The Sharpton knife in the cabinet

Notice must be taken of the place of honor accorded Al Sharpton and other notorious anti-Semites in the Democratic Party. Professor Edward Alexander’s column in today’s Seattle Times is a good start: “The Democratic Party’s anti-Semitism problem.”
Foremost among the figures discussed by Alexander is of course Sharpton. If there is a more vile person in American public life, I don’t know who he is. On June 18 John Kerry had this to say about Sharpton: “During the primaries, there was one person who consistently was always there, keeping the peace and the compass going in the right direction, and that was Al Sharpton.”
Given the monumental wrongs committed by Al Sharpton in the course of his career as a public figure, this statement by itself should disqualify John Kerry as a presidential candidate. Will some enterprising journalist ask Kerry to square his statement with the Sharpton record touched on by Alexander?
Also discussed by Alexander are Jesse Jackson and Cynthia McKinney. The Democratic Party has long foregone the reckoning that it is due with Jackson. But Jackson is ancient history; Sharpton and McKinney are the future of the party. Since her triumph in the recent Democratic primary, McKinney now stands poised to retake her congressional seat.
What Alexander says regarding McKinney is important and correct, though much more could be said. Alexander omits any mention of her past support by Abdurahman Alamoudi, then-president of the American Muslin Council, who last month pled guilty to being Muhammar Khadaffy’s bagman in connection with the plot to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. At the time of his support of McKinney in 2000, Alamoudi was well known as a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Alexander also omits any mention of the attirubution of McKinney’s pending defeat by her father immiediately before the Democratic primary in 2002 to “Jews, J-E-W-S.” That is a statement which McKinney has never disavowed or otherwise commented upon. As McKinney returns to Congress this year, will any journalist trouble himself to ask the powers-that-be in the Democratic Party about McKinney’s standing with it? (Courtesy of RealClearPolitics.)

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