Sharpton Visits Campus, Chaos Ensues

By Quinton Klabon and Boris Vabson | Friday, January 20, 2006

The meaning of “Between Heaven and Hell,” Dartmouth’s chosen name for this year’s Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration, escaped us until recently. The phrase turned out to describe our actual experiences with the holiday weekend. What other adjective could describe Sunday’s glorious multi-faith celebration of the Rev. King’s life but “heavenly?” But, the latter part was fulfilled last Thursday afternoon in Alumni Hall. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here . Al Sharpton was coming, and like any other sideshow, he was sure to both intrigue and horrify.

We arrived early, so as to find out exactly what sort of person voluntarily subjects himself to two hours of tympanic abuse. The four students already there cautiously eyed our notepads, severely endangering my cover as an affirmative action aficionado. Quinton reacted quickly. “Do you guys think Sharpton will better live than he is on TV?” he asked, opening up a bag of granola. The frowns faded. Vaguely referencing a class assignment, we asked audience members how they perceived Sharpton and his political impact. Many lauded his “refreshing” honesty and dynamic speaking style, which I can only assume means loudly using the word “cracker” (it wouldn’t be the first time). Though they all admitted his perennial marginality, they were all surprisingly vehement about his civil rights efforts. “White Democrats are afraid to address the issue of why black Americans are less well-off,” one commented, leaving me to wonder why they assumed the inheritor of King’s crown to be Sharpton’s Brylcreem-enhanced mullet. One Sharpton-devotee wondered aloud whom the College Republicans would bring to campus. I overheard them pick Ann Coulter, only to have the man who had deemed Sharpton “credible” snap around. “Ann Coulter?” replied the shaggy-haired activist. “She’s crazy .”

As the minutes passed, Sharpton’s supposed arrival time ticked by and the burgeoning crowd grew restless. While waiting, we passed the time by reading about Sharpton’s illicit relationship with a married woman, Marjorie Fields-Harris, which eventually led to a divorce from her previous husband. The evidence of trysts and a fervent sexual relationship between the two might lead one to forget that Sharpton, a supposed man of God, did happen to be married to his wife of twenty years at the time. Coincidentally, of course, Sharpton’s mistress is the director of the National Action Network, one of Sharpton’s pet projects to promote voter registration among African-Americans in New York City and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the country. The Village Voice reported that Fields-Harris did little work, though, was rarely spotted at the office, and almost never put in more than two hours a day. Furthermore, reported the Voice , her organization does virtually nothing related to voter registration, except provide an answering machine message on how to register. Sharpton may rail about blacks’ disenfranchisement, but his own contribution to the effort consists mainly of hiring his mistresses to administer sham programs. What’s more, Sharpton compensates this particular mistress quite well for her services, using money from his now-defunct presidential campaign’s coffers and the Democratic Party to buy her a seven thousand dollar Rolex watch, mink coats, two thousand dollar-a-night hotel stays, and so forth. Coincidentally, she currently resides in a Trump apartment in midtown Manhattan. He’s quite the sugar daddy, Sharpton.

Suddenly, a commotion came from the wings, and the Reverend Al Sharpton, sizeable paunch and loud tie leading, took to the podium thirty-five minutes late. As if to make up for lost time, he predictably began his tirades on the Republican Party, racism, and student activism – a veritable cocktail of causes, which he quickly changed into the Molotov variety. “Samuel A-li-to,” adding scorn to each syllable as only a Pentecostal preacher could, “Has a clear record against civil rights! He has a clear record of putting employers over employees, for putting employers over women and minorities!” The reverend then implied that Alito would roll back abortion rights to incredibly restrictive levels.

As always, Sharpton was best when riding the coattails of another. He latched onto Martin Luther King, Jr., per the holiday, invoking him whenever a boost of credibility was needed. We had to fight Ronald Reagan for MLK Day, he said. Martin Luther King was the most famous victim of the sort of wire-tapping that President Bush justifies (we were previously unaware that Martin Luther King had been involved with al-Qaeda). Why, even schools that hated Martin Luther King, Jr. are now closed for his birthday! Preach, Reverend, preach! It was surely in King’s spirit of racial camaraderie that he mentioned Bush’s typical “good, old conservative Republican” mindset as one implicitly against civil rights and liberties, one that was all too eager to accept a South fleeing from those do-gooder, tolerant Democrats. Sharpton must not have finished his history distributives during his two-year stay at Brooklyn College.

