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Although I am a political junkie and, going back to my early teens, always have been, this generation often makes me rue ever having taken an interest in public life. Living in a real world, I understand that I will encounter some lying and hypocrisy, even from really good people. As an honest person, I cannot say that my own life has been completely devoid of such moments. But the thing is, I do try to look into the psychological mirror, to judge myself privately, to accept (constructive!) criticism, and to do better. Once annually, that personal impetus is recharged for me on Yom Kippur, my religions Day of Atonement, which is not only about looking back but really is targeted more towards searching within ones past to chart an improved road going forward. Indeed, that really is what all life is about forallof us: to improve our eternal souls, to work on ourselves and to become better people ourselves.

(This process of personal improvement should not be confused with the specious virtue-signaling that sees certain types pontificate publicly about how they want to take your and my money to help others. That changes nothing. The others do not get helped meaningfully, and the do-gooders remain as venal and self-centered as ever. Such virtue signaling does not make the socialist any better a person. He still glorifies Communist bread lines. She still lies brazenly about a world that supposedly is doomed in twelve years, even as she distorts history by saying to a generation of college ignoramuses that the 22ndAmendment was passed to prevent Franklin Roosevelt from seeking reelection. Actually, FDR died in 1945, and the Amendment was passed in 1947. She still will take steps to deny thousands of her neighbors much better, higher-paying product jobs. And she will be persuaded, somehow, that she is The Boss.)

In the journey of our lives, few of us start the race at exactly the same line, so we cannot possibly expect an identical race with the next person. Women and men each have their respective advantages and disadvantages. Christians, Jews, Muslims. Even within a family, a first-born enjoys different privileges but sustains different responsibilities from the next born. The last born is cuddled more but endures being taken less seriously. The middle child advantages and disadvantages galore. Everyone ends up on the therapists couch or should.

Even racial groups Black and White. For all the talk of White privilege, the innocents born White know that the cup is half full and half empty. Likewise for those born Black. Asians in our country same thing: pros and cons. Everyone.

Life is not about who is the richest, smartest, best employed, most muscular, best looking. Rather, life is about what each one of us does with what we have been given. In my lifetime, I cannot think of anyone who was worse looking than Aristotle Onassis. To play on the old meme, the only reason that his face did not appear in the dictionary under ugly is that it broke the printing press. But he seems to have done OK, for what he valued in life. Jackie Onassis thought so, too.

We know of incredibly rich people who commit suicide or whose nuclear family members do. Of fat people, skinny people, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and those of other faiths who rose to greatness or descended to infamy. That is what life really is all about. Not ultimately about conquering the Iron Throne, being the Lord of Downton Abbey, or even getting a TV slot. It is not about having a million likes or a million twitter followers or a million clicks. Rather, life is about what we do in our limited time on earth to improve our souls, improve ourselves, overcome our character flaws.

And that is why I so hate the hypocrisy, the mendacity, the shameless lying that dominates every moment of every day not only in other countries but also in this greatest country that humans ever conceived. If Social Media and cable television were imagined as steps forward in humanitys evolution, the Digital Age has proven that humans remain humans. You can give humans texting, tweeting, apps, posting, Facebooking, and seven hundred 24-hour television stations plus access via the internet to all the learning and truth imaginable and people still are people. Some are evil, some righteous, most in between the two parameters.

A. Al Sharpton: Hater, Inciter to Violence

The latest example of this repugnant reality is the opposite ways two social icons Kate Smith and Al Sharpton recently have been treated. Kate Smith may have been physically obese, but Al Sharpton always has been a spiritual pig. Kate Smith was not intentionally cruel; she was naive. By contrast, Al Sharpton rose to notoriety by falsely accusing good men of raping Tawana Brawley and smearing her with feces. Sharpton incited race riots and an anti-Jewish pogrom in Crown Heights, Brooklyn that resulted in his incited frenzied mob murdering a Jew, Yankel Rosenbaum. Sharpton incited further race riots in Harlem that saw the burning of a clothing store, more frenzied Jew-hatred, and more death. Years of his speeches were infected by racist attacks on whole classes of people. Ways that he incited mobs to violence against Jews, against police, against White people, against gays.

