Today's New York breaking news is that Roger L. Stone, a notorious rethug operative, has been fired from a $20,000-a-month gig with the New York State Senate Republicans after Stone was linked to a threatening, profanity-laced phone call to Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer's 83-year-old father. Stone is no stranger to dirty tricks. Among other things, he led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County Florida recount in the 2000 Election.
A recent nasty race-baiting diary was posted titled: "Al Sharpton: Dangerous Liability to Democrats?" based on the usual rightwing talk-radio rap about "liberals" groveling for "Those People." Accordingly, this is as good a time as any to recall Mr. Stone's peculiar connection to Mr. Sharpton.
When Al Sharpton ran for president in 2004, many of my friends here in California, knowing my personal history as an 'Lefty" African-American activist in the Hudson Valley of New York, were genuinely surprised and amazed by the ferocity of my opposition to Al Sharpton.
They didn't understand.
I was not against Al Sharpton, in spite of my civil rights activism. I was against Al Sharpton, because of my civil rights activism. Sharpton is smart. He's no fool. He has some gifts. But having said that, it is important to understand that the man is a total opportunist with almost no standing in the civil rights movement who is almost entirely a product of the mainstream tabloid media.
The Village Voice's longtime investigative reporter, Wayne Barrett, wrote an expose on Sharpton's connection to, of all people, rightwing Republican operative Roger Stone in February 2004
Sleeping with the GOP
by Wayne Barrett
Village Voice, February 5, 2004.
Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton.
Though Stone and Sharpton have tried to reduce their alliance to a curiosity, suggesting that all they do is talk occasionally, a Voice investigation has documented an extraordinary array of connections. Stone played a pivotal role in putting together Sharpton's pending application for federal matching funds, getting dollars in critical states from family members and political allies at odds with everything Sharpton represents. He's also helped stack the campaign with a half-dozen incongruous top aides who've worked for him in prior campaigns. He's even boasted about engineering six-figure loans to Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN) and allowing Sharpton to use his credit card to cover thousands in NAN costs—neither of which he could legally do for the campaign. In a wide-ranging Voice interview Sunday, Stone confirmed his matching-fund and staffing roles, but refused to comment on the NAN subsidies.
Sharpton denounced the Voice's inquiries as "phony liberal paternalism," insisting that he'd "talk to anyone I want" and likening his use of Stone to Bill Clinton's reliance on pollster Dick Morris, saying he was "sick of these racist double standards." He did not dispute that Stone had helped generate matching contributions and staff the campaign. Asked about the Stone loans, he conceded that he "asked him to help NAN," but attributed the financial aid to his and Stone's joint "fight against the Rockefeller drug laws," adding: "If he did let me use his credit card to cover NAN expenses, fine." The finances of NAN and the Sharpton campaign have so merged in recent months that they have shared everything from contractors to consultants to travel expenses, though Sharpton insists that these questionable maneuvers have been done in compliance with Federal Election Commission regulations.
In the past Sharpton played ball with New York GOP Sen. Alphonse "Senator Sleaze" D'Amato. In 1994, Sharpton also endorsed GOP candidate George Pataki against his longtime foe, Democrat Mario Cuomo. Last but not least, Sharpton sabotaged the campaigns of both Mark Green and Fernando Ferrer campaigns against New York's GOP Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Sharpton and His Critics:
Poster Boys for the Failure of Race-Based Politics
I have said it before in diaries on the Daily Kos and elsewhere (ironically, diaries which, unlike that nasty white racist piece about Sharpton, have been tagged as "troll"): race-based "identity politics" is a failure in America and a catastrophe for progressive causes.
As I write this Laura Richardson is going to the United States House of Representative entirely on the basis of her color. On her blog, African-American "journalist," Jasmyne Cannick, crows about Ms. Richardson being:
... the 243rd woman and 26th African-American female ever to serve in the United States Congress...
Well, La-De-Da! We'll all sleep better for that when President Bush (or the next president) starts a war with Iran or with a nuclear-armed Pakistan.
Time for supposedly grown-up people to quit making political judgments based based on sex and color and use our brains to figure out who's moderate, who's liberal, who's progressive, and who is just a jive-talkin' ambitious hack.