Jackie Mason, a Yiddishe Boychick
I've always tried to live by the motto "if you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all." In an attempt to say something nice about Al Sharpton, I'd like to commend him on his short memory. This is the same Al Sharpton who is miffed because Jackie Mason called Barack Obama a schwartza, which loosely translated means "black" in Yiddish. Once the word slipped during one of Mason's routines, Sharpton berated the comic for foray into free speech.
Where is the civil rights leader when you need him in the recording studio when those rap artists are calling women words that are not even fit to be written in this paper's blog? Where was he in 1991 when a Jewish man accidentally hit and killed Gavin Cato, a black child in Crown Heights, with his car? An angry black mob murdered a young rabbinical student in retaliation, but not surprisingly, Sharpton was nowhere to be found. And where was he when Jessie Jackson called New York City "Hymietown" or when Louis Farrakhan was spouting off?
Maybe Al Sharpton should learn two things: The meaning of the word "hypocrite" and that what's good for the goose is also good for the gander. Mason may have pushed the boundaries of polite society, but he is a comic and not a scoutmaster.
Well we're going to have our first fight (again). Someone else's inexcusable behavior does not justify mine. It allows me to call him a hypocrite but not to return his transgression against decency and civility in (un)kind.
I agree, Jonathan, but "let he, aka Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and some of those other yahoos, who is without sin cast the first stone" or something like that. Those who cry the loudest are often just as guilty as those they are complaining about.
JD, here's where your idealism gets you in trouble. It's not about improving oneself or making a better world, it's about claiming the moral upper hand as you float down the waterfall....