Because “Jessie Jackson is an attention-seeking troublemaker” is one of the most reliable bogeymen for conservatives, right next to “Hillary Clinton is a scheming murderer” and “Howard Dean is a wild-eyed liberal.”
The first part of that is entirely true.
The only reason I included “at some point”, was to differentiate between team members who may not have attended the party, if there were any. The police may not have been able to establish when people were present, so anyone who was identified as having been present “at some point”, could be potential a suspect.
I had not heard that the young woman specifically identified her alleged assailants, could you provide a cite on that?
Jackson is not on my xmas card list, but he has done some positive things, especially for young black people.
I don’t know his motives in this incident, so I see no reason to belittle him at this point.
I’m a liberal. Jessie is a media whore.
Jesse used to pick his battles more wisely than he has in the last ten years or so. It’s a shame, because I really did like him and I still think he was an instrumental player in civil rights back when he was young. I just don’t know what the heck he’s thinking sometimes.
It’s only surprising that Jesse didn’t sign on with this circus sooner. But it makes sense, given his recent forays into sports-related controversies.
Hey, everybody, the circus is in town!
sigh
I would agree that Jackson does not really polarize people. I suspect that he simply angers many.
I doubt that the people who are angered by Jackson are “overrepresented on the SDMB.” Note that it is generally claimed (with a certain amount of validity) that the SDMB tends to lean Left, politically, yet Jackson is not held in high esteem by a sizeable number of people of all political persuasions who post here. He rarely angers me; I simply shake my head and think There goes Jesse looking for publicity, again, but I would have to say that I do that a lot more now than I did in the 1970s when it appeared that he was actually pursuing the improvement of life for people in the inner city through the two-pronged approach of encouraging the residents to take responsibility to rise above their conditions and encouraging the civic and corporate leaders to recognize where they could work to eliminate institutional racism.
Publicity is not evil in itself. (It never bothered me that he got into the middle of some of the Middle Eastern hostage situations, since he was able to actually secure the release of some captives, even if he got his grinning photo next to theirs in the paper.)
However, in the last few years, he has turned himself into a parody of the racists’ view of him, rushing out to defend people who have been caught in very public crimes just because they were black. (His defense of the kids at the Wisconsin high school who tried to start a brawl at a football game–claiming that is was just “racism” even though they were filmed in the act and even though not one school or police official had made any reference to them being black–was utter stupidity.)
Similarly, he has expressed outrage that the police did not immediately arrest someone in this situation, even though it appears that the police have taken the matter quite seriously and have been working to collect genuine evidence to build a case rather than running out to railroad some kid who would then go free for a lack of reliable evidence. That is sheer stupidity spoken for publicity and does nothing to help the police or the victim.
Reviewing the actual efforts of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition over the last few years that Jackson was actively involved in its management, I found very few actual projects that were intended to help people in the inner city. Oh, there were a number of legislative efforts (at a time when a Republican-controlled Congress was going to doom them to defeat, anyway), but nothing of the sort of bootstrap efforts that I recalled from the 1970s.
I still think that it is inaccurate to call Jackson a racist in the way that Sharpton’s involvement in the Brawley affair was clearly racist, but I suspect that Jackson is much more interested in Jackson than in anything else on Earth–a point I could overlook when he was accomplishing something in Chicago, but which is harder to ignore when he simply makes himself a faux spokesman for issues that he harms by his very presence.
When I posted this earlier, I had no idea that the girl involved was black. I withdraw the quoted post and will not post on this subject again until I know more. Please forgive my ignorance.
I prefer Jackson as my designated race pimp/demagogue. He dresses better than Sharpton, is better educated, and favors white-collar-extortion to the mass violence/riot fomenting/slander-libeling that Sharpton favors.
Though both are hugely and completely morally and ethically discredited at this point. I suppose that Jackson has more race points, since he actually bathed in the blood of MLK Jr… :dubious:
Same here, I dismiss him ever since he jumped into the Terri Schiavo deal in favor of the “culture of life” people that ignored the evidence that Terry did not want to be fed by a tube forever.
