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Mfume for U.S. Sex Symbol
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Posted: May 3, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
©_2005_WorldNetDaily.com
Officially, former Congressman and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume is currently running for U.S. senator from Maryland.
On the front pages of Maryland's two most widely circulated daily newspapers, the Democrat-dominated Washington Post and Baltimore Sun, Mr. Mfume is now also a leading candidate for United States Sex Symbol.
I mean, President Bill Clinton apparently had numerous adulterous affairs – including cigar-and-oral sex from under the table with Monica in the Oval Office.
But where is there any evidence that Slick Willie was ever so sexually irresistible to the opposite sex that two women got into an actual fight over him?
The Washington Post describes what happened on Feb. 26, 2004, as detailed in an internal NAACP memorandum:
"The screaming match between Monica McCullough and Tiffany Hawthorne at the NAACP's national headquarters in Baltimore was getting out of hand when three coworkers tried to intervene.
"But it was too late. McCullough had lunged over a colleague and struck Hawthorne in the face. The fight that ensued sent Hawthorne to Mercy Hospital's emergency room with swelling and bruises to her face and hands, according to her application for a protective order. The two women were granted restraining orders. "
The Post also reports that "Mfume has denied allegations in the memo that he gave preferential treatment to female employees he dated, causing unrest in the office."
Mr. Mfume has not denied, however, that as the NAACP's president, he did "date" NAACP female employees. And that inevitably raises the question: What happened when female employees dated the NAACP president?
Were these incredibly foolish presidential social engagements with female employees devoid of even good-night kisses?
Well, what do you think – since Mr. Mfume is unmarried and in the prime of life?
NAACP Chairman Julian Bond was quoted by the Post as saying of Kweisi: "He was good at outreach ..."
Chairman Bond was otherwise very non-committal for a man who has one of this nation's most savagely outspoken mouths.
When asked about the apparently leaked NAACP documents on Mfume, Bond replied: "We make it a practice not to discuss personnel matters."
Even when this NAACP person is all over page ones?
The Baltimore Sun reported that when Bond was "asked if he was bothered that an internal memo was leaked to a news organization, he responded: 'If I said it upset me, that would acknowledge that it exists.'"
This I-will-neither-confirm-nor-deny kind of reply (which almost always means confirmation) is also a suggestion that both the Post and the Sun would publish reports of a memo that does not exist – and make themselves wide open to libel suits.
The Sun also reported that Mfume is "banking on voters concentrating on his self-made career as a congressman and president of a venerable national institution, rather than his teen days as a street hustler named Frizzell Gray, who fathered five children out of wedlock."
The Sun also reported that Mfume is "a left-leaning politician who, as a student in the 1970s, helped take over a Baltimore community college building and replaced the U.S. flag with a black-power banner" – as recalled by Johns Hopkins University political science professor Matthew Crenson – "and others."
In New York, Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and formerly with the NAACP, said:
It was an open secret that the place was just unprofessional, a general climate of favoritism and cronyism. People were backbiting, and jockeying for position based on who knew whom, who was close to Kweisi, who was close to his son.
Then, there was the NAACP report prepared for top NAACP officials last summer by Chicago labor lawyer Marcia Goodman. She was hired to assess the organization's legal liability involving claims of workplace discrimination by Michele Speaks, a midlevel employee in the development department.
According to the memo, Speaks described nine female employees as "paramours" of Mfume, or his son – and she alleged those women were rewarded with promotions and raises. Goodman analyzed their salaries and believed that several of the women identified by Speaks advanced faster, with higher pay, than others in the office.
"The allegations by Ms. Speaks would likely be considered by a court to be sufficient to put the organization on notice of a potential problem regarding the pervasive paramour relationships or personal favoritism" by Mfume, Goodman wrote.
Considering this NAACP-reported issue of "pervasive paramours," I am obliged to conclude that Kweisi Mfume – if ever installed in a U.S. Senate office building – would be like making Bill Clinton the resident father supervisor of a college sorority.
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Les Kinsolving hosts a daily talk show for WCBM in Baltimore. His radio commentaries are syndicated nationally. He is White House correspondent for Talk Radio Network and WorldNetDaily. His show can be heard on the Internet at
www.wcbm.com 8-10 p.m. Eastern each weekday. Before going into broadcasting, Kinsolving was a newspaper reporter and columnist – twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his commentary.
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