Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree
EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY
THINGS ARE COMING TO A HEAD, SO WE NO LONGER HAVE TIME FOR CIVIL RIGHTS PIMPS
Every time I turned on the television to get an update on the George Floyd murder case, the very first thing I saw was Al Sharpton at the podium playing master of Ceremonies. It made me want to throw up. What’s up with that guy? What makes him think that we always want to hear his mouth every time we turn on the television set?
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Now, I’m sure Sharpton would say that he was merely supporting the Floyd family. But how did constantly grinnin' into the cameras every chance he got constitute supporting the family? What he was actually doing was taking advantage of the family’s pain to promote his own interests. The vast majority of people who were there were there to support the family, but not one of them ever stepped before a camera to start pontificating, not even once. They were content to simply remain a part of the crowd. But not Sharpton. The media couldn’t turn on a camera anywhere within a hundred yards of him without him pushing himself to the front of the crowd and giving a speech. So Sharpton’s appearance at the media event had absolutely nothing to do with supporting the Floyd family. It was all about Al Sharpton wallowing in his need for celebrity and attention.
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Sharpton is one of those people who has built his entire life on benefiting from the pain and suffering of Black people, and it’s sick. It was also sickening to watch him introduce his fellow vultures, and having to endure their endless speeches. A man was tortured and murdered, so watching Sharpton and Crump giving speeches and slapping one another on the back was disgusting – and worse, the dedicated attorneys who actually won the convictions against Chauvin were relegated to the background. They’re the ones we wanted to hear from, not Sharpton or Crump. Yet, there he was, corrupting the news to his advantage. It was a disgusting spectacle to watch.
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Sharpton never fails to turn the most sober occasion into a three-ring circus. That’s his thing. He's a hearse chaser who never had a real job. He'll preach, he'll snitch for the FBI, or he'll chase hearses - he'll do anything not to have to hit a clock, and that's been his MO all his life. But now he's got the ultimate hustle - Black Man in Chief for MSNBC. With his, now, symbiotic relationship with MSNBC, he's got the perfect hustle. He's got an inexhaustible source of revenue, a legitimate platform in the White establishment, and a permanent expense and travel voucher to attend every atrocity against Black people in the country. In return, MSNBC gets the inside track on said murderous atrocities. It's almost like an Al Sharpton reality series.
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So Sharpton's got it real sweet these days. His primary reason for existence, to turn every gathering of Black people demanding justice into the Al Sharpton show, has been fulfilled, and he's being paid by MSNBC to provide them a front-row-center seat to every crisis in the Black community. They're now privy to things that they might not ordinarily have known about in the past, but now they have the ultimate insider in Sharpton, who can share all of our dirty laundry with the White establishment. So Sharpton's background as an informant for the FBI may just come in handy.
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But both Sharpton and the network have now crossed the line. They're allowing themselves to become a part of the story. Sharpton often creates the news, and that's unethical for a news organization, and MSNBC should know better. While we've always known Sharpton to be an unethical egomaniac, now he's dragged an entire network into the mire with him. Thus, it seems they've lost their bearings, so it's time for the Black community to find ours. This is no time for the Black community to put up with a character like Sharpton. The community is facing a serious crisis, and our image has become an important element of our survival. So we can no longer afford the luxury of dragging along shysters like Al Sharpton, because his entire way of life is dependent upon there being drama in the Black community.
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Glory-seeking people like Sharpton do Black people a disservice, because they’re so sickening they turn potential supporters off. That prevents Black people from getting the kind of support that we might get otherwise. When people think of Civil Rights, they generally have the image of a particular Black person in their mind, and if they don’t like the image they visualize, they tend to turn their backs on the cause. Well, Al Sharpton has made himself one of the primary images that people think of when they think of Civil Rights. So when many are voting in jury rooms to determine whether or not Black lives matter, they think of Sharpton, and that's bad news. Think about it. What are the chances you would support the cause of a person who brought Donald Trump to your mind?
