Sharpton and Jackson = Race Baiters!!!!

Race Baiters Seldom Care Whether the Charges Are True

The fact that the ending of the Duke rape hoax against three lacrosse players and the firing of Don Imus from MSNBC occurred on the same day provides a moment of clarity about how the media and corporations can be manipulated by the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

Both men played up the incredibly weak Duke rape accusations. Mr. Jackson railed against a "right-wing media machine [that] has kicked in, prompting mean-spirited attacks upon the accuser's character." In the controversy over the Imus meltdown, both men demanded Mr. Imus be fired for his insulting racial reference to the Rutgers women's basketball team.

Both men have proven themselves to be race hustlers extraordinaire in the past. Mr. Sharpton's career dates back to the sordid Tawana Brawley affair, another racially-tinged hoax in which Mr. Sharpton was forced to pay a defamation judgment of $85,000 to a prosecutor after accusing him of abusing a black girl. For his part, Mr. Jackson has a long history of engaging in less-than-subtle intimidation and threats against corporations if they don't bow to his demands. Yet both men remain fixtures on cable television, which provides them with the media oxygen to pursue their shakedowns.

Yesterday, Mr. Jackson was at it again. He said he planned to meet with executives at CBS Radio and NBC, the networks that employed Mr. Imus, to demand more diversity in broadcasting. "Imus is on 1,040 hours a [year] and yet they have virtually no black show hosts. That is true for other networks as well," Mr. Jackson said. "We must raise the ethical standard for all of them."

Of course, it is difficult to have sympathy for the corporations involved. They have profited for years from playing the anti-social songs of gansta rap artists, whose lyrics degrade women, sometimes call for violence and use far worse language than Mr. Imus did. Indeed, NBC Universal, which owns MSNBC, also owns Interscope Records, a label notorious for hiring gangsta rap artists.

Mr. Sharpton said there was no way "that an apology would do" in the case of Mr. Imus's offense. He demanded his firing. But while he has criticized record labels for selling some gangsta rap songs, Mr. Sharpton has never called on them to fire the artists involved. In the case of gangsta rap, he will only say the artists themselves aren't the issue and that "there is a place that we need to have that discussion."

That place would likely be in corporate boardrooms where Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Jackson can now press their demands. In this case, both the executives involved and the race-hustlers probably deserve each other.