Kopel: Media skip other side of Sharpton

'Hate-crime perpetrator' given a pass by Denver dailies et al. in CU appearance

Saturday, February 25, 2006

If David Duke or Louis Farrakhan gave a speech in Colorado, would the newspapers report the event without even a single sentence letting the readers know about the speaker's record as a racist hatemonger? Covering the Feb. 13 speech by Al Sharpton at the University of Colorado, both Denver dailies and the Boulder Daily Camera failed to provide any context about Sharpton.

What the metro-area papers didn't tell you is that a jury awarded $345,000 to New York prosecutor Steven Pagones because Sharpton repeatedly defamed Pagones by participating in the rape hoax story invented by teenager Tawana Brawley, and by knowingly falsely accusing Pagones of rape.

In 1989, a young woman jogger in Central Park was viciously raped and beaten by a gang of youths. Sharpton led a mob outside the court which claimed, without a shred of evidence, that "the boyfriend did it," and screamed that the victim was a "whore."

At a rally in Harlem, Sharpton denounced a Jewish small business owner as a "white interloper," and then stood by approvingly while one his associates incited the crowd to violence. Later, a listener killed seven people in the store. Sharpton then lied and claimed he had never been at the rally.

Sharpton helped incite a murderous anti-Jewish pogrom in Brooklyn when he gave a speech at a funeral of a black child who had been accidentally killed by a Jewish driver. Sharpton announced, "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house." He also organized a boycott of small grocery stores owned by Korean immigrants. He called New York City's first black mayor, David Dinkins, "that n----- whore turning tricks in City Hall."

In 1994, Sharpton explained black cultural superiority: "White folks were in caves while we were building empires. . . . We taught philosophy, astrology, and mathematics before Socrates and those Greek homos."

The Denver Post article absurdly concluded with a quote from a CU student who was using Sharpton's speech as an occasion to protest against hate crimes on the CU campus. The Post, like the rest of the metro-area media, disgracefully refused to inform the public that the speaker inside was a professional hate-crime perpetrator.

The Feb. 12 Sunday Denver Post featured another in the long line of coin scam advertisements which the Denver Newspaper Agency runs. "Public has 72 hours to get rolls of the new Jeffersons for face value," announced the headline on the ad. Actually, the toll-free number of the so-called "World Reserve Monetary Exchange" was still willing to sell me the coins when I called 10 days later, and so was the company's Web site.

The ad offered the opportunity to buy a roll of new nickels for their face value (that's 40 nickels for $2), plus a $9 processing fee. The toll-free salesperson also explained to me that there was a $3.85 shipping fee. So the ad was selling $2 worth of nickels for $14.85.

The ad claimed that one variety of Jefferson nickels from 2004 has "already increased in value by an astonishing 1,098%." The ad continued, "Just think if you had saved 10 rolls of the 2004 Jefferson nickels. Right now you'd be trying to decide whether to let it ride or cash in for one big jackpot."

Actually, you would have made a total profit of $91.11. This is the amount that the ad deceptively described as "one big jackpot." Of course if the coins appreciate at a normal rate, you'll lose much more than $91.

Almost any intelligent adult would be wary of the Jefferson nickel scam (like the papal holy water scam the DNA ran last year), but the readership of the Denver papers obviously includes many naive people; that's why the scammers continue to buy ad space from the DNA, which makes illegitimate profits by fleecing its most vulnerable readers.

Ryan Morgan of the Boulder Daily Camera broke an important story on Jan. 31, reporting that state Sen. Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield, was planning a bill to allow some adults, including homosexuals, to create "reciprocal partnerships." After noting Mitchell's consistent opposition to gay rights, Morgan added his own analysis: "Now, as Brokeback Mountain, a big-screen tale of gay cowboys in love, sweeps the nation, Mitchell appears to have had a change of heart."

He assertion that Mitchell's supposed change of heart was due to a movie might be titillating to readers in Boulder, where Brokeback drew large audiences, but was unsupported and ridiculous.

Mitchell explained to me, "I haven't had a change of heart about gay issues; I've heard a proposal for compromise that makes sense. The influence did not come from Brokeback Mountain, which I haven't seen, but from the conservative magazine, National Review, which I do read."

Dave Kopel is research director at the Independence Institute, an attorney and author of 10 books. He can be reached at davekopel@RockyMountainNews.com.