Jesse Jackson Returns!
LABASH, MATT
Jesse Jackson Returns! After a 48-hour withdrawal from public life, he's back. BY MATT LABASH New York JESSE JACKSON IS BACK. Some may not have known he was away, as one man's exile is another's...
...But Jackson shoos me with his meaty hand...
...Though Jackson is usually accessible, even insistent on talking to the media, we can't get near him this evening...
...Tonight, however, Sharpton has ginned up an outpouring of love because Jackson is a living legend, a mentor, and because, as a source close to Sharpton confides, "Jesse asked him to do it...
...Now is the time for Jackson to take refuge in his chauffeured town car, to bark at Sharpton to find his cell phone, and to speed off to a mid-town Sheraton for the opening reception of his fourth annual Wall Street Project convention...
...after Bush's inauguration, "the winds shifted," leaving us with a "queasy, uneasy feeling...
...Trying not to seem too inaccessible (it is, after all, his convention), Jackson periodically pokes his head out...
...This in Matt Labash is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Instead, they praise his "genius...
...Though the two have known each other since Sharpton was a 12-year-old boy preacher, the relationship has soured in the past few years...
...Our path is obstructed by beefy security guards...
...Indeed, considering a DNA test has established Jackson's paternity, evasion time seems to have been two years ago...
...Pittman has come to announce not only that AoL Time Warner (a company that's just slashed over 1,000 employees) has generously updated the Rainbow/PUSH website, but that they're also launching a vehicle to help minority businessmen lay hands on venture capital...
...So excruciating is all the talk about customer affinity and group policies and diversity score-cards that Jackson himself at one point rests his cheek in the cradle of his palm and closes his eyes...
...Rogers rips through such spot-on Sam Cooke impressions that even the local white politicians, their complexions pink as shaved ham, are moved to gyrate, as Sharpton admonishes them to clap on the downbeat...
...I have no comment," he says...
...Jackson and Sharpton file onto the stage to take their high-backed throne-like seats among lesser clergy...
...Now is not the time to rehash, even if there hasn't been a time to hash...
...Sharpton, as always, looks as if he ate the canary...
...Though nearly everyone interviewed praises Jackson's soft-selling gregariousness, a quick calculation reveals that one-third of the companies the Wall Street Project lists as "gold" or "silver" partners have been threatened with Jackson boycotts...
...But with the president's sympathetic phone call, the public embrace from his own rivals, and the deep pockets of the one-eyed man, Jackson's admission is shaping up to be something quite unexpected: an excellent career move...
...Jackson talked with his family, played cards, and as Jonathan, his (legitimate) son, related, he helped eat "all the ribs and sandwiches in the house...
...Among self-respecting demagogues, Sharpton is generally regarded as coming by his dishonesty more honestly than Jackson...
...Now, with that painful chapter behind him, he is back to do the "nation's business" in Harlem's Canaan Baptist Church...
...Inside, the church sanctuary resembles Jackson's career in miniature: historic, with flashy gold-leaf-accented pillars attempting to distract attention from the crumbling plaster ceiling...
...Rangel delivers what is one of the only overt references to the love-child story all evening, and it's directed at the media: "Get over it...
...By all accounts, those painfully introspective 48 hours were a period of great breach-healing...
...While both regularly prick corporations over racial grievances—sometimes real, mostly imagined—Sharpton is largely a bullhorn-wielding creature of the streets, while Jackson heads foundations subsidized by the corporations he's purportedly monitoring...
...We're here instead to celebrate Jackson (at one point, the audience cheers, "Run Jesse Run...
...But after the recent National Enquirer bombshell that the married Jackson had fathered a daughter (now 20 months old) out of wedlock with Rainbow/PUSH Coalition staffer Karin Stanford, Jackson vowed to take time off to "revive my spirit and reconnect with my family" before returning to his "public ministry...
...The Wall Street Project is perhaps the most sophisticated mau-mauing apparatus ever hatched by a civil rights activist...
...No," Jackson chuckles...
...When they're not raping their mothers and eating their young, they steal elections and plant stories in scandal sheets...
...Jackson has mostly been applauded for saying this is "no time for evasions, denials, or alibis"—in contrast with Bill Clinton, whom Jackson counseled for "ministering" to Monica Lewinsky during the very time of Stanford's pregnancy...
...Ministry" here is a term of art the churchless reverend uses to describe his race-baiting, demoniza-tion of Republicans, and shaking down of corporations for large sums of money...
...He is flanked by Rep...
...At the moment, there are more pressing matters—more pressing even than restoring voting rights to ex-felons...
...King...
...While covering the conference, I'm unable to find a single attendee scandalized by Jackson's disclosure...
