Regular readers of my posts and comments on this blog know that I have been a consistent critic of Al Sharpton.
And I don’t back off any of them.
But this week, Rev. Al has been getting a bum rap.
After the Don Imus controversy and the exoneration of the Duke Lacrosse players, a bunch of commentators, including Imus himself, started yapping about how Al owed the Duke lacrosse players an apology for all that he said about them.
But guess what – apparently Al didn’t say much about them.
Ellis Henican in his column in Newsday reported that Al never went down to Durham, NC to vilify players.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-nyhen135169190apr13,0,5789110.column?coll=ny-nynews-print
According to Henican –
The closest Sharpton got was an exchange on MSNBC, Imus' station, with host Tucker Carlson.
"I hope in the end," Carlson said, "when this case is dropped, you'll come on the show and apologize to the families of those boys."
"If that is the case, I would say that they are due that," Sharpton said. "If it is not, I think that I will present you with a bigger shoe to eat than Hillary Clinton did."
I was surprised to read that and Sunday morning, Al was on Fox News Sunday when host Chris Wallace did raise the issue and then said he was going to play a tape of what Al had said.
Aha, I thought, Henican was wrong, and Fox had the smoking gun to prove that Al was acting as badly in this case he had in the Tawana Brawley hoax.
But all the tape showed Al speaking with Bill O’Reilly as saying that if the DA was still prosecuting the case despite the lack of DNA evidence, he must think he had a case.
That’s it. That’s all Fox could come up with. A perfectly reasonable refusal to rush to judgment. In fact, that was my opinion at the time also
So for one of the few time ever (and likely the last), I say lay off Al Sharpton on this issue unless you can find that smoking gun.