Sharpton subsequently conjured Condoleezza Rice’s name and described her childhood in the troubled Alabama city of Birmingham, recalling how she knew one of the four girls killed in the 1963 church bombing that rocked that city and the nation. Being Al Sharpton, of course, he continued oblivious to the crowd’s obvious discomfort with the delicate matters he was scrutinizing. Then, in response to her support of the Bush administration’s policies, he asked Rice the rhetorical question, “How can you stand for the same forces that helped spur the church bombing?” Sharpton clearly remains just as classy as his 1980s velour track suits.

As he continued in his almost hypnotic cadence, we grew more and more amazed. The man was a literally virtuoso of the baseless accusation. Sharpton on God in politics: “The GOP hid under a flag and a Bible.” Sharpton on Bush’s compassion during Hurricane Katrina: “What did Bush do? He left to California to get an award and a guitar!” Sharpton on government action against King: “J. Edgar Hoover distorted private information and gave it to politicians for national security.” In what can only be deemed a tour de force of vapidity, he declared that President Bush “dishonors” King, and that “he has stood against everything Dr. King represented…I think we can say that the President is the most renowned Dr. King dream-buster that we’ve ever seen.”

Yet, the reverend seemed most forceful in describing Hurricane Katrina, citing its aftermath as this generation’s civil rights struggle. The blame for it, he felt, was improperly placed upon New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco. Sharpton did not fault nature for the disaster nor go on a hunger strike to protest tropical humidity. He preferred instead to imprecate Bush, who supposedly contributed to the calamity by not properly funding levees, as “money instead went for tax cuts for the rich and Iraq.” Sharpton also found affinity with Kanye West, deeming Katrina proof of ongoing racism. He even alleged that because the biggest victims of this action were “poor and black,” negligence was “all too easy for the President.” Instead of recognizing the inherent disadvantages crowded, poor neighborhoods would have during a flood, the reverend’s rhetorical sleight of hand exposed that in Bush’s actions, it was “more important to take care of the rich than the poor people.”

The hour-long diatribe did prove amusing, though, in a bless-him-he’s-trying fashion. “Isn’t it a blatant disgrace on how [Bush] can see WMD’s in Iraq not there, but no hurricane in New Orleans that is there!” he spouted. “We even watched it on FOX!” In grasping awkwardly for street cred, he mused that, “bin Laden got more videos out than Mary J. Blige,” which prompts me to wonder how Al, with numerous supporters in the comedy industry, couldn’t get better joke writers. However, where comedy exists, tragedy must as well. The trouble for Dartmouth was that Sharpton’s event wasn’t billed as mere entertainment or a low-grade comedy club show. The reverend’s speech was viewed seriously, fit as a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy. A man like Sharpton, who has called whites “crackers” and Jews “diamond merchants,” was nonetheless thought qualified to discuss racial harmony. Sharpton is little more than a modern-day Pharisee that uses his organization’s coffers for personal gain, yet he continues to decry government negligence and waste. The absurdity of treating Sharpton’s early 2008 campaign efforts seriously during such an important holiday leaves Dartmouth worse for it.

Indeed, a set-up for another failed candidacy is the only explanation feasible to explain Sharpton’s refusal of a fee. The reverend seems to be looking to add more votes to his already formidable showing in the 2004 New Hampshire primary as he traveled throughout the state this past week. Sharpton, of course, received a grand total of 345 votes in the last New Hampshire primary. While I don’t fault him for trying, I prefer greater qualifications for my president than “Huge James Brown’s fan.”

Ultimately, it was emotion that triumphed in Sharpton’s speech, as logic fell by the wayside. Sharpton emphasized alternate messages of blame and activism, concluding with the importance of reaching out to other races, political factions, and social classes. Some in the crowd could not have helped but see the reverend in a presidential light as he soaked up the resounding applause. Perhaps it was with this goal in mind that the reverend urged students to strive for relevance, stating, “No one heeds an old ignorant activist who tells old war stories. If they sit on 125 th St.…no one’s going to listen to them.” If Sharpton believes, however unrealistic it may be, that he could be president, can we fault him for dreaming?

Staff writer Hazel Kent also contributed to this article.

Sharpton Visits Campus, Chaos Ensues

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