Eminentoes: Mr. Democrat
Gahr, Evan
1EMINENTOES by Evan Gahr Mr. Democrat I n January 1998, every New York Democratic senatorial candidate—plus the party's gubernatorial hopefuls—dutifully attended a Harlem public policy...
...But he has emerged in the last few years as a genuine political player—embraced by the entire Democratic Party establishment from President Clinton on EVAN GAHR is a contributing writer for the American Enterprise magazine and a former New York Post press critic...
...As he told USA Today, "I'm still Rev...
...He joined the picket lines outside Freddy's — and even used his National Action Network radio program to denounce the owner of Freddy's as a "white interloper...
...One day was reserved for labor activists and members of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice...
...Last year, New York's rate of fatal police shootings was 0.48 per i,000 cops, a far lower Al Sharpton is the party's latest comeback kid...
...The following year, a grand jury ruled the story false and specifically exonerated Pagones...
...The store, which actually rented the space from a black church, had been locked in a bitter dispute with a black subtenant it threatened with eviction...
...And what a turnout...
...Giuliani, a Republican, came to power," the New York Times reported...
...A Talmud student was killed hours later in retaliation during the four nights of riots that ensued...
...Moreover, there's no evidence that NYC cops are a triggerhappy bunch...
...When Sharpton decided to run for Mayor in 1997, Freddy's was all but forgotten by the press...
...Today, much works for Sharpton...
...58 June r 9 9 9 The American Spectator average than major cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C...
...With those kinds of remarks omitted, readers were given the impression that Sharpton was simply a quick-tongued politician no different from Bob Dole...
...Sharpton did his best to sow further unrest...
...Charlie Rangel, former Mayor David Dinkins, and some 1,200 lesser-known folks were arrested...
...most folks with a record like Sharpton's would have been driven from public life long ago...
...The only difference is I've got a little gray on the side, I've gotten a little thinner and I take more people's opinions into consideration...
...Democrat I n January 1998, every New York Democratic senatorial candidate—plus the party's gubernatorial hopefuls—dutifully attended a Harlem public policy forum...
...During their debate Sharpton, blessed with a quick wit, stole the show...
...Staff writer William Murphy hailed the man's "talent for the use of biting quotes...
...The big draw was Al Sharpton, the racial activist who had made his name with the Tawana Brawley hoax and, more recently, had called a Harlem store-owner a "white interloper" just weeks before his shop was burned to the ground...
...But after each odious incident, Sharpton somehow emerges stronger...
...But had anyone even alluded to such matters at the forum, he would have seemed the proverbial skunk at a garden party...
...To protest the killing, and supposedly rampant police brutality, Sharpton orchestrated daily "civil disobedience" protests outside New York City police headquarters...
...At the time, however, City Comptroller Alan Hevesi was the lone Big Apple Democrat who vowed to withhold his support if Sharp-ton won the party's nomination...
...Despite the media hype, no one should have been surprised this March when top Democrats got arrested for Sharp-ton's latest cause—and helped him turn a genuine tragedy into political gold that he will likely mine for quite some time...
...And, of course, actors and actresses, such as Susan Saran-don...
...For example, a Daily News piece on the first anniversary of the fire entirely omitted Sharpton's role...
...No matter: The Sharpton-led protests seemed designed to cripple Rudolph Giuliani's mayoralty and turn the clock back on his quality-of-life initiatives...
...Newsday took the occasion of his January 1997 campaign kick-off to publish a compilation of the "Wit and Wisdom of Al Sharpton...
...But the next time Republicans are accused of being "divisive" or pandering to racial prejudice they could remind folks that a racist clown has been welcomed into the Democratic Party's big tent...
...The policemen who shot Diallo weren't rogue cops out to terrorize a black neighborhood...
...More importantly, thanks to the cops that Sharp-ton's protesters likened to the KKK, crime is down throughout New York— especially in minority neighborhoods...
...Moreover, the NYPD is now the subject of several federal and state investigations, and even the normally unapologetic Rudy Giuliani was left on the defensive...
...Each day, the police received a list from Sharpton and Co...
...True enough...
...Nope...
...And if another Democratic primary opponent, Robert Abrams, seemed uneasy about sharing a stage with a man who had compared him to Hitler, he didn't show it...
...Sharpton has done what no Democratic candidate has done since Mr...
...Appearances were clocked to the minute...
...Sharpton lost, but his star continued to rise...
...Besides that, I haven't changed...
...On December 8 seven innocent people died in an arson attack on a white-owned Harlem clothing store, Freddy's Fashion Mart...
...On a day reserved for black political leaders, Sharpton raced to Penn Station to pick up NAACP president Kweisi Mfume so he could get arrested on schedule...
