Al Sharpton was one of the perpetrators of the Tawana Brawley hoax. He accused innocent people of raping a girl. One of them was an assistant DA, Steven Pagones. For years, he pursued a defamation case against Sharpton and finally won.
Sharpton has always refused to apologize: refused to apologize for this grotesque and monstrous lie. (He is a man of the cloth, remember.) One reason is this, by his own testimony: Jesse Jackson apologized for referring to New York City as “Hymietown.” And gained nothing from it (according to Sharpton). So why should he, Sharpton, apologize for the rape hoax?
I wrote about all this in a piece for NR in 2000. Why am I bringing it up now? I thought of it when reading a news article.
Carr, in a column Thursday in the Boston Herald, said that Trump advised him off-stage: “Whatever you do, don’t apologize.”
“You never hear me apologize, do you?” Trump added, according to Carr. “That’s what killed Jimmy the Greek way back. Remember? He was doing OK ’til he said he was sorry.”
It was a reference to Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, a sports commentator who was fired from CBS after saying that black athletes were “bred” to be better athletes than whites when they were slaves.
Al Sharpton and Donald Trump are both a New York type: They are perpetual celebrities, perpetual controversialists, perpetual “characters.” Rabble-rousers. Media maestros. Camera hounds. Braggarts and showmen.
There is room for this in America. Plenty of room. But in the Oval Office? Anyway, voters have decided that one of them is a major-party nominee.