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Sharpton: Race-Hustling for Profit

Sharpton: Race-Hustling for Profit

Pay up…or else

http://youtu.be/WKT_iwg9xbY

When he’s not fighting with the teleprompter or holding rallies that summon Black Jesus, Al Sharpton stays pretty busy.

But how does he make the big bucks?

Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein of the New York Post have the skinny:

Want to influence a casino bid? Polish your corporate image? Not be labeled a racist?
Then you need to pay Al Sharpton.
For more than a decade, corporations have shelled out thousands of dollars in donations and consulting fees to Sharpton’s National Action Network. What they get in return is the reverend’s supposed sway in the black community or, more often, his silence.

Even corporate behemoths like Sony Pictures aren’t immune to the Sharpton shakedown:

Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal met with the activist preacher after leaked e-mails showed her making racially charged comments about President Obama. Pascal was under siege after a suspected North Korean cyber attack pressured the studio to cancel its release of “The Interview,” which depicts the assassination of dictator Kim Jong-un.

Pascal and her team were said to be “shaking in their boots” and “afraid of the Rev,” The Post reported.
No payments to NAN have been announced, but Sharpton and Pascal agreed to form a “working group” to focus on racial bias in Hollywood.

Sharpton notably did not publicly assert his support for Pascal after the meeting — what observers say seems like a typical Sharpton “shakedown” in the making. Pay him in cash or power, critics say, and you buy his support or silence.

“Al Sharpton has enriched himself and NAN for years by threatening companies with bad publicity if they didn’t come to terms with him. Put simply, Sharpton specializes in shakedowns,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal & Policy Center, a Virginia-based watchdog group that has produced a book on Sharpton.
And Sharpton, who now boasts a close relationship with Obama and Mayor de Blasio, is in a stronger negotiating position than ever.

“Once Sharpton’s on board, he plays the race card all the way through,” said a source who has worked with the Harlem preacher. “He just keeps asking for more and more money.”

Sony is not the only corporation that landed in Sharpton’s crosshairs. According to the NY Post, AEG, Plainfield Asset Management, Macy’s, Pfizer, General Motors, American Honda, and Chrysler have all “donated” to Sharpton’s organization.

American Honda and Pepsi share similar stories that illustrate how Sharpton used race to score a hefty pay-off elicit charitable contributions to his National Action Network.

Sharpton targeted American Honda in 2003 for not hiring enough African-Americans in management positions.

“We support those that support us,” Sharpton wrote to the company. “We cannot be silent while African-Americans spend hard-earned dollars with a company that does not hire, promote or do business with us in a statistically significant manner.”

Two months later, car-company leaders met with Sharpton, and Honda began to sponsor NAN’s events. The protests stopped.

Sharpton landed a gig as a $25,000-a-year adviser to Pepsi after he threatened a consumer boycott of the soda company in 1998, saying its ads did not portray African-Americans. He held the position until 2007.

Since brandishing the scarlet R is about as bad a PR nightmare as can happen these days, corporation after corporation has given in to pressure.

The entire article (which you should read) is both illuminating and heartbreaking. For every trumped-up fabrication, there is an instance of actual racism that is demeaned and ignored in favor of an aggressive shakedown.

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Comments

He’s only doing what he watched Jessie Jackson did and, as a community organizer, what Obama himself did.

    joethefatman in reply to joethefatman. | January 5, 2015 at 8:47 am

    *do

    nordic_prince in reply to joethefatman. | January 5, 2015 at 9:23 am

    Jesse’s been rather quiet in recent years. Apparently he’s passed the shakedown baton to Al.

    They’re both a couple of phonies and frauds who haven’t earned an honest dollar in their lives ~

      Jackson was demoted when he criticized Obama. The protection racket works both ways, and he was less important to the cartel than he believed.

    Estragon in reply to joethefatman. | January 5, 2015 at 5:16 pm

    Obama wasn’t very good at it. But then, he isn’t very good at anything.

    Jackson was a real pro. He landed his cronies seats on the Boards of Directors of Coca-Cola and Texaco. He got his son a valuable Anheuser-Busch distributorship in Chicago ahead of those with experience and adequate financial backing. Yusef had just graduated college, where he was a star linebacker.

    The real beauty of the extortion racket is you don’t even have to DO anything to get the perks, the donations, and the respect. They pay off for NOT being called racist.

    Sharpton belongs in jail, and the next Republican President should make sure that’s where he goes if those payroll taxes aren’t paid when he takes office.

http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2015/01/04/no-justice-no-quiche/

The #blacklivesmatter souffle broke and collapsed over the last few days.

The race-baiting batter went sour.

Like OccupyWhatever, which was composed of the same poison at its roots, this movement has reduced to the anarcho/communists of the Collective, and left behind the less crazy/evil elements it was duping for a while.

I’ve predicted that we’ll see a response from America in the direction of demands for more law and order, in place of the permissive and passive style of “response” we’ve seen in Oakland and Missouri.

2015 will be an interesting year.

Sharpton shaking down corporations is not new. This was reported years ago. No one cared then, and no one will care now. To challenge it is racist.

Has anyone found a video of the “Black People’s Grand Jury” yet? I’m looking for something funny while I eat my cornflakes one of these mornings.

Isn’t this special?!?-from NAN’s website:

Decency
The Decency Initiative was created in order to reduce the degrading, racially insensitive and misogynous language and culture that has become pervasive today and to hold corporate America and the private sector equally accountable with racial sensitivity.

Look! we can all join!!

Membership
National Action Network’s membership is open to any person or entity that promotes a doctrine of civil rights and fairness for all people.

From 2010:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/09/sharptons_fake_nonprofit_on_th.html

More recently:

“Back in 1993, Sharpton pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor tax offense to avoid felony charges, the (NY)Post said in a 2012 editorial.
http://www.eurweb.com/2013/08/report-rev-als-nonprofit-organization-suffering-from-financial-woes/

NAN is short for Sharpton’s self-funding Nanny state.

You can always tell a lot about a culture or sub-culture by looking at the people they hold as heroes.

theduchessofkitty | January 5, 2015 at 11:40 am

“Nice corporation you have there. Such a pity if someone were to call you all “racists”… Got you an offer you can’t refuse…” – Al Sharpton, The Black Don.

Mario Puzo (“The Godfather”) and John Gotti couldn’t have anticipated such thing.

    You got there first. My sentiments exactly. Back in the old days this had a name – blackmail. Today it has a different name – freedom of speech.

Want to influence a casino bid? Polish your corporate image? Not be labeled a racist?
Then you need to pay Al Sharpton.

Sounds familiar…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGAmPRxV48

buckeyeminuteman | January 5, 2015 at 12:30 pm

Why is his voice always turned up to 11?

The civil rights businesses, part of the greater social complex, behave remarkably similar to a protection racket.