He’s the one in the $5,000 Italian suits expertly tailored
around his newly trimmed down 60 year old body. He’s the one who scowls angrily
at the cameras one minute, then flashes a mouth full of oversized teeth at you
the next.
He’s the man who recently bragged, “I’ve been able to reach from the streets to the suites!” And
because he is who he is, it hasn’t cost him a dime. Welcome to Al’s World.
The Rev. Al Sharpton was recently celebrated at a
lavish Manhattan restaurant birthday party attended by every prominent New York
State politician the other day where everyone took turns praising the great
man. Even the President sent an aide with a message to read, extoling the
Reverend’s many virtues. Apparently, thrift isn’t one of them.
It would seem that the good Reverend owes the Internal
Revenue Service some $4,500,000 in unpaid State and Federal taxes, a figure
that has been growing each year. Sharpton’s non-profit organization, National
Action Network has been kept afloat for years by failing to pay Federal payroll
taxes on its employees.(Now that’s
some Action I could get on board
with!) Neither Al nor his non-profit organization have bothered to pay travel
agencies, hotels or a long list of landlords for years. Despite this penchant
for welching on his debts, the lavish birthday bash at the Four Seasons was
paid for by a long list of corporations that for reasons unknown are not
troubled by his history of serial freeloading.
I bring this up because in just a few days the grand
jury down in Ferguson will render their verdict, and if it doesn’t contain a
conviction, that luckless town will go up in flames. Then Al will show up, a gaggle of cameras in his face recording
the rhyming rage coming forth from his mouth. The Reverend will no doubt be in
high dudgeon about how poorly African-Americans are treated, about how the
system is out to get them and how the burning buildings in Ferguson are a just
and understandable reaction to years of ill-treatment at the hands of the privileged
white establishment.
When speaking this way, he will be referring of course
to the great unwashed African-American population, not the Al Sharptons of the
world. I’m almost positive that if Doug Dunnevant had somehow managed to amass
a 4.5 million dollar bill for back taxes, my white skin wouldn’t stand a chance
of saving my ass from the heavy hand of the IRS legal team. My prison cell
would be the last on the left, right across from Hannibal Lecter. I mean, Al
Capone got away with murder, extortion, bribery, and racketeering, but couldn’t
fight the taxman. How does Sharpton manage it?
Becoming a race hustler
and poverty pimp was obviously an astute career move for Al Sharpton. It’s Al’s
world. The rest of us are just living in it.
