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The making of a boogeyman
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March 30, 2000 | WASHINGTON -- Clinton would be traveling to a Harlem church that night, Matalin explained, and her true purpose was "to suck up to Al Sharpton," who, she said, had been called "a professional monger of racial hatred, a career inciter of race violence." "Isn't there a way to show your support of the minority community," Matalin asked, "without kissing the ring and other parts of Al Sharpton's anatomy?"
Problem was, Sharpton had nothing to do with the Harlem church event where Clinton was speaking. In fact, he wasn't even there. Welcome to the GOP racial political strategy circa 2000, where the Rev. Al Sharpton -- a longtime controversial fixture on New York's political scene -- has become a national black boogeyman: a la Jesse Jackson in 1984, or Willie Horton in 1988, or Louis Farrakhan, or ... you get the idea. Consider some developments of the last few weeks: The Republican National Committee puts together a "backgrounder" on Sharpton's past (titled "Al Sharpton: A Chronology of Hate"); Rep. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., introduces a resolution condemning Sharpton; Sharpton is featured as the cover story in National Review, which later quotes a former Nixon and Reagan speech writer advising Gov. George W. Bush to "Willie Hortonize Al Sharpton" during the campaign. Sharpton rode through Washington on Wednesday, stuffed into a charcoal pinstripe three-piece suit, his hair pushed back wildly, riding in the front with his arm slung over the seat, and frequently flashing a sly grin at his questioner in the back. "They needed a figure that, if they called his name to white America, he represents black protest to them," Sharpton says. "And I'm the candidate this year." Sharpton -- who yesterday filed a defamation lawsuit against RNC Chairman Jim Nicholson for remarks he made about Sharpton in the Washington Post (accusing him, among other things, of causing a man's death in a riot) -- insisted that it is more accurate to compare him to Jesse Jackson than Willie Horton. "They're doing me more like Jesse than like Horton," he says. "Willie Horton was a criminal. I'm a civil rights leader." Truth is, he's probably somewhere in between. Over the years, he has brought attention to important issues of racial discrimination and police brutality, rallying people around incidents like last year's shooting by four police officers of unarmed African immigrant Amadou Diallo. But a list of his unsavory behavior could fill a book: associations with organized crime figures; acting as an informant for the FBI; making inflammatory remarks about Jews that come grotesquely close to anti-Semitism (his nearly synonymous use of "diamond merchants" to refer to Jews). Then there was his smearing of numerous law-enforcement officials who investigated the allegations of rape (eventually proven false) of teenager Tawana Brawley, which finally caused a state jury to find him responsible for defaming a former assistant prosecutor. Finally, Sharpton led pickets of a Harlem store owned by a Jewish man who he attacked as a "white interloper." One of the protesters eventually stormed the store, shot three people, set the store on fire, shot himself and left seven others dead. Despite this unsavory past, Sharpton has remained a man-to-see of sorts in New York for Democrats -- and, on more than one occasion, Republicans -- for more than a decade. In 1992, in a race for the U.S. Senate, he drew roughly 166,000 votes, an undeniable base making him a one-man third party. Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political consultant, spoke of Democrats dalliances with Sharpton the way a choreographer might discuss an upcoming composition. "They have to dance around him and get as close as they can to him without getting found out," he said. "If they have black constituencies of any kind, they don't want him running around banging them. He is a self-contained political party; 170,000 votes. That's not somebody you want to have angry with you."
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