B. Kate Smith: A Decent Person in a Different Era

Kate Smith sang one song, Thats Why Darkies Were Born, that also was recorded by Black singer Paul Robeson. That song is open to various interpretations. She also sang an embarrassingly stupid song, also in the early 1930s, with lyrics no less embarrassing than some of those in Stephen Fosters iconic My Old Kentucky Home. (Uh-oh, lets hope hes not next. And wait till they find out the original name of Agatha Christies And Then There Were None.) She did not write the lyrics but was given that song to sing as part of a movie role. If she were singing and filming today, she never would have agreed to sing it. We know that because Kate Smith strongly advocated racial fairness. In an era when baseball teams including those that now suddenly will no longer play her iconic recording of G-d Bless America still banned Black athletes from playing on their team,Smith had black musicians and entertainers on her radio variety show more than 40 times, including Bill Robinson (Bojangles), Count Basie, Cozy Cole, the Deep River Boys, the Delta Rhythm Boys, Duke Ellington, Eddie Haywood, Ethel Waters, the Ink Spots, the King Cole Trio, Maurice Rocco, and the Southernaires.

No one ever said Boo! about Kate Smith for more than half a century until a month or so ago.

Has no one else in Hollywood ever played a role and sung lyrics that were out of touch with todays milieu? Obscene roles? Take Robert De Niro please. He can curse out our President all he likes, and maybe he cannot be blamed for it because he never finished high school, so perhaps never learned how to engage in mature polemics. Besides, the word that he uses F - is word that he has used for years and years in his movies, all the ethnically stereotypical depictions of Italian-Americans as mobsters without souls. To my movie recollection, he never played an Italian-American United States Attorney. And that is understandable because, although he is a great mobster actor, his talents do not extend to portraying a legal scholar. That would demand too much of the movie-going audience. Even when he is not saying F - he is playing in movies with names like Meet the Fockers. With his limited vocabulary, he probably thought that was a great pun. Get it? The Fockers?Clever word play for the New Age.

Robert Da Zero.

Its not that Italian-American mob actors cannot play great lawyers. Consider Al Pacino. On the one hand, Michael Corleone, Lefty Ruggiero (Donnie Brasco), and Scarface. On the other hand, one of the great jury summations of all time as Arthur Kirkland in And Justice for All. Also an attorney, John Milton, in the weird movie,The Devils Advocate. Even a bitter blind military-hero-turned-compassionate-quasi-attorney in Scent of a Womanduring that powerful closing-argument soliloquy, as Frank Slade. Pacino can do Shakespearean soliloquies: Shylock in Merchant of Venice, Richard III and King Lear in those eponymous plays.

Can you imagine Da Zero doing Shakespeare?

As Hamlet: To be or not to be, that is the question! Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer oh, F it!

As Romeo: But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east uh, or is it the west? East? West? Oh, F it!

Consider the evil and villainy in Da Zeros roles, one of which even prompted a nut job, who should have been executed, to attempt assassinating one of our greatest Presidents. Then contemplate the awful lyrics that Kate Smith was instructed to sing in an earlier day when she got a unique opportunity to star in an early talkie during a brief era when Hollywood hired stars based on their skills and gifts, not on their complexion, hair, and the coveted BMI factor. How can all her lifes work be obliterated so instantly by the kind of Truth Squad that tears down statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, while elevating the race-baiting Al Sharpton to democracys kingmaker?

It is the kind of bald-faced hypocrisy and double standard that sometimes makes me rue the day I took an interest in the public sphere. The race-baiting Al Sharpton signed the White House visitors book more than did any other visitor during the Wasted Obama Decade. He ended up with his own television show. He portrays himself as a civil rights leader, and others complicit with the fraud, even though they have to know better in their inner selves, pay dutiful obeisance. Obama turned to Sharpton as he began his second Presidential campaign. Yet Sharpton has blood on his hands. He has been convicted in court of defamation. Thisis the Mad Kingmaker, the wormy Littlefinger, to whom every single Democrat seeking the Presidency first must turn for approbation and blessing, beseech, beg, and bend the knee?

