[Steeltrap]

This article is by an AfAm columnist in Newsday, the Long Island, N.Y. newspaper. It speaks to some of the issues I personally have w/Rev. Al:

Sharpton's Future Rides on Fessing Up Past
Sheryl McCarthy

January 23, 2003

Now that Al Sharpton is a presidential candidate, the inevitable questions about his character are cropping up again. When asked about his role in the infamous Tawana Brawley rape case on a Sunday talk show, Sharpton sidestepped the issue. He was indignant that the question was even asked.

"The next time anybody wants to know about Tawana Brawley, I'm going to ask them, 'Do you ask Teddy Kennedy about Chappaquiddick? Do you ask Hillary Clinton about her husband?'"

Where've you been all these years, Al? One of the reasons Ted Kennedy gave up on the presidency after his 1980 campaign was he realized that questions about his treatment of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick in 1969 would always dog him, and because he could never sufficiently explain his behavior.

Later, Kennedy's efforts as a senator to defeat Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court nomination on moral grounds failed partly because around the same time he spent an evening drinking with his nephew, William Kennedy Smith - the same night Smith was accused of raping a woman. When you declare yourself qualified to run the whole country, you have an obligation to show that you possess a certain modicum of character. And part of that is owning up to your past mistakes.

Has Sharpton forgotten how Jesse Jackson, a former presidential candidate, was haunted by his "Hymietown" remark in 1984? Jackson apologized repeatedly, even seeking forgiveness at a Jewish temple, and was still apologizing four years later when he ran for president again. This gave him a little more moral capital and allowed him to be the most exciting candidate in the 1988 race. The baby business - well, that came later.

Even Bill Clinton confessed to being a philanderer when the issue came up in his first campaign, and he was forced to admit it again when he was president.

Sharpton continues to act as if those who raise the Tawana Brawley case are the hatemongers, the ones who are avoiding the really important issues and who are still living in the past. But doesn't he know this case is going to haunt him through any presidential campaign?

In the years since this bogus rape shook New York, Sharpton has reinvented himself, becoming trimmer and better groomed, responding to racially charged incidents in a more circumspect way, and making respectable showings in a mayoral and U.S. Senate race. In his journey from street activist to purported statesman, he's expanded his agenda from black issues to global ones - the Mideast, the bombing of Vieques and a potential war with Iraq.

But he still can't bring himself to admit he was wrong about Tawana Brawley and that he maliciously slandered the white former prosecutor, Steven Pagones, by accusing him of rape and murder.

It seems to be a point of pride for Sharpton to cling to the fiction that a young woman was raped and that the system protected the rapists, instead of admitting that he scammed the public and the system to boost his popular appeal. To say he erred would be an admission that he did something really immoral, even as he waved a banner of righteous indignation at an allegedly corrupt system.

Sharpton's not against demanding apologies from others, however. He believes reparations should be paid to African-Americans for slavery because it's the only serious form of apology, he says. And last summer he demanded that MGM, the movie company, apologize to black people for some irreverent remarks about civil rights figures in the popular movie "Barbershop."

Why not practice what you preach, Al, and fess up to the people you deceived? Five years ago, on a trip to Barbados, you told the Barbadians about the moral imperative for African-Americans to be paid back for slavery: "It's like I break into your house, take your furniture, your wife, money, rape your daughter and say if you act right I may apologize. You can't separate us from our history, and until we deal with history, we cannot deal with the future."

That goes for you too, Al.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.