...It was quite a show, as carefully choreographed as the Democratic convention, and with a politically and ethnically correct bunch of participants to match...
...Which power broker managed to bring such Democratic luminaries as Geraldine Ferraro and Charles Schumer together in the first such gathering of the campaign...
...police shootings in New York have declined steadily in recent years...
...Once laughed off as a buffoon, Sharpton is still fat and loud...
...Paul's on the road to Damascus—is too big a whopper even for him...
...Ferraro praised Sharpton's wit...
...Quite true...
...Major media outlet...
...Sharpton and two compatriots told how the black teenager had fallen victim to a racist conspiracy that supposedly included a local district attorney with mob ties (Stephen Pagones) and a New York state official (Attorney General Robert Abrams) who masturbated with Brawley's picture...
...He won 32.5 percent of the vote, and nearly forced a run-off election...
...At Cato's funeral he reportedly denounced Jewish "diamond merchants" and repeated a false rumor that a Jewish-operated ambulance wouldn't treat the boy as he lay dying...
...But in December 1995, it seemed that Sharpton's luck had finally run out...
...But when the predominantly white jury finally found Sharpton and his two colleagues guilty, the verdict seemed anti-climactic...
...Schumer expressed utter delight when Sharpton dubbed him "Reverend Schumer...
...they were looking for a black serial rapist (later caught...
...It was an assertion he hardly needed to make, because his actions and words quickly slipped down the media memory hole...
...And the lucky few were divided into groups...
...A far more important group of Sharpton's peers had made up their minds months earlier...
...The American Spectator • June 1999 59...
...The four cops who shot Amadou Diallo were indicted for murder...
...In November 1987, Sharpton, then relatively unknown, claimed that a group of white men raped and kidnapped Brawley...
...He has assembled the remnants of the city's once-dominant liberal Democratic coalition and built upon that foundation!' That's no mean feat...
...Nevertheless, Sharpton emerged from his pack of lies with his credibility enhanced: He was now a bona fide civil rights leader who supposedly spoke for disaffected blacks...
...If it worked for you, he gushed, it can work for me...
...In August 1991, a 7-year-old black boy, Gavin Cato, was accidentally killed by a Hasidic driver in Brooklyn...
...All the while, Sharpton managed to besmirch the entire police force over a single—albeit horrific—incident...
...of whom to arrest...
...But President Clinton is happily photographed with Sharpton, and, according to the Forward, the two even shared a warm hug last year...
...Fresh from Jew-baiting in Crown Heights, he ran for the Senate in 1992, winning praise from such normally aggressivecompetitors as Geraldine Ferraro...
...The Bush White House denounced Duke...
...Curiously, he even benefited when the defamation lawsuit brought by Stephen Pagones, one of the men Sharp-ton said had raped Brawley, finally went to trial in December 1997...
...The case dragged on for nearly a year...
...Journalists explained that he had since tempered his rhetoric and matured...
...Moreover, the head of his Buy Black committee, Morris Powell, had denounced the "Jewish department store" and promised to "make this cracker suffer...
...Sharpton's role soon became clear...
...Note the contrast with how the GOP ostracized its own racist demagogue, David Duke...
...Despite all the blather about his newfound moderation, all that's changed is that Sharpton now easily travels in Democratic power circles...
...Then came Crown Heights...
...In a telephone interview, Sharpton said he was in no way culpable for the attack...
...No wonder that Sharpton, downright giddy during the civil disobedience protests this March, bragged to the New York Times that he's recognized as a leader by just about everyone these days...
...The protests ended in late March, but only after Sharpton got what he demanded...
...We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it...
...Latinos and Asians, another...
...In February, four white policemen in the Bronx shot and killed an unarmed African immigrant who, according to press reports, they thought was wielding a gun...
...A party elder...
...he pattern, of course, began with Tawana Brawley...
...Indeed, the Poughkeepsie, New York trial was barely underway before journalists explained that the entire Brawley affair was little more than youthful foolishness on Sharpton's part...
...As the trial dragged on for months, Sharpton stuck to his story...
...True, the forum took place during Sharpton's trial for defamation in connection with the Tawana Brawley affair, but that hardly put a damper on the festivities...
...Sharp-ton finished a close second in the primary to Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger...
...The Democrats' big guns spoke of Sharpton in such effusive terms that casual observers could have mistaken him for the second coming of Martin Luther King...
...He forgot quite a few from a recent speech at a New Jersey college, in which Sharpton, according to the Forward, explained that "White folks was in the caves while we was building empires...
...down...
...Actually, the notion that Sharpton is a new man since Tawana Brawley—that he's undergone a metamorphosis akin to St...
...Sharp-ton was deluged with so many volunteers, he had to tum folks away...
Vol. 32 • June 1999 • No. 6
