You Know, I Always Wondered …

by

… about the egregious Al Sharpton, whom I will not dignify with the title of reverend, first because there is no record of the fat, illiterate, race-baiting rabble-rouser ever having attended a seminary of any sort, and secondly because … oh, good lord, just look at those old pictures of him from the 1970s and 80s; jheri-curled, velour track suit and gold pendant the size of a man-hole cover. People, trust me when I tell you that I require a smidge more dignity from those who hold churchly office in any denomination, a standard from which Al Sharpton fell so far that he would need a bucket-truck with a three-story-tall extension even to get close.

Yes, in the interests of keeping abreast of news events in the pre-internet days, your Dear Author bought or subscribed to a great many print publications, to the point where on days when bulk mail came in to the military post office, I practically had to use a crow-bar to extract them all from my post-box. One of the regular reads – gotten from the Stars & Stripes bookstore, since I didn’t particularly feel the need for a subscription – was The Village Voice. So – yes, I had heard of the unsavory Mr. Sharpton some years before he burst upon the wider world outside of New York with the Tawana Brawley affair in the late 1980s.

Subsequently, I wondered why the wretched little man seemed to be legally untouchable, even in spite of being ordered to pay out in the case of the Pagones defamation suit. The Crown Heights riots, the Freddy’s Fashion Mart fire – all of that had Al Sharpton’s smeary fingerprints all over them … and yet … he seemed to talk away always, unscathed by any meaningful payback. Falsely shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater and setting off a panic which kills people – that would be actionable, surely?

And yet, nothing ever happened to the so-called reverend; he appeared to thrive as a particularly scummy and public race-baiter – and indeed, even to recent times, ascending to a presumably well-paid position at a major broadcast television channel. Which again – this really gives one cause for wonder, seeing as that the egregious Sharpton, who appears to have lost some weight and refined his sartorial taste – has gone vaulting up into higher and higher levels of visibility and social authority. Still – why?

Part of the answer, according to this story, courtesy of the Daily Mail, is that Al Sharpton was an FBI snitch. (Why again, are so many stories of this kind appear on a publication like the Daily Mail, which seems to have semi-literate high school students write their headlines, cut-lines and badly re-write stories lifted from other places? Well, at least they do, which is more than what can be said of our very own dear national media.) And if you believe he volunteered to be a snitch with regard to the FBI investigating two prominent Mafia families out of the goodness of his heart and as a fine upstanding citizen with a deep concern for the welfare of his community … then bless your heart and I have some fine Nevada swampland that I’d like to sell you. I’ll throw in a small bridge in Brooklyn, just because I am a good upright citizen myself.

No, Al got leaned on by the Fibbies, and I hope I live long enough to read in the headlines exactly what they held over his head and threatened to charge him with to ensure his cooperation. I’ll break out a $20 bottle of champagne or maybe a fine Fredericksburg Winery Fredericksburg and Northern vintage red Zinfandel and drink a toast. Al was a valued informant, and therefore Teflon in his subsequent career. Interesting also that it is revealed now – and I also wonder if there is some FBI agent a couple of weeks from retiring with a good pension who decided to square things by slipping the word to The Smoking Gun. Discuss.

22 thoughts on “You Know, I Always Wondered …”

  2. Al Sharpton’s career as a “preacher” began when he was a child.

    The Brooklyn-born Sharpton was a child preacher who was ordained in the Pentecostal Church at age 10. He was rebaptized as a Baptist in 1994. He often serves as a guest preacher at various churches but does not lead a congregation.

    It was a scam as has been the case with most of his life. It would be interesting to see who supplies his funding since hais fines were paid by others and her is suit proof because he owns nothing in his own name, even his clothing. The victims of the Tawana case got a large judgement against him but never collected because he stayed out of New York and then had no assets. None.

  3. One more time, the Daily Mail in the UK covers news that US media does not.

    So much for Stop Snitchin’.

    I notice that the preview function has been fixed. Previously, it worked only when you had already placed a comment.

  4. Yes a huckster born and bred. A natural candidate for criminal associations. An informant to the FBI? Why not?

    If it smells like fish it’s either a fish or …

  5. Some of you may know this already, but it deserves repeating: Sharpton was one of the honored guests at the state dinner President Obama threw for French President Hollande.

    (Even if he did it under duress, Sharpton’s informing on the mob would still be one of the best — or perhaps I should say least worst — things in his public record.)

  9. Visiting ChicagoBoyz is the intellectual equivalent of a buffet of fine food and drink…until I get to the punchbowl and see that PenGun has left a turd for us.

