Al Sharpton is a decent man

The BBQ Pit
41

Oh, it is so sweet to get under your skin. I never said he was a prince. What I said was that after you racist fucks are done blathering about how he was wrong in 1987, that perhaps the man is well spoken enough (and he is off the cuff verbally more adroit than anyone I’ve yet seen posting on this board) to merit some attention to his ideas.

But a black man getting in people’s faces gets only derision. One must be a good black man, like Bill Cosby to be taken seriously, even though Cosby has chosen to do his work internally in the black community. It must be very comfortable for white people (l’m white) to embrace Cosby as a black rights spokesman when all his statements are misinterpreted to blame black people for the problem.

Now King had the gift to reach across race and speak to everyone, but racist fucks killed him.

42

Well, of course that’s the true reason anybody could have anything against Sharpton: Sharpton’s own racism.

43

Yeah, racist fucks like me. Fuck you, you fucking fuck.

44

Cosby is threatening to the white establisment. He’s one of the most threatening men I know. He’s about education and self-improvment. He works and donates to it, not just paying lip service. Now, I’m not saying the Cosby Show (The second… check the first out sometime) wasn’t blanched a bit.

But the man is trying to get a movement going. One where the ‘black man’… eff it. The urban disadvantaged youth, specifically, can get his ass out of the projects and step face to face with the Man and hold his own.

Sharpton is a man about a victim culture. I repeat, the man is responsible for manufacturing a situation where people died. He didn’t cause them to die, but he started the situation, over jack and shit, and he raised a furor and he raised a fuss, and people died.

The man is about hatred and racism. You want to hear what he has to say about the jews sometime? I don’t want to repeat the words, but they’re not nice.

I will if you ask.

Now, this is a good question. Is he a traitor to the race? What the hell is so damn wrong about educating your ass and getting a good job and learning how to talk all proper like the business people do? Shit, you can talk any way you want at home. You can talk any way you want with your friends. Hell, where I work, I catch myself saying “on the D-L” and stuff like that.

What’s he saying that’s so different from Chris Rock? Is Chris Rock a traitor to the race? Yeah, Rock’s show is true. It’s damn true, it’s about working three jobs, the life Cosby had. But you know, they wouldn’t have shown his show without Cosby in I Spy, Cosby in the first Bill Cosby show, Cosby as a doctor in the second, and Fat Albert.

Fat Albert’s funny. It’s also sending a message. You talk like Mushmouth, people won’t understand you. (My memories of the show are a bit faded, I admit) but it’s positive. It’s wholesome. It’s healthy. Heck, the Brown Hornet alone was a positive thing.

Now, I’m going to ask you… what the heck is Sharpton defying? What game is he playing, if he’s rejecting the man’s game? Cause I don’t want to play his.

I’d rather make the world a better place.

See, I don’t differentiate between good and bad blacks. I differentiate between good and bad people. Sharpton’s a bad one. He ain’t even on the good side. Cosby’s generally good with feet of clay.

I also differentiate between good and bad messages and cultures. Inciting riots is bad. Inciting education is good.
What you’re saying is like saying people differentiate between good and bad muslims. Sure do. The ones blowing people up are presenting bad cultural images. Also, they’re killing people. The ones talking about how Israel must be destroyed are also presenting bad cultural images. (They may be good people, excepting that quirk. I know little about the president of Iran’s other stances)

Sharpton presents a negative, victimizing message, and he’s not good people, either. He’s an ambulance chasing, scamming, son of a bitch.

Now, disagree with me. Maybe I’ll learn something. But I’m not talking about stuff I don’t know anything about. If I wanted to do that, I’d call Marion ‘bitch set me up’ Barry a bad person. Truth be told, I don’t know what kind of job he did as mayor. I think it wasn’t so good, but I’m not sure on it.

Sharpton, I’ve seen since the 80s. The Khallid Abdul Muhammad thing? That was what, five years ago? You know who that guy is? You know what Sharpton was saying?
http://www.etherzone.com/2002/maye011402.shtml (Biased. Huh. Didn’t know that about Goetz. Goetz was sending a strong, possibly welcomed, but bad message.)
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/9935,noel,8028,1.html (Fairly neutral)
That’s who Sharpton supports.

Now, you tell me where that message has redeeming features.
Me, I call it crazy-ass.

Oh. And one more thing? As I said before, I wish Malcom X was still with us. I’m not scared of righteous anger. I’m not scared of a strong message. I’m not scared of a man with a different view than me.

But I despise those who market hate.

45

“Recently” must mean “quite some time ago” for you then. Cosby made a video a long time ago in which he showed how bad prejudice of all forms, especially racism, is. Sadly, I can’t recall the name of the video right now.

46

You ignorant sod. One=/= plural.

47

Bob Loblaw, he wasn’t just wrong in the Brawley case-he deliberately ignored the evidence, accused good and decent people of heinous crimes (one a man who had recently committed suicide and couldn’t defend himself), and then when he was caught, tried to weasel out of it. It’s people like Brawley that make the real rape victims suffer, because people will point to her when a woman says she was raped. Sharpton made a TON of baseless statements, merely to get attention, even when it was PROVED he was full of shit.

Fuck you. I shouldn’t have to prove that I’m not a racist. And hating Sharpton has nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with hating assholes.

48

While I agree with some of your larger points, I think you underestimate the cultural importance of The Cosby Show. It showed, to many whites and blacks previously unaware, that the blackness and the upper middle class American dream were not mutually exclusive. Sometimes the things that make the most profound changes are hard to see while their making it. Yes, it was just another TV show. Yet, it was anything but just another TV show.

