Al Sharpton Criticizes Don Imus?If America is going to be lectured on the state of race relations, could the African-American community please find a spokesman who isn't a criminal, an avowed racist and an anti-semite?
Does anyone remember Tawana Brawley? Do you remember the role the "Reverend" Sharpton played in that hoax? How did Sharpton, who has continually refused to apologize for that disgraceful ruse, ever become a leading spokesman for African-Americans?
What Don Imus said was ridiculous and blatantly racist but please, I don't, and America doesn't, need to be lectured by a person of Al Sharpton's character and background. Twenty years after the lie that was 'Tawana Brawley', Sharpton should just now be being considered for parole, not lecturing the country on race relations.
There still needs to be a lot of discussion on race in this country. But the African-American community needs to find people with a hell of a lot more credibility than some asshole like Al Sharpton so that there can be an attempt to have a serious dialogue.
In 1987, a 15-year-old black girl named Tawana Brawley went missing and was found four days later covered in dog feces and with racial slurs written on her body. She claimed that at least two and possibly six white men, one of them carrying a badge, had repeatedly raped her in the woods in upstate New York. Sharpton took up Brawley's cause and defended her refusal to cooperate with prosecutors, saying that asking her to meet with New York's attorney general (who had been asked by Gov. Mario Cuomo to supervise the investigation) would be like "asking someone who watched someone killed in the gas chamber to sit down with Mr. Hitler."
According to the Associated Press, Sharpton and Brawley's lawyers asserted "on 33 separate occasions" that a local prosecutor named Steven Pagones "had kidnapped, abused and raped" Brawley. There was no evidence, and Pagones was soon cleared. Sharpton then accused a local police cult with ties to the Irish Republican Army of perpetrating the alleged assault.
The case fizzled when a security guard for Brawley's lawyers testified that the lawyers and Sharpton knew Brawley was lying. A grand jury investigation concluded in late 1988 that Brawley "was not the victim of forcible sexual assault" and that the whole thing was a hoax.
The report specifically exonerated Pagones, and in 1998 Pagones won a defamation lawsuit against Sharpton, Brawley, and Brawley's lawyers. Sharpton was ordered to pay Pagones $65,000. Johnnie Cochran and other Sharpton benefactors subsidized the payment.....Slate
