Stick a fork in Al Sharpton — he’s about done.
Fresh reports that the rabble-rousing reverend may have been a coke-head and an FBI mob snitch were not surprising, despite putting a damper on his National Action Network’s lofty convention last week — an Afrocentric forum that shouted its denial of our black youth-crime epidemic, but beat the same old drum against the white establishment that helps fund and promote the questionable group, and others like it. Again, no surprise there.
The three-day powwow was as predictable as the lame guest appearances from the mayor, the attorney general, and the president, an impotent triumvirate that ignored the city’s horrendous spate of black teen crimes in recent few weeks to jaw about nonsense.
Mayor DeBlasio called Sharpton “a blessing” while blaming — again — the previous administration for its policing policies. Attorney General Eric Holder whined about his alleged ill-treatment at a congressional hearing a day earlier. And President Obama claimed Republicans were threatening voting rights.
Sharpton held up the rear as a lousy urban warrior.
The self-professed civil rights leader reneged on his moral obligation to address brazen, violent black teens, such as gloating alleged arsonist Marcell Dockery, 16, who admitted setting a fire in Coney Island out of boredom, killing Officer Dennis Guerra, and then smirked demonically about it; and Kahton Anderson, 14, who allegedly shot and killed Angel Rojas when he opened fire on a busy Clinton Hill bus in an attempt to shoot a rival thug.
Sharpton’s nonchalance speaks volumes because he, too, has made his mark hurting innocent people.
He helped to ruin the life of former assistant district attorney Steven Pagones, whom he tarred and feathered in the 1980s for being one of Tawana Brawley’s imaginary rapists. Ditto for the owners of a pair of Korean groceries that Sharpton used as his whipping posts in the 1990s during his 16-month-long racial boycott that shamed the city and wrecked David Dinkins’ mayoralty.
The reverend has tried to legitimize himself these days, wheedling his way onto New York magazine’s list of the city’s “Power Dozen.” But bad reputations are immortal and Sharpton’s clunker boasts limitless gaucheries.
He has hoodwinked us on a grand scale, write Anson Shupe and Janelle M. Eliasson-Nannin in their book, “Pastoral Misconduct: The American Black Church Examined.”
“Sharpton has built with the aid of a core of wealthy contributors a small empire of tax-exempt and for-profit companies, and mingled their finances to confuse creditors and tax collector, alike,” write the authors. “When called to account, he conflates his personal travails with his civil rights crusading, turning his own questionable practices into a vehicle for self-promotion and raising his political clout.”
Al Sharpton has trimmed his girth, pruned his bouffant, clipped his verbal diarrhea, and ditched his jumpsuits and cat-sized bling to reinvent himself as a man of all seasons, earning the deference of politicians and the adoration of new generation of Afrocentrics and their apologists.
But the ploys are futile, for there is no coming back for a mean-spirited low-life — short of a vigorous redemption campaign.
Repeat after me, Al: “I repent the innumerable suffering I have caused innocent people, and I promise never to do it again.”
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