...But when the media throng presses in, he quickly retreats in a sort of human version of whack-a-mole...
...The band takes its place, as an organist noodles through introductions and prayers...
...They've left Jackson little choice but to return from exile, Jackson says...
...It is the Tuesday after the scandal broke, and a support vigil is being sponsored by Al Sharpton, Jackson's protege and rival...
...Though Jackson's exile began on a Thursday, he announced his reemer-gence on Saturday, apparently having had his fill of reconnecting with his wife, Jackie, who told Life magazine in 1987 during a flurry of rumors about Jackson's extramarital activities, "If my husband has committed adultery, he better not tell me...
...Jackson awkwardly applauds Pittman's "vision," saying "a one-eyed man is king in a blind city...
...Shortly thereafter, Stanford, who wrote a book about Jackson with the unfortunate title Beyond the Boundaries, relocated to Los Angeles, where she lives in a $365,000 home, drives a BMW, and enjoys $3,000-per-month child support payments from Jackson...
...In addition, Jackson took reassuring calls from world leaders (George W. Bush), former world leaders (Bill Clinton), and failed world leaders (Al Gore...
...After swimming around Jackson's blockers, a reporter asks Jackson if he'll be taking any questions about the scandal today...
...They call him a "bold . . . man of intelligence" and "appreciate his courage for stepping out and being an example" of the "words of Dr...
...And you better not go digging into it...
...With bureaus in multiple cities to put the heat on corporations to provide "untapped capital" to "underutilized talent," the project sees to it that blue chip bigwigs like Freddie Mac and Verizon get to underwrite Jackson's celebrity golf tournament, his black-tie gala on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and other monuments to Jackson's hubris...
...addition to the $35,000 Rainbow/ PUSH admits having paid her in (depending on the spokesperson) "severance pay," "moving expenses," "consulting fees," or the more colloquial "hush money...
...The other reason we are here, the night's discourse makes clear, is Republicans...
...When Jackson finally does emerge to formally kick off the festivities, he does so behind the most distinguished offensive line since the mid-'80s Redskins...
...Some apparently thought the Rev...
...Unlike other preacher sex scandals, this one will entail no quivering confessions, no rending of garments, no embarrassing I-have-sinned waterworks displays...
...Instead, the mood is defiant and celebratory...
...The panel features lengthy diversity-babbling disquisitions from the chairmen of American General and MetLife, who are about as interesting as . . . insurance salesmen...
...As the New York Post's Rod Dreher alone has reported, Rainbow/PUSH sent out a press release in March 1999 announcing Stanford's maternity leave and naming another man as the father of her child...
...Jackson's situation might at the very least be taken as a sign of spiritual bankruptcy, a lack of moral seriousness, that diminished his stature among race-hustling activists...
...All this so that the Wall Street Project can fight for projects benefiting disadvantaged minorities, such as a Delaware franchise in the Continental Basketball Association...
...By mid-morning, most reporters who came to extract even a single comment from Jackson about the scandal have given up, allowing him to escape once more...
...Blocking for Jackson are inner-city media magnate Percy Sutton, former New York mayor David Dinkins, and AoL Time Warner co-chief operating officer Bob Pittman...
...The morning after the Sharpton rally and the welcome reception, Jackson is holed up in a conference speakers' holding pen next to a continental breakfast bar...
...Some may not have known he was away, as one man's exile is another's long weekend...
...While Jackson is full of savvy investment advice ("Money grows on trees if it's planted in money mud"), his influence is most acutely felt in the shakedown of corporate "part-ners"—he calls it a "shake-up"—who thank him for the privilege...
...Apparently we are not here to dwell on the past...
...by means of an Afrocentric dance troupe and Willie Rogers, of the Soul Stirrers...
...Not only did he mangle the cliche, but Pittman actually has a glass eye...
...One that can only be rectified by Jesse Jackson, who will continue to advance his important agenda, such as ending capital punishment ("Jesus was on death row") and restoring voting rights to ex-felons...
...As the service concludes in an amen-crescendo, Jackson slips out the back door with his entourage, which includes Jackie Robinson's widow...
...Today, Jackson is concerned with "insurance literacy," and so is moderating a CEo panel on "access and inclusion within the insurance industry...
...Television cameras line the auditorium, trying to get shots of the stage through a thicket of church hats and paddle fans hauled out in the middle of January...
...Charlie Rangel, whose prodigious girth indicates he ate two or three...
...After slaloming through security, I jab a tape recorder at Jackson to inquire whether he has any intention of addressing puzzling love-child issues such as why Karin Stanford was paid moving expenses at the same time she was severing relations with Rainbow/PUSH...
Vol. 6 • February 2001 • No. 20