All while Kate Smiths recorded voice now is banned from belting out G-d Bless America from public arenas and stadia that played her rendition every day until a month ago.

This is the Metaphor of Hypocrisy for the New Age. May we in this land that we love see this long night end with the light from Above.

See the original post here:
On Kate Smith and Al Sharpton: The Metaphor of Hypocrisy ...

WASHINGTON (JTA) Al Sharpton appealed to Reform Jews for a united front in facing down anti-Semitism, racism and other forms of bias and acknowledged his role in stoking division, recounting how the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.s widow reprimanded him for his cheap rhetoric.

The civil rights activist and MSNBC hostreportedlyhas expressed regrets privately to Jewish leaders for the incendiary rhetoric that helped fuel the deadly Crown Heights riots in 1991. But Mondays remarks here at the Religious Action Centers Consultation on Conscience were the closest he has come in public in acknowledging his role.

The invitation earned criticism for seeming to rehabilitate a figure at the center of a number of anti-Semitic clashes in the 1990s. After the accidental killing of a black child in Brooklyn by a car driven by a member of the Lubavitcher rebbes entourage, African-American protesters targeted religious Jews in the Crown Heights neighborhood.

Yankel Rosenbaum, a graduate student affiliated with Chabad-Lubavitch, was stabbed to death in the rioting.

Sharpton also was accused ofinciting the violent firebombing of a Jewish-owned clothing store in Harlem in 1995.

Without mentioning the Crown Heights riots specifically, Sharpton said he could have done more to heal rather than harm. And he said that all the public criticism he received paled next to the rebuke from Coretta Scott King, who was known for her closeness to the Jewish community. It appears to be the first time Sharpton has publicly shared the tale.

Al Sharpton speaks to the media after meeting Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg for lunch at Manhattans Harlem neighborhood, April 29, 2019. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

One of the things she said to me, she said, Al, the purpose of our movement has never been to just get civil rights for us, its to protect and stand for civil and human rights for everyone,' he recalled.

She said that sometimes you are tempted to speak to the applause of the crowd rather than the heights of the cause, and you will say cheap things to get cheap applause rather than do higher things to raise the nation higher.

She said, I know that you may not have done things youre accused of, but you could have spoken out louder, if you are going to be in the King tradition and if you are going to be invested in your roots, and if you are going to be what we invested in you to be.

All of the editorials and the cartoons, and all that have raised various questions in my controversial career, never really impacted me like Mrs. King, who I grew up [with] in that movement, that had a gentle but firm way of correcting some of my excesses.

Sharptons overarching message to the Reform gathering was that blacks and Jews must overcome past differences to confront an increase in bias against all groups, particularly under President Donald Trump. Henoted his recent work with the Reform movement exposing U.S. government abuses against migrants on the border, as well as attacks on houses of worship.

You cannot fight racism without fighting anti-Semitism, he said.

Referring to white supremacists behind two recent deadly attacks on synagogues, as well as the 2015 mass shooting in a black church in South Carolina, Sharpton said, Unless we stand up together against this blatant anti-Semitic spirit, then I dont have the right to stand up when they go into Charleston.

Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone, who runs social media for Chabad, the movement whose members were principally targeted in the 1991 riots, watched the livestream of the speech and expressed his outrage on Twitter.

The willingness to wash away our pain is so cruel, he said. The Religious Action Center needs to deplatform hate Not give it a pulpit and whitewash it.

Lightstone, who with his wife is also director of Tech Tribe, a Chabad center in Brooklyn, was tweeting in his personal capacity as a resident of Crown Heights, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Rosenbaums brother, Norman, wrote in a Washington Examinerop-ed that inviting Sharpton sends a very dangerous and intolerable message to the anti-Semites among us.

Rabbi Jonah Pesner, the Religious Action Center director, acknowledged the pain that Sharptons appearance must be causing others.

