . . It’s no accident that we know we should not be run over. We are the royal family on the planet. We are the original man. We gazed into the stars and wrote astrology. We had a conversation and that became philosophy. . . . We will win because we are right. God is on our side. Sharpton’s rhetoric could also be rather less high-flown. “If the Jews want to get it on,” he said, “tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” So: When is the New Sharpton supposed to have emerged? Later in 1991, when, during a march in Brooklyn, he was stabbed in the chest, by a drunken young white. One of those who sped to his bedside was David Dinkins, then mayor, and the symbol of the black establishment that Sharpton despised and would soon replace. “I always tease Mayor Dinkins,” he now likes to say, “that I looked up and thought I had died and gone to hell.” In a display of magnanimity, Sharpton forgave his assailant and recommended leniency for him in court. The supposedly sobered Sharpton quickly jumped into the electoral realm, running for the Senate in 1992 against a field he described as “recycled white trash.” He finished third out of four Democrats, beating Elizabeth Holtzman, the renowned former congresswoman. Two years later, he again ran for the Senate, taking 26 percent of the vote from the incumbent, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. His most striking political showing came in 1997, when he ran for mayor. He garnered a full 32 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, almost forcing a runoff with the winner, Ruth Messinger (who went on to be defeated by Giuliani).All the while, Sharpton’s power and influence-the sense of his legitimacy-grew. Once he had referred to Dinkins as “that nigger whore turning tricks in City Hall.” By 1993, however, Dinkins could say, “I’m the mayor of New York, but Sharpton is the leader. If we didn’t have an Al Sharpton, we would have to create one. Imagine if Al wasn’t around. What would have happened to victims? Who would have raised our issues? Thank God for Martin [Luther King], thank God for Adam [Clayton Powell], thank God for Al.” The torch had effectively been passed. But the torching, so to speak, continued. In 1995-four years into the putative New Sharpton-there was another, fatal case in which Sharpton had a guilty hand: Freddy’s Fashion Mart. In Harlem, a white store owner — no, worse: a Jewish one — was accused of driving a black store owner out of business. At one of the many rallies meant to scare the Jewish owner away, Sharpton charged that “there is a systemic and methodical strategy to eliminate our people from doing business off 125th Street. I want to make it clear . . . that we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Sharpton’s colleague, Morris Powell, said of the Jewish owner — Sharpton’s “white interloper” — “We’re going to see that this cracker suffers. Reverend Sharpton is on it.” Three months later, one of the protesters, Roland Smith, stormed Freddy’s with a pistol, screaming, “It’s on now: All blacks out!” In addition to shooting, he burned the place down. Eight people died. Sharpton now faced a PR problem, a bump on his road to full respectability. In a manner both Sharptonian and Clintonian, he denied having even spoken at a rally at all. When tapes surfaced, he asked, “What’s wrong with denouncing white interlopers?” Eventually, he decided to apologize-but only for saying “white,” not “interloper.” [...] Eric Fettmann, an editorial writer and columnist for the New York Post, finds Sharpton anything but cute. He is a kind of one-man truth-and-memory squad against Sharpton. The Rev’s greatest hoax, he argues, is not Tawana Brawley, but the New Sharpton. The Rev has, in fact, sued the Post, for damaging his reputation and inhibiting his fund-raising. The paper — delighted not least by the prospect of a legal proceeding that would open Sharpton’s (dubious) books — editorialized, “Bring It On, Rev. Al.”A tragic aspect of Sharpton is that, given his talents, he could be a force for good. When the verdict in last month’s Amadou Diallo trial came down, going against Sharpton and his protesters, he said, “Let not one brick be thrown.” This was probably the most statesmanlike utterance of his career. But if Sharpton has shed Saul for Paul, he has provided scant evidence of it. Seldom does he resist the demagogic, the hatemongering, temptation. He is, for the most part, proudly unrepentant. And, oh, how he hates any cold-eyed look at his life and times. “They always try to scandalize you,” he has complained (echoing an old spiritual). But “they,” sadly, do not try to scandalize him enough. Perhaps even worse, they do nothing to scandalize those top Democrats who have bent to Sharpton’s feet, raising him higher than ever.