Reverend Al

           By Florida Bill

          Here in South Florida, in this land of sunshine and tropical storms, it is not unusual to run into a serpent here or there. The most frequent of these encounters is typically with a common black snake, which can startle most people with its size and quickness.  Though these nasty looking reptiles are essentially harmless, backyard encounters are usually unwelcome and almost always unnerving. Nobody likes to come face to face with any critter with its body coiled in anger and its tongue darting.

           The bothersome presence of these Florida reptiles remind me of that New York hisser, Al Sharpton.  However, over the years, Sharpton has come to be more like the rapacious python  that is ravaging the Everglades than the harmless garter snake popping up in backyards. Like the invasive Florida snake, Sharpton moves stealthily about with his jaw unhinged, threatening to squeeze the reputation out of anyone who gets in his way. And like his counterpart in the Florida landscape, Sharpton is amazingly hard to get rid of. And, like other snakes in the grass, he typically leaves fear, anxiety and bedlam in his wake.  

            Sharpton, who likes to be known as “the Reverend” maintains that he is a Baptist or evangelical minister who was ordained when he was just 4-years-old by a trusted Bishop Washington, who he  met on the sidewalks of New York.   Sharpton maintains that he preached his first sermon during his kindergarten years, and that he has been passing out his advice and counsel ever since, primarily to those men and women who claim abuse and discrimination against them by Caucasians, who are usually policemen.  But occasionally,  he provides his wisdom and counsel to President Obama  in the plush setting of the White House.   

              During his real heyday, Mr. Sharpton weighed in at more than 300 pounds, though nowadays he hits the scales at about 140.  Sharpton used to be seen often in an African garb as he waved a fist in one hand and a bull horn in the other. Nowadays you will find him, shriveled looking in a neat business suit, sometimes on a television screen, but still screaming about racial discrimination, which he finds under almost any rock or anywhere an angry crowd is assembled.

            Sharpton has been especially visible as a promoter of the “Black Lives Matter”  movement. Of course, he is generally silent when policemen are gunned down, but was right in there as one of the lead rabble rousers in Ferguson, Mo,. when a white police officer shot a black criminal who had attacked him. In every subsequent conflict between police and African Americans, Sharpton has quickly arrived on the scene to make sure there is abundant news coverage and community outrage.

       “Do I think Al Sharpton is a legitimate civil rights activist? Are you out of your mind?” said former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. “Are you living on Mars? If you can’t figure out Al Sharpton is a con man, you’re not a reporter. 

“Al Sharpton stands for something,” he went on.  “He is involved in every racial or quasi-racial issue that has involved any police officer … always on the side of whoever is against the police. Some of them have been legitimate, many of them have been illegitimate. We’re talking about a man with a record that is astoundingly outrageous, a man who was a tax cheat, a liar … who has made allegations against police officers constantly.”

Sharpton got his start in the l980s in New York when he, along with two lawyers, accused a policeman and a prosecutor of  the rape and abduction of a 15-year-old African American girl, Tawana Brawley.  After six months of an intense grand jury investigation, the story was proven to be a hoax and subsequently defamation lawsuits were filed against  Sharpton, the alleged victim and two other lawyers, by the police officer and significant awards  were entered against the defendants.   But nonetheless, Sharpton’s reputation as a police-hating activist became nationally known and his presence was a given at protests in which police or others were accused of racial animus.

             With his antics and activist personna, Sharpton’s wealth has grown and he is said to be worth many millions of dollars. Through the years he has been sued many times, and reportedly numerous judgments and liens have been filed against him.

He says that claims he is in debt to the IRS to the tune of nearly $4 million are exaggerated, and that he has already worked out a repayment plan with the government for whatever amount it is that he has failed to pay.  

Though sometimes characterized as a race hustler and a tax cheat, Sharpton appears to have become a close advisor and friend of President Obama.  Records indicate that he has visited the White House some 80 times since Obama took office in 2009.  Giuliani has said he believes the anti-police sentiment sweeping much of the African American community has been given legitimacy by the portrayal of Sharpton as a confidant of President Obama on the issue of race relations. Perhaps this close association with the chief executive has also contributed to giving the nation’s top race activist a Teflon coating of protection and an air of importance.

  Several years ago, the snake was uncoiled on NBC television and given his own talk show, reportedly earning him millions, which allowed him to hiss about his theories of police discrimination and expound on the doctrines of Obama.   

When Obama ran for president, he promised the American people that he would be a uniter, not a divider; that he would bring harmony to the enmity that exists between many whites and African Americans.

 Yet racial tensions are higher today than at any time in the recent past. Perhaps the President of the United States should reconsider his friendship and admiration for the man who slithers onto center stage at every racial confrontation in American today.