That there are members of our Crown Heights family and our Chabad family that are in pain over this actually creates a lot of pain for us, and were sorry about that, he said in an interview with JTA.

At this moment when children are being separated from their parents at the border, and Jews are being murdered in the synagogues, and people of color are being gunned down in their churches, and people in mosques are being firebombed we need to stand together, and Reverend Sharpton has stood with us these past couple of years.

In the same interview, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said Sharptons role as an ally in this moment of increased bias and violence should be factored into understanding why he was invited to speak.

There are many chapters in Reverend Sharptons life, Jacobs said. We are in a moment of urgency, and Reverend Sharpton has spoken up and has stood strongly with the Jewish community.

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Al Sharpton admits to using 'cheap' rhetoric about Jews ...

5/9/2019 12:30 AM PDT

EXCLUSIVE

Al Sharpton isn't surprised that President Trumpwas reportedly bleeding money -- about a billion dollars worth, no less -- in his "heyday" as a mogul ... 'cause that's been his MO.

We got the reverend leaving Capitol Hill in D.C. Wednesday, where our photog asked about the big NYT story from yesterday -- in which the paper claimed to have uncovered 9 years worth of Trump's taxes between 1985 and 1994 ... showing he spent a decade in the red.

Rev. Sharpton says the news didn't strike him as much as it might have the average Joe, as he says that anyone who dealt with The Donald in those days knew full well that he wasn't the business hotshot he portrayed himself as ... especially in "The Art of the Deal."

According to Al, there's only one business Trump has been successful in ... and he says the Prez has carried that same formula over to the White House. Any guesses???

Bottom line for Mr. Sharpton ... it's time to change the channel away from Trump.

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Al Sharpton Says Trump Belongs in The Con Man HOF ... - tmz.com

The 2020 Democratic primaries are taking place next year, but the contest to be the presidential nominee is already throwing up some unforgettable images.

Weve already seen Beto ORourke standing on things, Elizabeth Warren cracking open a beer, and Bernie Sanders shouting and pointing, but step aside, all of you, because now, we have a mind-boggling photo of Mayor Pete Buttigieg meeting the Rev Al Sharpton in front of every single photographer in New York City.

Buttigieg dined with Sharpton, the longtime civil rights activist and founder of the National Action Network, at Sylvias restaurant in Harlem on Tuesday.

The meal and chat, as Buttigieg seeks to further boost his campaign, spawned an image that scans like a postmodern take on privacy and politics in the modern era: dozens of journalists straining for a glimpse from outside a window as Sharpton and Buttigieg have a nominally private conversation.

Both men are pretending to be oblivious to the scrum of photographers. An earnest-looking Buttigieg animatedly gestures and smiles at an utterly impassive Sharpton, the scene bringing to mind an eager sales rep trying to foist a new line of faucets on a department store owner.

If the setting looks familiar, well, it should. Silvias is Sharptons go-to place to fix Democratic presidential hopefuls with his inscrutable gaze.

The California senator Kamala Harris met Sharpton in the same restaurant, and sat in the exact same spot, just last week. Sharpton again looked as though he was taking part in a staring contest.

Back in 2016, Sharpton was staring at Bernie Sanders although on that occasion at least both men seemed equally skeptical of each other and Sharpton met Obama at Sylvias there in 2007, peering at the eventual president as Obama crammed a chicken wing into his mouth.

Buttigieg was in New York as he attempts to bolster his support among African Americans, after surging in Iowa and New Hampshire polls.

Its unclear if his effort will be successful, and unclear if Buttigieg can sustain his meteoric rise.

One thing, though, is certain: he wont be the last candidate to be stared at by Sharpton in Harlem.

Originally posted here:
Through the looking glass: Pete Buttigieg and Al Sharpton ...

When Pete Buttigieg asked Rev. Al Sharpton for advice on campaigning for president in the Souths Bible Belt as an openly gay white man, the civil rights leader responded, I think you should say, I am who I am.