49

Are you insane? I hate Rev. Sharpton because, though he has done some good, I believe that he is overall bad for society. Likewise I hate Reverands Phelps and Fallwell. For the same reasons. You will see the same amount of vitriol for them, particularly Phelps, on this board. You’re full of shit, kid.

50

If you keep diluting the word racist by adding more and more idiosyncrasies, it will eventually lose all its meaning.

Kind of like eating soup from a jail cell & referring to it as a ‘hunger strike’ or defining global pandemics like AIDS as a condition “started by human beings to get after certain people they don’t like”.

51

Fool.

By the way, Farakan is a vicious anti-semite. Intersting that someone having something against him, for cause, is racist, but Farakan himself is golden in your eyes.

52

Oh, and Brick? If I’m getting a little heated, my apologies. I grew up knowing how bad hatred is. Fifty years before, my mother’s family was in the same tenements they showed on the news. Playing basketball, because that’s what kids in the ghetto did. Running in gangs. Heck, even being in the mob. I’m not joking, here. Basketball’s first superstars were all jewish. It was a jewish game. Same reason it’s black now, near as I can tell. And we had the drug runners… we had all this damn shit that we’re seeing now. And we, by and large, educated ourselves out of it. Without losing our cultural heritage. And if you think the jewish nose isn’t as noticable as black skin… brother, I wish I was you.
Now… my grandfather’s father came over back in 1900. That’s as far back as our family tree goes, now. Because the ones that didn’t come over? They’re gone. The town’s gone. Plowed under. By hatred. (And not the Nazis, either.) I’m never kidding when I say ‘never again’. I mean it. To anyone.

Sharpton is the man who pushes some of my nastiest buttons. He says the same things they used to say in the old country. And people still listen.

I’m not black. But I work in the City. I work with the homeless. I work with those who have no hope. And it hurts. But I’m helping them. I’m doing what I can, using my skills in a positive fashion. I worked somewhere else before, and it damn near killed me, the callousness. So, forgive me, when I see a cancer walking, I want it cut out of the body politic.

53

Do you think it is possible for a black man to fight against racism and to be a racist, as well? And possibly a disgusting human being? Or does being black and fighting against racism inoculate you from all human failings?

54

James Earl Ray said he had help, a man named Raoul. You’re thinking who killed the Kennedys, when after all, it was you and me.

55

Yeah, enjoy your victory in getting people to dislike you. It seems to be a skill you’ve had a lot of expirience in; well done!

Style doesn’t equal substance, mon ami. You claim we should listen to him because he speaks well? And is witty? He may be a good orator, but that doesn’t mean he’s got the ability behind it to back him up.

Oh, and; yes, I’ve paid some attention to his ideas. Like i’ve said before, his goals are noble. The way he goes about reaching those goals is sometimes not.

Read that back carefully; I didn’t say he doesn’t get results. On the contrary, i’m sure that he’s been and will likely continue to be effective. However, that doesn’t mean I agree with the way he goes about getting those results.

Are you even reading what you write? Are you seriously saying that Al Sharpton, Your Personal God, is not a good black man? You do realise he’ll kick you out of the fan club for that?

I’m sure it is, for many people, rascist or no. However, I happen to not agree always with Bill Cosby, either. Again, noble goal, not always agreeable methods.

Yep, and ML King was truly a man without sin. Oh wait, hang on, no…he had a tendency to sleep around. And he may have been a plagiarist.

The difference between ML King and Al is that while King had his flaws, the same as Sharpton, King put the civil rights movement first. Sharpton often puts himself first.

Another difference for you; King thought black people, white people, asian people, etc were equal. Sharpton is, at the very least mildly, rascist himself.

56

This captures the argument succinctly and accurately. Care to comment, BL?

57

Are you insanse, stupid, or just from a different reality?

58

Cosby has done some great work, and I’m not saying he hasn’t. But racism in this country is so widespread and so repugnant, it needs people who are willing to get in the faces of others and make people think. I’m denouncing the outright dismissal of Sharpton based on his mistake(s). We don’t do that to white politicians and pundits.

The attitude that we may dismiss what Sharpton is saying because he has been wrong and an attention monger is what goes on in the MSM and here in this thread. I have no problem with someone discounting his credibility due to his mistake in the Brawley affair, it probably was very poor judgment. But to shout Tawana Brawley, Tawana Brawley, I refuse to listen to anything that man has to say is racist, and that is what I see go on. If Brawley was the liar, then she was the liar, not her advocate.

And yeah, fuck you all, you fucking fuck racists who are so proud of your fucking fuckism that you don’t even see it. You demand that public spokespeople be perfect and eat humble pie when they are wrong. Well, they aren’t perfect, and they don’t eat humble pie when they are wrong. You accept them all back, except the black ones.

59

No doubt, Bob Loblaw, you’ll accuse the writer of this article to be a racist, but here you go anyway.

From www.encyclopedia.com entry on Martin Luther King, Jr.:

BTW, wasnt’ that really cool the way NASA faked the moon landing? :about as credible a theory as the bunk you’re spouting:

60

I wonder how much we could accomplish if we devoted as much energy to figuring out why Sharpton gets so much traction as we do to hating his guts?

I mean, there seems to be a significant proportion of our population that’s willing to believe that there’s a conspiracy among the power elite to exterminate them, which is objectively less loony than the notion that letting Adam and Steve tie the knot will bring a rain of hellfire and damnation, or that Saddam was involved in 9/11.

Just a thought.