Agitating Dirty

In “Holder and Obama are making race relations worse, inflaming hatred”, John Fund and Hans Von Spakovsky point out that one Alfred Sharpton has become the new Civil Rights Leader, even though he is

[f]ar from becoming the “refined agitator” his apologists now claim him to be [and] is the same racial charlatan and rabble-rouser of the past using slightly new tricks.  

Looks like the same one to me too — with a lap-band and a less flamboyant conk.

Every now and then, I still see non-black conservatives exhort black persons to “stop listening to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton” and to “get new leaders,” or something similar. It would be good advice, if it were true that black person had voted for or, somehow, appointed such persons to “lead us” in the first place.

But we did not. So where do these people come from?

Sharpton has been a hilariously awful commentator for MSNBC for a bit. But even before that, MSNBC, CNN and even Fox News had been sticking microphones under him and other "civil rights leaders" as the go-to guys--and sometimes girls--as if they were the go-betweens for "the black community" and the rest of America.

I call Bravo Sierra.

“Civil rights leaders” never just spontaneously came to the fore; they are and have always been created. The rise in the fortunes--literally and figuratively--of Sharpton  should be proof of this. (And, as it turns out, Sharpton has always hidden backers, later revealed.)

 Even the concept of a civil rights leader is a created one. But, ‘agitator’ is better because it is more descriptive. The word makes me think of that part inside your washing machine--the constant spinning and the noise-making. And that’s where the comparison ends.

No one will be made clean and whole by Al Sharpton's latest product. And his most recent backers are far from hidden.

It all depends on whether you will allow yourselves to see it.

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