You really had to hurl after seeing Jeb Bush and him together in that press conference joining forces.
Jesse doesn’t seem to realize that he is so last century. I wouldn’t want him on my side now.
The ESPN show “Quite Frankly, with Stephen A. Smith” mentioned this a night or two ago. Smith, who is black, evicerated Jackson over getting involved. He seemed genuinely enraged, for many of the same reasons already mentioned in this thread.
So the sentiment is definitely out there.
Stripping for a guy at a club … $20
Stripping at a party … $100
Claiming you were raped and getting a free college education from Jesse Jackson whether you are really a victim or a liar … Priceless!!
I may be remembering badly but it seemed to me in the past that Jackson was doing OK until the Tawana Brawley case. I always thought that he saw Al come out of that fiasco with more notariety and influence then ever and decided that anything that got his picture in the paper was worth persuing.
I figured that was wher he went off the rails.
In this case, it’s hard to see how Jesse Jackson can possibly help.
It’s NOT as if the prosecutors were going to let this case drop until Jesse stepped
in to demand justice. If it appeared that a bunch of rich white boys raped a black woman and the authorities were looking the other way, I’d fully expect prominent black activists to go public and raise their voices.
But that’s not the case here. If anything, Durham prosecutors have been OVERLY aggressive in pursuing this case (obviously, we may yet see evidence that will change my mind), despite the lack of DNA evidence and some holes in the victim’s story.
So, if white authorities have chosen to believe the alleged black victim, and are prosecutring alleged white wrongdoers, Jesse Jackson has absolutely nothing to contribute here.
But then, he hasn’t had much to contribute for a long time. These days, Jesse is mostly a corporate shakedown artist. I’m guessing he’ll find a way to get Duke University to write some big checks to Operation PUSH, and to put a crony or two of Jesse’s on its board of regents. And don’t be surprised if Duke ends up instituting a large, expensive new Diversity Board, one run by a few of Jesse’s pals.
Short and to the point.
Another accurate assessment.
Are you fucking kidding? Leaning left has nothing to do with it. People around here shut off their brains whenever a handful of issues come up, and unfortunately, many of them are black issues. It doesn’t take long for any of the threads discussing the aforementioned issues to degrade into name calling and thinly veiled racism. How else do you explain comments like this:
Race pimp? What the fuck does this even mean, and why is the ____ pimp term only used for Black leaders? This is the type of despicable comment that rarely gets challenged in threads like these, and it’s about time someone points this out.
How about this thread that posits that Al Sharpton is a decent man. Notice it doesn’t say perfect or even good, yet every closet racist and/or irrational asshole comes into the thread to shit all over him.
Or this where a school system decides to use AAVE in class to facilitate standard English instruction. The result: the equivalent of a bat signal calling every jackass on the internet to demonstrate their best Ebonics impression.
Here’s one about Jesse Jackson. Don’t miss the brilliant Ebonics impression inside.
I can appreciate the board for what it is, and I don’t expect people to share all my views and opinions, but I think it’s pretty sad that reasonably intelligent people can’t discuss these issues in a rational way. Where the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world aren’t held to a different standard than other people in the public eye. Damn near every politician is full of shit, and uses fear to raise money from the public and private sector. How many of them are said to have “extorted” the money? I don’t mean to imply everyone here is racist, nor do I think you all need to be on the “right” side of black issues, but I think it says a lot when such issues aren’t given the respect they deserve by a large number of people here.
You calling me a racist or intolerant asshole, brickbacon? Sharpton is not a decent man. I stand by that statement. If you want to continue this discussion, start a new thread, but I deeply resent your apparent characterization of my words in that thread.
Hm. Man, after rereading the thread… you know, I think that’s the only time I’ve ever been Pitted. There was the time I got in a fight with this guy who lied about Transformers and computers… Chas E? Something like that.
That said, it seems you were on ‘my side’ in the thread. So, for the sake of clarity, please state that you don’t consider me a ‘racist or intolerant asshole’, as I’m the one being pitted there.
A person’s only as good as their reputation, you know, and I can say enough stupid things on my own time, without implications from someone else.