Obama embraces racial demagogue Sharpton

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Washington Examiner:

President Obama's meteoric political rise was built in part around his call for a new kind of civility in American public life -- as he often put it, an environment in which people could "disagree without being disagreeable." We support this goal, which is why we find it mind-boggling that his administration has sent not one, but five cabinet secretaries, to address the annual conference of the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network.

It is easy to dismiss Sharpton, now an MSNBC host, as a harmless, buffoonish talking-head along the lines of Ed Schultz. But he isn't. In 1995, the same National Action Network played a role in turning a Harlem landlord-tenant dispute into a deadly racial incident that killed seven.

At that time, the Jewish owner of Freddy's Fashion Mart on 125th Street sub-leased space to a black-owned record store. When he tried to raise the rent (as it happened, to cover a rent increase imposed by the predominantly black church that owned the building), Sharpton immediately saw an opening for racial demagoguery. He went on the radio, vowing, "We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business. ... I'm going to go down there and do what is necessary to let them know that we are not turning 125th Street back over to the outsiders." Sharpton also promised "a major reaction and major protest from us."