Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Personal Asides: Did Anyone See “Chicago Week in Review” Last Friday?...The Reason for Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Non-Tirades.

jessejackson


Chicago Week in Review on WTTW.

A friend told me that “Chicago Week in Review” the WTTW-TV review of local news which was aired Friday had a brief story about the Pfleger “snuff you out” story…but was dismissed as inconsequential by the panel of same peas-in-a-pod liberal journalists because they all agreed Pfleger “misspoke.” Is that correct? Did anyone see it and can verify or deny it?

Jackson.

Some years ago when it had a different editor, the “Sun-Times” ran a series showing how Reverend Jesse Jackson announces boycotts and then receives favors in jobs and contributions for PUSH from the companies he has targeted. It included the awarding of a lucrative Budweiser distributorship for two of his sons, Yusef and Jonathan, following Jackson’s “Bud’s a Dud” campaign. With no background in beer distributorship at all, the two Jackson sons, were rewarded with the Chicago distributorship in 1998.

The deal occurred after Jackson asked supermarket tycoon Ron Burkle to look for some enterprise for his kids. Burkle strategically seated the two young men next to August Busch IV, at a dinner—and where the offer was made. Since then the two Jackson sons have been heading up River North Sales & Service in Chicago. As the late Richard J. Daley once said when his own son got a favorable client, “what sort of a father would not help his son?” There have been no threats of boycott since the Jackson boys got their cushy distributorship.

These and other stories were published by the ‘Sun-Times” as well as the “Tribune” in exposes of the Jackson dynasty. There was an outcry from blacks whom Jesse whipped up against the “Sun-Times,” that when the editorship changed to a duo which turned it into the Democratic party’s official newspaper of record, it hired Jesse Jackson, Sr. as a weekly columnist and commentator on public affairs. Since then the flamboyant minister aka “The Pout” has been scorching whitey for not doing more for blacks i.e. he and his pressure group. The tenor of the stories are all the same: there’s poverty in the inner cities and whitey hasn’t done enough to alleviate it.

As part of the boilerplate, the old man has singlemindedly criticized white Republican lawmakers exclusively for assorted sins, some of which were actually true. He was particularly vicious regarding Tom DeLay and Republicans who didn’t perform up to his high standards on ethics including on the greasy importuning of a House page by a gay Republican where some of his fellows looked the other way. There is no doubt that the tirades put on by the leather-lunged preacher only cut one way—to Republicans. And to businesses which don’t fall into line.

The naïve assume it’s happenstance. But when Democrats fall prey to human weakness, not a word comes out…as with the case of Jackson’s non-mention and non-tirade of his fellow black Democrat, Congressman William Jefferson who was indicted last week on federal charges of racketeering, money-laundering and soliciting more than $400,000 in bribes in connection with years of trying to broker business deals in Africa. The charges came almost two years after investigators raided Jefferson’s home in Washington and found $90,000 in cash stuffed in a box in his freezer.

The indictment in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, lists 16 alleged violations with prison terms totaling as many as 235 years—the charges concerning racketeering, soliciting bribes, wire fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice and conspiracy. He is accused of soliciting bribes from 11 different companies for himself and his family and also of bribing a Nigerian official. The bribe solicitation was extremely complicated and involved setting up a shell company to hide the money.

It’s not surprising that Reverend Jackson has had nothing to say—zilch—about this since the purported offender is black (not white) and is a Democrat (not Republican). Of course in the estimation of The Pout, the charges could be dismissed as probably the result of ingrained poverty engendered by whitey that mis-led an honest lawmaker to venality. Either that or it’s rigged. Rigging would be hard to prove since two former Jefferson aides have admitted soliciting bribes on his behalf. One has already been sentenced to eight years in prison: probably an extreme miscarriage of justice manipulated by whitey. A second Jefferson associate, a telecommunications executive pleaded guilty to paying between $400,000 and $1 million in bribes to Jefferson in exchange for his assistance in securing business deals in Nigeria and other African nations—in return for which he has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison.

Jefferson has been under investigation since March, 2005. In August of that year, feds searched his home in New Orleans, his car and office of his campaign accountant in New Orleans after Jefferson was videotaped accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from Lori Mody, a northern Virginia investor and former technology executive who was wearing an FBI wire. Reverend Jackson’s refusal to extend his tirade on corruption to Jefferson is interesting—a case of cherry picking…when the offender is a white Republican, it’s grist for Jackson’s “Sun-Times” column, when the offender is black and Democrat, is it off limits.

Jackson has been very vocal about the federal government’s “incompetence” in rescuing victims of the New Orleans Katrina hurricane. He has lamented that insufficient aid has been given to victims to aid in their rescue. While the media amply covered charges against Congressman Jefferson…that five days after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, on September 2, 2005, Congressman Jefferson commandeered a National Guard helicopter to visit his home and retrieve property—a laptop computer, three suitcases and a large box—at a time when the citizens of his city had no similar opportunities--…Reverend Jackson determined to write his weekly “Sun-Times” column on other malefactions that whitey has perpetrated against blacks.

Which leads the a news consumer question: when will the newspaper stop paying a tithe in the form of a newspaper column which is nothing more than DNC boilerplate for which Jackson gets the sum of $150 weekly to this racial hustler who never measured up to his contemporaries in the civil rights community…has hoked up his purported “closeness” to Martin Luther King and about whom King was properly suspicious until the end of his life?

2 comments:

  1. Tom: Once again, you got it right on Jackson, Sr. Someone should interview the family that USED to have the A-B distributorship for another view of the story (which the MSM will pretend did not exist.) I wish more people would call the Reverend out on his garbage but they don't. Channel 7 used to have a policy where their on-air talent could not appear on other shows. This is no longer the case; Cheryl Burton was on 11 several days ago. She is maybe the most beautiful woman ever to have appeared on the show but she did the whole "blame the guns" script down to the inflections. As we, the Country-Clubbers, all know, it is guns, not people, that perpetuate violence. Let's extort more money for public schools while we are at it because of course, more money thrown at teachers' unions solves all the world's problems. Also, as discussed earlier by other commenters, why does the IRS not go after Meeks, Pfleger or Jackson for using non-profit charities (churches) for their political propaganda? If it were the late Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, the G would sic their unelected bureaucratic dogs on them so fast it wouldn't be funny.

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  2. The Dude has more names Old Scratch and more moves than pole dancer in Calumet City.

    All in all, the guy is an ineffective goof unless one is an immediate family member or orgaizational appendage.

    The only folks who delight in the goof are equally self-absorbed members of the media.

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