Democratic Dessert Tray - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Democratic Dessert Tray
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WASHINGTON — I have met one of the prodigies of the age. I actually shook his hand. He is an amiable, suave, butterball of a man with slicked back hair that curls up at the back of his neck. He has a blues-singer’s voice that would charm the birds out of the trees. The voice would be particularly effective if the birds carried cash with them or had other transferable assets. The prodigy wears a glittering gold Rolex watch on his left wrist and on his right wrist just gold. He wears a three-piece suit, not badly tailored, and highly polished shoes. He is a man of the cloth, though he wears no collar. He is the Rev. Al Sharpton, and he has the smile of the eternal boy, the eternal bad boy.

I encountered the Rev. at Manhattan’s City Hall restaurant, a fine eatery where Manhattan pols gather to eat and drink just a block or so from the real City Hall where Manhattan pols gather to acquire the wherewithal to eat and drink. It is obvious that the Rev. is a happy man. He jokes easily and smiles almost all the time, save for when his boyish eyes widen as he discusses the good things that are happening to him. On of those good things is the new TV contract that he has just gotten from one of the cable networks to do a Reverend Al talk show. My guess is the show will be a bust. Yet whether it succeeds is not the point with the network, of that I am sure. The network executives merely want to show how innovative they are and what friends of civil rights.

Surely they are not giving the Rev. a show to demonstrate what friends they are of religion. In fact the Rev. betrays no hint of the holy orders he must have at one time been anointed with. My friend who introduced me to the prodigy reminded me that the Rev. has been a preacher since boyhood, but I saw no manifestation of the blood of the lamb around the Rev. at lunch. He was consuming what appeared to be black bean soup with a dab of cream atop it when I departed his table to allow him to dine and laugh in the company of his companion, another corpulent and merry pol.

Both men, I am told, have poor blacks as their especial constituents. They are the heirs to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to the Rev. Jesse Jackson. The Rev. Jackson seems to have lost some of his fire since a mistress was found heavy with child and with funds from one of the Rev. Jackson’s tax-deductible foundations. Both the Rev. Jackson and the Rev. Sharpton are of course hucksters. Their obvious prosperity and the esteem they hold in the media tell us something about the idealism of our time — it pays.

Dr. King did not gain prosperity and esteem for his work in civil rights. Much to the contrary, he gained nights in jail and assassination. History remembers him well, but in his day he suffered for his beliefs. Today if the Rev. Sharpton suffers it is only an occasional missed dessert and the probable doom of his television show. (Facts are facts, and the fact is there exists no large audience eager to hear him bloviate on things he knows very little about, namely, public matters. I heard him bloviate during the Democratic presidential debates. He is a vacuum.) That idealism pays today suggests why it attracts hucksters. Yet that is not wholly a bad thing.

To be a civil rights idealist is no longer a dangerous pursuit. In fact the cause of civil rights is no longer a dangerous cause. That is because the vast majority of Americans favor civil rights for all Americans. There was a day when black people were barred from the Bill of Rights. To qualify to vote in some segregated areas of the South blacks had to take literacy tests that asked such questions as “How many bubbles are there in a bar of soap?” It is a funny question but with a cruel consequence. Those days are past.

So now we have civil rights leaders such as the Rev. Sharpton. As he left the restaurant he joshed to us about how he was engaged in cooling off his erstwhile opponent, John François Kerry, from making yet another campaign blunder. The Rev. has a whiff of the magisterial to him. He puts on a grand show.

So there is no more lynching in the South or much prejudice up North. Al prospers. If only something could be done to help the poor blacks who are condemned to inner city schools. On that Al has not a clue.

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
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R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is the founder and editor in chief ofThe American Spectator. He is the author of The Death of Liberalism, published by Thomas Nelson Inc. His previous books include the New York Times bestseller Boy Clinton: The Political Biography; The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton; The Liberal Crack-Up; The Conservative Crack-Up; Public Nuisances; The Future that Doesn’t Work: Social Democracy’s Failure in Britain; Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House; The Clinton Crack-Up; and After the Hangover: The Conservatives’ Road to Recovery. He makes frequent appearances on national television and is a nationally syndicated columnist, whose articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Washington Times, National Review, Harper’s, Commentary, The (London) Spectator, Le Figaro (Paris), and elsewhere. He is also a contributing editor to the New York Sun.
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