Not much in the way of political commentary crosses the line into public service. Here's one that does.
If you aren't familiar with Andrew Klavan's brilliant polemics at Truth Revolt, PJ Media and City Journal, you're in for a treat. He's also a best-selling author of mystery novels under the pen name Keith Peterson. Remember that great Michael Caine crime thriller, "A Shock to the System," from 1990? Klavan wrote the screenplay, based on a book by British author Simon Brett.
When it comes to concise slams of "the Reverend" Al Sharpton, Klavan's withering evisceration here sets the bar. Seldom have I come across criticism so simultaneously funny and informative --
Everywhere you look these days, there's Al Sharpton. It's strange, even after you wake up screaming he's still there. It's like one of those Blumhouse movies.
If he's not in some city calling for protests because a cop killed a thug who was resisting arrest, he's in some other city calling for protests because another cop killed another thug who was also resisting arrest.
He's even been meeting with Barack Obama, as if the president of the United States were just some hapless loser who can't find anyone else to talk to.
So, it's about time we asked ourselves, who is Al Sharpton and why?
Al Sharpton has dedicated his life to the improvement of the black man -- Al Sharpton.
He first flushed himself to fame in 1987 when a 15-year-old black girl named Tawana Brawley concocted a lie about being raped by a group of white men. Reverend Al Sharpton, called Reverend Al Sharpton because he's revered -- by Al Sharpton -- became one of Tawana's so-called advisers. He falsely accused a young police officer of participating in the alleged rape and after the already troubled officer committed suicide, Sharpton accused another man of murdering him to cover up the crime.
Sharpton and his cronies organized daily protests using viciously inflammatory language, even though one of Sharpton's top aides says Sharpton suspected all along Tawana's story was false. Finally, a grand jury investigation exposed the girl's hoax, leaving Sharpton looking almost exactly like a race-baiting charlatan -- unless you happen to be a leftist or a journalist or some other sort of gullible buffoon. In that case, Al Sharpton was now a black leader and, sure enough, wherever a tragedy could be misconstrued as a case of racism, black leader Al was there, leading blacks to false conclusions, and violence.
There was Crown Heights, Brooklyn, for instance, when a black child was accidentally killed by a car driven by a Hasidic Jew there in 1991. A small gang of local blacks responded by murdering an innocent Jewish man. But that wasn't good enough for Al. His furious rhetoric helped stir days of anti-Jewish riots in what's been called one of the worst anti-Semitic incidents in American history. And Al wasn't done.
In 1995 he helped incite a vicious name-calling boycott of a Jewish storeowner in Harlem and inspire protests that only ended when one of the protesters shot four whites in the man's store and set the place on fire, killing seven workers, most of them Hispanic.
More recently Sharpton has accused three white lacrosse players from Duke University of raping a black girl, which they didn't; made out that Trayvon Martin was the victim of a racist murder, which he wasn't; and suggested Michael Brown was a gentle innocent shot dead by an evil cop, wrong again. And he managed to do it all while owing the government $4.5 million in taxes.
Which brings us back to our original question -- why do corrupt, opportunistic knuckleheads get elevated to black leadership? Maybe that wasn't our original question, I can't remember. But I mean, you don't see white people accepting leaders like this.If someone like Hillary Clinton had been shown to lie outright again and again about everything from her husband's infidelities to being shot at in a warzone to the reasons behind the terrorist attack in Benghazi, would white people accept her as a leader? .... OK, maybe that's not a good example.
Well, then, if Teddy Kennedy left his mistress to drown so he could fashion an alibi? ... OK, wait. If fools like Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi ...?
OK, look, black people, the point is, don't elevate demagogic flimflammers to leadership in your community. Don't be like white people -- do better than that.
All of which makes it even more appalling that "black leader" Sharpton is one of Dear Leader Obama's closest confidantes. Their chumminess does, however, provide another public service, however inadvertent. If you're ever wondering what Obama actually thinks on any given issue, turn to Sharpton's show on MSNBC to wince through the barely coherent meanderings of his doppelganger.
On Meet the Press this past Sunday, New York Times columnist David Brooks placed himself and others on the show at the "adult table" of conversation while he consigned Ann Coulter and the incorrect satirists at Charlie Hebdo to the "kiddie table."
Sharpton, on the other hand, comes from the clown car of political discourse and emerged at roughly the same moment as another deranged crank, Morton Downey Jr.
Were it not for leftists, journalists and other gullible buffoons, Sharpton would have gone the way of Downey and be largely forgotten today. Instead, his clown car is parked all too often outside the White House.