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When a rogue cop goes before a jury for killing a Black man, the jury is supposed to follow the evidence. But people being people, they take many other things into account, including their attitude towards the victim and the cop involved. But since the victim is deceased, they often replace him with the highest profile symbol of Black manhood that they can think of, and in far too many cases, that symbol of Black manhood is Al Sharpton. So if those people don’t like Sharpton, or see him as a self-serving clown, it diminishes the value of the victim in the peoples' minds. That makes them far less prone to punish the rogue cop for taking the victim's life. Because many people will take one look at Sharpton and say, “Yeah, I see why so many Black people need to be shot.” The only reason that didn't happen in the Chauvin case was the evidence was so glaring.
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Research done by Bowling Green State University indicates that "Since the beginning of 2005 (through June 24, 2019), there have been 104 nonfederal sworn law
enforcement officers with the general powers of arrest (e.g., police officers, deputy sheriffs, state
troopers, etc.) who have been arrested for murder or manslaughter resulting from an on-duty shooting
where the officer shot and killed someone at incidents throughout the United States. Of those 104
officers, to date only 35 have been convicted of a crime resulting from the on-duty shooting (15 by guilty
plea, 20 by jury trial, and none convicted by a bench trial)."
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So it makes me want a scream every time I turn on the news and see Sharpton giving yet another one of his lame and mindless-ass speeches. The above study points out that out of 104 killings by rogue cops, only 20 were found guilty by a jury. So personally, I don’t want to be symbolized by Al Sharpton in the eyes of the American people. So why can’t this guy just stay in the background and keep his damn mouth shut like everybody else? Why can’t he just come and give the family moral support and leave it at that? I’ll tell you why – because that would defeat his self-promoting purpose. And beyond that, Sharpton is so arrogantly full of himself that he thinks the people EXPECT to hear from him. He thought he was doing the Floyd family a favor by appearing on their behalf. Well, I don’t, and it’s past time for the Black community to tell him they feel the same way. I want him to just shut up, unless he has a specific reason to speak.
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Sharpton’s appearances on camera are not only a complete waste of time, but counterproductive. He doesn’t give a damn about the reasons for most demonstrations, all he cares about is looking good for the cameras. Sharpton’s one and only specialty is preaching into cameras. He never gives trying to find ways of preventing crimes against Black people a second thought. That’s far too close to real work, and there’s no glory in it. So the fact is, if true justice ever came to the Black community, it would be Sharpton’s worst nightmare, because it would mean no more cameras, and thus, the end of his career.
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There’s plenty of evidence to prove that these attention-seeking egomaniacs are all about themselves. When Barack Obama first appeared on the scene and began to get national attention as the potential first Black President, people like Sharpton didn’t celebrate the arrival of a new day in America, on the contrary, Tavis Smiley all but demanded that Obama come on his show to get his approval to run. Smiley thought he owned the Black community, so Barack Obama had to come kiss his ring to get permission to run for President. Listen to Cornel West in the video below. He's talking like Obama had an obligation to come on Tavis' show.
We don’t need any more professional screamers running out to take center-stage every time there’s a tragedy in the Black community – they're just self-serving distractions. We need real civil rights workers who are thoughtful and sincere, and who are willing to work within the community to organize and educate the people when the cameras are off. We need people who are willing to fight for the community when the media's not paying attention and there’s no glory to be had. I've urged Najee Ali to be such a person - the kind of person that our great grandchildren will be honoring a hundred years from now.
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That's what the Black community needs, people who are real, and who's thoughts are focused on the best interest of the people, not trying to become a superstar. We need people we can truly respect, and the rest of the nation can respect as well; people who we’re proud to stand firm with, not people who make us want to hold our nose. The Black community needs people who are willing to shun the cameras to work the crowd and bring knowledge, wisdom, and unity to the people. We need true dedication and sincerity, not hustlers.
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So let us stop allowing ourselves to be hustled. We don’t need one voice speaking for millions, we need millions speaking with one voice.
Eric L. Wattree
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.