Lowry stands athwart, part 2

Barack Obama defiled the White House yesterday with the presence of Al Sharpton at Obama’s invitation. In terms of disgrace if not frequency, what Yasser Arafat was to the White House in the Clinton years, Al Sharpton is to the White House in the Obama years.

Jay Nordlinger noted Sharpton’s ascent in the 2000 National Review cover story “Al Sharpton: Power Dem.” Jay has returned to the subject several times since then, though not yet for the comprehensive update that is warranted. His stomach may not be that strong.

In the meantime, today we have National Review editor Rich Lowry in the New York Post standing athwart Sharpton yelling stop:

Despite a disdain for the Internal Revenue Service that would make the average anarcho-libertarian blush (among other embarrassments and scandals), Sharpton has leveraged himself into respectability with the Democratic establishment by making himself central to any national racial controversy.

By rights, he should have given up any pretense to criminal forensics after his defamatory role in the Tawana Brawley hoax in the 1980s, but there he was at Ferguson, Mo., suggesting the worst despite what turned out to be strong evidence that Officer Darren Wilson acted lawfully.

When the grand jury found there was insufficient evidence to indict Wilson, Sharpton pronounced that the Ferguson protesters had lost the battle, but not the war.

What are they going to do to win, go out and find another cop to falsely accuse of a racial assassination and attempt to railroad into an indictment and conviction?

Wayne Barrett’s 2004 Village Voice article “On a new high, Sharpton hits a new low” remains necessary reading. I took a look back at Sharpton’s career in demagogy in “Sharpton’s shape.”

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