  11. Much as I hate to do this – after all, Chicagoboyz is not a college campus – Penny’s further droppings on this thread and topic are either deleted or satirically edited as suits my pleasure, since that single comment proves without a shadow of a doubt that our dear Penny knows absolutely nothing about Al Sharpton. I leave the current dropping as proof positive of this, and of my wisdom in taking this radical step. Have a nice day, Penny.

  12. “The Reverend Al has more humanity in his little finger than you have in your entire body.

    Have a nice day.”

    Pen, tell the truth, were you into some mood enhancers of one sort or another when you wrote that? Really bizarre, Thanks for the smile.

  14. I have real sympathy for blacks, although jonathan Chait would disagree with me. I was raised by a black nursemaid in a middle class home in Chicago. She came to live with us when my sister was born in 1941. She lived with us, and after my parents sold their home in the 1960s, in a Hyde Park apartment where my sister saw to her needs and finally admitted her to a Catholic nursing home until she died at the age of 96.

    When she lived in Hyde Park, I used to visit when we were in Chicago. A very nice black supermarket manager nearby arranged to stock her freezer with nice food and looked in on her from time to time. I’m sure Al Sharpton would describe this as a form of paternalism distinct from that which keeps his career going in spite of his tangles with the law.

    She was raised in Georgia and her family were landowners. She began as a nursemaid for white people’s children when she was 16. Even so, she was literate and would tell us stories of the children she had raised until they were old enough not to need a nursemaid. She converted to Catholicism because we were and her account at the local drug store was in her name, except her surname was listed as “Kennedy.”

    Among other things I learned from her was the blacks’ anti-Semitism. Some of this was probably related to the fact that small stores in the “black area” of Chicago at the time were mostly owned by Jews. A similar reaction in Los Angeles is directed to Koreans.

    In my time in high school in Chicago, I was probably as racist as most white boys but it did not inhibit us from hanging out in a black bar in south Chicago called “Ella Mae Reed’s Hideaway.” My buddy and I used to go in there almost every Friday night and play bumper pool. We would be the only white faces in there and I never felt unsafe. My buddy and I got to be very good at bumper pool and we would win every game. The guys in the bar would line up to play us and I never felt any resentment, even though we were playing for beers. I would never take the chance of doing that now.

    When I was in college, USC campus was in a largely black area of Los Angeles. I remember walking back to my apartment one New Years Eve and going into a party down the block. Again, we were the only whites. Times have sure changed.

    My high school, Leo Catholic High School although it no longer has Christian Brothers, has a 96% college attendance rate among graduates. It is a blue collar neighborhood but the tuition is paid and the parents try very hard to overcome the forces that oppress them. And those forces are not Republicans, no matter what Jonathan Chait thinks.

  15. I go back and forth on PenGun. On my own blog, under his own name, he’s recently unleashed his snark in defense of Gosnell. Yeah, that Gosnell.

  16. PenGun might have missed missed this piece on the sainted Reverend Al.

    Remember, Sharpton is a man who blamed the Jews in New York for all manner of conspiracies. Riots he inspired led to chants of “kill the Jew.” The “No Justice, No Peace” mantra emerged out of this violence as a not-so-subtle racial threat to New York Jews and the NYPD that had to deal with the Sharpton-motivated chaos. Both Holder and Obama appeared before a wall containing the same slogan this week. The audience Obama spoke to was already primed to believe outlandish fantasy and racially soaked paranoia. That the President of the United States set foot in the room tells you everything you need to know about the man.

  17. Sgt Mom “that single comment proves without a shadow of a doubt that our dear Penny knows absolutely nothing about Al Sharpton”

    You are too kind in your assumptions. In my long and bitter experience, leftists like PenGun know exactly what Sharpton is.

  18. TMLutas “I go back and forth on PenGun. On my own blog…”

    Your own blog:would that be Flit? I forgot about it after you started posting at ChicagoBoyz. Didn’t realize you had resumed posting there–and under a new URL.

  19. Penny listens to James Brown, who apparently in one of his more incoherent moments, included Al Sharpton rapping in sycophantic praise on one of his albums. No, we do not take James Brown as one of the major sociopolitical commentators of the age.

    And that appears to be the sum and total of Penny’s knowledge of Al Sharpton.

    This clueless blather has been edited by Sgt. Mom

  20. “I go back and forth on PenGun. On my own blog, under his own name, he’s recently unleashed his snark in defense of Gosnell. Yeah, that Gosnell.”

    To defend choice with the example of That Gosnell is pretty disgusting, Penny –

    edited by Sgt. Mom, who means what she says.

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