Politico to go: MSNBC and Sharpton- a match made in...

Posted

When CNN gave Elliot Spitzer his own show, many complained engaging the disgraced former governor was a new low in cable news. But by hiring “Reverend” Al Sharpton as their 6pm host, MSNBC has smashed through CNN’s record, establishing a new low which may never be topped.  With Sharpton, MSNBC contracted a man who’s incited two anti-Jewish pogroms, bears false witness against innocent people and is linked to the demise of at least eight innocent people.
In 1987, Sharpton helped make the Tawana Brawley false rape charge big news. To this day he refuses to admit that it was proved a hoax. He falsely named Steven Pagones, an Assistant District Attorney in Dutchess County who was working on the case, as one of the rapists. Sharpton and Brawley’s lawyers asserted “on 33 separate occasions” Steven Pagones “had kidnapped, abused and raped” Brawley. There was no evidence, so Pagones was soon cleared.
Sharpton accused district attorney William Grady of trying to cover up Pagones’ involvement and demanded Governor Cuomo immediately arrest the two “suspects.” Sharpton refused to provide evidence, saying only that he would reveal facts when the time was right, and that revelation never came.
A grand jury had plenty of facts the story was a hoax, including rape kit results which didn’t indicate sexual assault; despite her clothing being charred there were no burns on her body indicating that she took them off to burn them. The racial epithets written on her were upside down; indicating Brawley herself had written the words, and testimony from her schoolmates revealed she had attended a local party during the time of her supposed abduction.
Three months after Sharpton’s accusation, his aide, Perry McKinnon, stepped forward to tell the truth.  McKinnon testified “Sharpton acknowledged to me early on that ‘The [Brawley] story do sound like bull---t, but it don’t matter. We’re building a movement. This is the perfect issue. Because you’ve got whites on blacks. That’s an easy way to stir up all the deprived people, who would want to believe and who would believe—and all [you’ve] got to do is convince them—that all white people are bad. Then you’ve got a movement.”
Does MSNBC believe that its hosts should be ruining people’s lives with false charges of rape, or trying to create a race war?
Beyond the Brawley case, Sharpton has twice used false claims to stir up Anti-Semitic pogroms; one resulted in deaths of innocents. The Crown Heights pogrom occurred after a car accident when the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s motorcade accidentally killed a young boy, Gavin Cato. The riot was sparked after a private Hasidic ambulance arrived, and on the orders of a police officer removed the Hasidic driver from the scene. A city ambulance picked up Gavin Cato and his cousin, Angela, soon after.
Caribbean and African-American residents of the neighborhood rioted for four days fueled by rumors driven by Sharpton that the private ambulance refused to treat Cato which was an outright lie. Sharpton was fully aware the Hasidic ambulance was directed by the police to leave.
During Cato’s funeral, Sharpton screamed about “diamond merchants” a code word for Hasidic Jews. He charged them with shedding “the blood of innocent babies” and told the Jews to “pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” He continued to agitate the crowd by leading marchers through Crown Heights shouting “No Justice No Peace.” Stirred, in part by such rhetoric, hundreds of Crown Heights blacks took to the streets committing violence against the local Jews. Sharpton reacted to the riots by stating, “We must not reprimand our children for outrage, when it is the outrage that was put in them by an oppressive system.”
In 1995 a Jewish-owned store named Freddy’s Fashion Mart canceled the lease of the Black-owned record store that sublet part of the property. Freddy’s, which had been on the premises for over 30 years, wanted to expand. Sharpton, for months, led rallies to scare the Jewish businessman away and called for a boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses. He 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 Freddy’s Jewish owner, “We’re going to see that this cracker suffers. Reverend Sharpton is on it.” In December 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 first lied about being involved. When confronted with a tape showing his presence, he said: “What’s wrong with denouncing white interlopers?” 
Well “Rev” what’s wrong with a man standing idly by when eight people die? Is that the make-up of a “Reverend?”  Apparently it is the make-up of an MSNBC host.
Remember the case of the Central Park Jogger who was brutally raped and left for dead by a gang of youths? During the trial Sharpton led a mob outside the court, which claimed, without a shred of evidence, that “the boyfriend did it,” and screamed that the victim was a “whore.”
This is what MSNBC hired, an anti-Semite and racial agitator. Even their usual biased version of the news would be preferable.

Jeff Dunetz is the Editor/Publisher of the political blog “The Lid” (www.jeffdunetz.com) Jeff lives on Long Island.