Jesse Jackson's Extortion Racket
14 Mar 2001
Rev. Jackson's extortion racket
Anyone interested in how the American civil rights movement has largely
degenerated into a series of shakedown schemes that would make the Mafia
blush needs to read Jesse Jackson's recent interview in the Chicago
Sun-Times.
The interview itself is one of those texts that, like Shakespeare and the
Bible, should be read more than once. No single reading can do justice to
the picture of hypocrisy, greed, megalomania and corruption the Rev. Jackson
unwittingly paints when discussing his increasingly tangled affairs. Here
are some highlights:
Last year, Jackson billed the charities he controls $614,000 for "travel
expenses." When asked to explain this extraordinary figure, he says that he
often spends more than 200 days per year traveling on charitable business.
Yet even if we make the charitable assumption that this figure doesn't
include any direct padding of Jackson's self-reported $430,000 annual
income, this still works out to nearly $3,000 per day.
Do the contributors to Jackson's charities (who include everyone who pays
taxes) realize the reverend claims to spend the bulk of his working days
traveling in a style that would embarrass the Rolling Stones?
In recent years, Jackson has spent much of his time opposing mergers in the
broadcast and telecommunications industries -- mergers that require federal
approval. The Sun-Times explains that Jackson "withholds his approval until
the companies meet his demands for greater minority participation."
On a remarkable number of occasions, "minority participation" ends up
meaning "Jesse Jackson's friends and business associates." For example,
Jackson opposed the CBS-Viacom merger, but let it be known that his
opposition would disappear if Viacom were to sell its UPN network to Chester
Davenport or Percy Sutton, both long-time friends of his.
The Sun-Times reports "Jackson also blocked the SBC-Ameritech merger until
Ameritech agreed to sell part of its cellular phone business to a minority
owner, who turned out to be Davenport." "The price you pay for our support,"
Jackson says, "is to include us."
Of course the reverend wants people to think he means "the African-American
community" when he refers to "us." A mountain of evidence suggests the
pronoun should be given a somewhat more limited meaning. (In yet another
example of what Jackson means by the politics of inclusion, his Citizenship
Education Fund has gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from
telecommunications companies whose mergers he initially opposed.)
Charity, as they say, begins at home. One of Jackson's highest-profile
boycotts was of Anheuser-Busch. Three years ago, Anheuser-Busch's warm
feelings for the Jackson family overflowed to the point where the
corporation gave Jackson's sons a beer distributorship.
When the Sun-Times asks if there might be any connection between the boycott
and the awarding of the distributorship the reverend becomes mightily
offended. "If Bush is qualified to run the country, they are qualified to
run a beer distributorship" he thunders, employing a typically spurious bit
of illogical demagoguery. "They should not be profiled or otherwise
suggestions dropped that they are less than able to do what they do. That is
very insulting to me. Very insulting."
This is a truly priceless bit of racialist bluster. Notice Jackson doesn't
even bother to deny that the distributorship was a payoff. Instead, he
switches the topic to the racially loaded question of whether his sons were
"qualified." Qualified for what -- to join their father in enjoying the
fruits of the racial protection racket? There's no need to feel insulted,
Reverend: Nobody doubts they were.
There is much more along these lines, including details of how Illinois'
Republican Gov. George Ryan appears to have bought Jackson's political
support. All this leads to a simple question: How can a man who at this
point retains all the moral authority of a professional extortionist
continue to hold himself out as one of America's political and spiritual
leaders?
Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be
contacted at paul.campos@colorado.edu.
March 13, 2001
**And here's a link to the column in the Chicago Sun-Times that he
refers to:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/jesse08x.html
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by Paul Campos
Rocky Mountain News
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