“Nooses, the ‘n’ word, a Klansman’s hood, and the burning cross are the clearest symbols of hate for black America,”
–Al Sharpton, in remarks prepared for the House Judiciary Committee

Chutzpah is often defined as murdering one’s parents and then asking the court for mercy as an orphan, although the image of a violent pimp who beats and rapes his women and then talks about chastity and women’s rights also comes to mind. The above statement probably takes the grand prize for chutzpah, not merely this year but for all time. If Sharpton dislikes the N word so much, perhaps he should not have personally called former New York Mayor David Dinkins “a cheap Negro whore turning tricks in City Hall.” “Negro” was not, of course, the word Sharpton used. Nooses, Ku Klux Klan regalia, and burning crosses can easily be construed as violent threats if they are displayed on or near a Black person’s property. The same goes for the conduct of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, under Al Sharpton’s personal direction, outside Freddy’s Fashion Mart in Harlem.

Democrats Embrace ‘Impresario of Hatred’ by Fred Siegel reports,

It would have taken no great effort for the reporters covering the Apollo debate to have walked across 125th Street from the theater to visit Freddy’s Fashion Mart, where in 1995 eight people died in a murderous rampage inspired by Mr. Sharpton. Mr. Sharpton is best-known for the Tawana Brawley hoax, in which he insisted that a 15-year-old black girl had been abducted and raped by a band of white men practicing Irish Republican Army rituals. In fact she had made up the story to protect herself from her violent stepfather. But at Freddy’s, Mr. Sharpton was even more malevolent. He turned a landlord-tenant dispute between the Jewish owner of Freddy’s and a black subtenant into a theater of hatred. Picketers from Mr. Sharpton’s National Action Network, sometimes joined by “the Rev.” himself, marched daily outside the store, screaming about “bloodsucking Jews” and “Jew bastards” and threatening to burn the building down. After weeks of increasingly violent rhetoric, one of the protesters, Roland Smith, took Mr. Sharpton’s words about ousting the “white interloper” to heart. He ran into the store shouting, “It’s on!” He shot and wounded three whites and a Pakistani, whom he apparently mistook for a Jew. Then he set the fire, which killed five Hispanics, one Guyanese and one African-American–a security guard whom protesters had taunted as a “cracker lover.” Smith then fatally shot himself.

If any of our readers can point out a significant difference (other than the respective skin colors of the perpetrators and victims) between the conduct of Sharpton’s National Action Network and a bunch of Ku Klux Klansmen burning a cross and brandishing hangman’s nooses outside a Black-owned business in a white neighborhood, we would be fascinated to see it. Furthermore, just as a reminder:

Senator Hillary Clinton (NY): “I have enjoyed a long and positive relationship with Reverend Al Sharpton and National Action Network, and I don’t ever remember saying “no” to them and I intend to remain their partner in civil rights as I clean the dirt from under the carpet in the oval office when I am elected President.” (Clinton’s endorsement of this anti-Semite makes the story about her use of the phrase “f***ing Jew bastard” more rather than less believable.)

Nordlinger of the National Review adds,

There was more, of course-always more. In the spring of 1989, the Central Park “wilding” occurred. That was the monstrous rape and beating of a young white woman, known to most of the world as “the jogger.” The hatred heaped on her by Sharpton and his claque is almost impossible to fathom, and wrenching to review. …Outside the courthouse, they [Sharpton and his entourage] chanted, “The boyfriend did it! The boyfriend did it!” They denounced the victim as “Whore!” They screamed her name, over and over (because most publications refused to print it, though several black-owned ones did). Sharpton brought Tawana Brawley to the trial one day, to show her, he said, the difference between white justice and black justice. He arranged for her to meet the jogger’s attackers, whom she greeted with comradely warmth. In another of his publicity stunts, he appealed for a psychiatrist to examine the victim. “It doesn’t even have to be a black psychiatrist,” he said, generously. He added: “We’re not endorsing the damage to the girl — if there was this damage.” …But the torching, so to speak, continued. In 1995-four years into the putative New Sharpton-there was another, fatal case in which Sharpton had a guilty hand: Freddy’s Fashion Mart. In Harlem, a white store owner — no, worse: a Jewish one — was accused of driving a black store owner out of business. At one of the many rallies meant to scare the Jewish owner away [can anyone say, “burning crosses meant to scare the Negro owner away?”], Sharpton charged that “there is a systemic and methodical strategy to eliminate our people from doing business off 125th Street. I want to make it clear . . . that we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Sharpton’s colleague, Morris Powell, said of the Jewish owner — Sharpton’s “white interloper” — “We’re going to see that this cracker suffers. Reverend Sharpton is on it.”

Then there was Crown Heights:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Sharpton#Crown_Heights_Riot A visiting rabbinical student from Australia by the name of Yankel Rosenbaum, 29, was killed during the rioting by a mob shouting “Kill the Jew.” Sharpton has been seen by some commentators as inflaming tensions with remarks such as “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house” and referring to Jews as “diamond merchants.”

“Nooses, the ‘n’ word, a Klansman’s hood, and the burning cross” are indeed hateful symbols in the United States. Every decent person in this country, no matter what his or her race or ethnicity might be, has both the right and the duty to object to them. Al Sharpton is, however, not a decent person. He is, in fact, exactly the kind of bigot and professional hate monger he claims to condemn. He has personally used the N word, not as a joke but as a vicious attack on a fellow African-American. His National Action Network, while under his personal direction, has done the equivalent of wearing sheets and hoods while burning a cross outside a store owned by a person of the “wrong” skin color. His vicious hate speech has played at least an indirect role in at least two violent incidents (Crown Heights riots, Freddy’s Fashion Mart) in which people were killed. It is therefore the right and duty of every decent human being in this country to denounce Al Sharpton just as harshly as we denounce nooses, the N word, Klan regalia, and burning crosses.