Personal Asides: Special Treatment for Black Bigot Sharpton by the White Media is Cowardice: Nothing Less… ”Tribune’s” Editorials Vastly Improved….But the Axe Seems to Have Fallen on Mary Laney at the “Sun-Times.”

Special Treatment.

As one who foolishly, unwisely and ignorantly brought an element of affirmative action via 8(a) construction contracts to the nation as an assistant commerce secretary in 1969 with the naive hope that the legacy of slavery and segregation could be ended in a relatively short time with a cut-off on preferential treatment, I am doing penance for my sins. Of course affirmative action will continue ad infinitum for the balance of all our lives and I was stupid to imagine that the political climate would agree to a change. Believe me, I am heartily sorry for having offended and detest this political sin. Since I left that job I have vowed firm purpose of amendment. There was nothing worse to be done against blacks than what I did…and what Lyndon Johnson did earlier.

But just because I let my temporary bout with liberalism seduce me, there is absolutely no reason on God’s green earth why this nation has to wink and turn away when clear-cut violations of church and state are committed by politicized black preachers (as well as white: ah, there, Fr. Pfleger!) who invite candidates for public office to address church congregations.

The reason the media ignore the violence to the Constitution and gladly take up other so-called “ruptures” of church and state is clear. They are not just a pack of liberals but cowards who are afraid to criticize this break in the Constitution because the media are in fact phony. Let some white evangelical preacher denounce a lawmaker who supports abortion and the sanctimonious whitened sepulchers will be all over him.

And don’t give me the stuff that is usually heard in defense of black candidates: that when they talk about societal injustice that is not politics. Case number one is Mr. Barack Obama raising his voice last month at the Vernon Park Church of God about the murder of young black people in Chicago. This carnage is indeed a tragedy but it will not be alleviated by chuches which are afraid to dutch-uncle their congregations about the necessity to (a) marry and (b) have children after marriage not before. This hooting and clapping and cheering for oratory in black churches while the audience sways to and fro is a might tiring…as is the liberal prescription that if one could only subvert the 2nd amendment, black children would be alive today. That kind of foolish fairy tale has wreaked great harm on the black community which does not have much benefit from preaching that dwells on the Judeo-Christian ethic but on leather-lunged, finger-snapping hip-hop parodies of Elmer Gantry who hope to get some face time on TV.

Take a look at a recent column in the “New York Times” by Bob Herbert who as an African American should…and does…know better but who is prevented from mentioning the anomaly because of whiter sucking up to cowardice. “Senator Barack Obama took his presidential campaign to Chicago Sunday where he addressed an agonizing issue that has been largely overlooked by the national media—the murder of dozens of the city’s public school students since last September.” So there it is: he took his presidential campaign to the pulpit. I guess it’s all right because Mr. Obama is black and the congregation is black and, after all, they deserve to enjoy the Constitution being shredded because…well, they’re black.

The second thing wrong with the article is that it is an unpaid hack job for the arrant nonsense that a multiplicity of guns are the source of the tragedy and not the dissolution of families that white liberaldom and cynical black clergy have allowed to fester.

All of this cowardice leads to a disgraceful denouement…the “reception” for Al Sharpton in this city. Sharpton was pictured as a visiting clergyman…a former presidential candidate… with little or no reference to his disgusting history.

Al Sharpton’s arrival here is a wonderful boost for Mayor Daley. After all, having a black David Duke in town has to be the greatest possible political asset. But it is hard to imagine Duke coming here and setting up an office to promote racism and being welcomed by more than a tiny minority of white bigots and a media which suffocates his background. With Sharpton, the compliant press here was too timid to rehearse the background of this demagogue. In 1987 he spread the vile Tawana Brawley hoax, charging that a 15-yeaer-old black girl was aducted, raped and smeared with feces by a group of white men. He singled out for denunciation one Steve Pogories, a young prosecutor, charging that he was derelict in his duties because Sharpton’s charges did not hold up in court. He declared, “if we’re lying, sue us so we can…prove you did it!” Pagones sued and won a $345,000 verdict for defamation and to this day Sharpton refuses to recant—and the media tamely says “bygones are bygones.” What rot.

In 1991 a Hasidic Jewish driver in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights section accidently kills Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child and anti-Semitic riots break out. Sharpton sees his big chance for more media and at Gavin’s funeral he rails against “the diamond merchants” with “the blood of innocent babies” on their hands. He leads hundreds of demonstrators to march through Jewish neighborhoods vowing “no justice, no peace.” A rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, is surrounded by a mob shouting “kill the Jews!” and is stabbed to death. Not a word about that in Chicago now that Sharpton is coming.

In 1995, the United House of Prayer, a large black landlord in Harlem, raises the rent on “Freedy’s Fashion Mart,” and its Jewish owner is forced to raise the rent on his subtenant, a black-owned music store. Again comes Sharpton followed by TV cameras. “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” His “National Action Network” sets up picket liknes and customers going into Freddy’s are spat upon and cursed as “traitors” and “Uncle Toms.” They shout “Burn down the Jew Store!” and hurl matches. “We’re going to see that this cracker suffers,” says Sharpton’s colleage Morris Powell. And on December 8ua protester bursts into Freddy’s, shoots four employees and sets the store on fire. Seven employees die in the blaze.

A media that tolerates the phony Fr. Pfleger can be expected to do no less for Sharpton—but even Pfleger must be, in his reflective moments, worried about Sharpton. None of these things were reported here by a foppishly tame media that is shaking in its boots for fear they will be called racists when the signal racist is welcomed into town. In the history of Chicago journalism, this is a bleak day…when those who are entrusted to report the news have not the stomach to do their jobs.

Tribune’s Improving.

I don’t know if you’ve realized it, but the tone of the “Tribune’s” editorials is improving…and actually take a position. Instead of pro, con and shrugging, the paper is actually giving some opinion guidance to its readers as should be expected with a major publication. I especially regard the editorial on the “Fairness Doctrine” as significant. In the old days not long gone by, the editorialist would say…fairness? What is fairness much in the say Pilate asked “what is truth?”

Mary Laney.

One by one the conservatives are being driven away by the Uptown Edition of the “National Enquirer” aka the “Sun-Times.” First Mark Steyn, then Betsy Hart and now…evidently…Mary Laney. Remember, this is supposed to be the working man’s newspaper…the blue-collar newspaper. As Henry II shouted: “Will no one rid me of this priest?” The priest was St. Thomas of Canterbury no resemblance to the ad hoc chaplain for the liberal Democratic party. Well, no one will rid the paper of this priest but before long time and attrition will take care of the paper which has no right of existence since it prostituted its legacy…a legacy when Emmett Dedmon was editorial page editor…when the newspaper surpassed the “Tribune.”