ButtigiegmetSharpton for lunch at the landmark Harlem soul food restaurant Sylvias on Monday to discuss the need to confront homophobia in the faith community as well as the South Bend mayors policy agenda for the black community in Indiana and around the country, according to a campaign statement.

We need to deal with homophobia in the faith in the black community, said Sharpton.

In the past month, Buttigieg hasclashedwith Vice President Mike Pence over his faith and sexuality; faced antigay protestors and hecklers outside of hishomeand on thecampaign trail; and received criticism from evangelical leaderFranklin Graham, who said the mayors homosexual lifestyle was not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized.

You should be judged on your merits, Sharpton told Buttigieg, who sat across from him at a table for two. And we cant fight against bigotry based on race and were going to be bigots based on sexual orientation.

Sharpton suggested Buttigieg put the black LGBT community on the table, particularly when the mayor returns to campaign in South Carolina next month.

Buttigieg laid out his agenda for black voters, which he said focuses on homeownership, entrepreneurship, health, education, and criminal justice. But he also touched on issues that have given black voters pause. Buttigieg talked about hisfiringof South Bends first African-American police chief, a decision he said still stings with the black community. Later in front of reporters, Buttigieg reiterated his opposition to giving incarcerated felons the right to vote.

While Mayor Pete has risen to national prominence and has become a factor in the crowded Democratic presidential field, South Bends black residents have expressedlukewarm attitudestoward him and he still has along wayto go towin overblack voters across the country. Perhaps in an attempt to make up that ground, Buttigieg has now met twice in one month with Sharpton, who called him very much authentic and firm in who he was and what he represented.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg, right, meets with Rev. Al Sharpton in Harlem. (Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)

In early April, Buttigieg and other Democratic hopefuls spoke at Sharptons National Action Network annual conference. It was there that Buttigieg called for abolishing the death penalty and said he would sign a bill to commission a study on reparations for descendants of slaves.

Sitting across from Sharpton in Sylvias, as Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., had donemonths before, Buttigieg candidly outlined his campaign strategy to reach diverse constituencies around the U.S, comparing it to rock climbing.

I know Ive got a handhold with the LGBT community [which] is a minority, but also touches every other part of the coalition, he told Sharpton during lunch, which he apparentlydidnt knowwas being broadcast live. Or people in the Midwest Ive got a handhold there. So I can reach into the Latino community ... just take whatever relationships we have, then try to use those to reach other people.

The problem I have is some people will just come find me, Buttigieg continued. Theyll come to my rally, theyll rush to my event, theyll be at my fundraiser. But if Im only talking out to the people who come to me, its not going to become more diverse.

So youre going to reach out? interjected Sharpton with a wide, sweeping arm gesture.

I got to, said Buttigieg.

Its important for this midwestern mayor to come to the mecca of black America, Harlem, to speak to our premier leader of black communities, said Alvin Ponder, leader of NANs New York City chapter, who called Buttigiegs appearance with Sharpton good politics. The black vote is going to be extremely significant in the 2020 election. ...[H]es more in line with my views, which are between moderate and progressive.

But while politically savvy New Yorkers recognized Buttigieg on Malcolm X Blvd. and struggled to pronounce his name others failed to see the cause for commotion.

Jerome, 31, from East New York, was having lunch at Sylvias when Sharpton and Buttigieg showed up trailed by men in suits and cameras. He recognized the reverend but couldnt name the presidential candidate. Then again, he said he likely wouldnt have recognized some of theother 182020 hopefuls anyhow.

I kind of lost interest in politics, he told Yahoo News. When Hillary won the popular vote, but Trump ended up winning the election, it was kind of discouraging.

Jerome, who nonetheless plans on voting in 2020, said Buttigiegs race and sexual orientation didnt matter to him but called it a good thing for Buttigieg to come to Harlem. Hopefully, this is him having good intentions, being genuine and actually seeing what issues black folks care about, said Jerome.

Democratic presidential candidate and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg comes to Harlem. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

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In Harlem, Al Sharpton tells Pete Buttigieg to be himself