Al Sharpton's Magical Mystery Tour

Co-authored by Tim Graham.

During the Christmas season, the national media hoped to once again dip the entire Republican Party in the mire of David Duke and other racists, to spread that taint across the political landscape. Republicans fought back with Obama’s long association with his racist Reverend Jeremiah Wright, which the media worked hard to erase as utterly irrelevant.

But here’s someone who hasn’t been removed from the spotlight around Obama. We recently found an amazing video The New York Times made about Al Sharpton, the unrepentant racial hoax-exploiter. Sharpton has never suffered from ruining reputations and causing strife over teenager Tawana Brawley’s made-up stories of rape and racist mistreatment at the hands of white cops in the late 1980s.

The video ends with left-wing journalist Wayne Barrett exclaiming, “One would think if he sold you such a terrible bill of goods, on such a giant story that dominated news cycles for such a long period of time and proved to be a total hoax, that you might not show up at his next press conference with your camera crew. He has managed to transcend it magically.”

That “magic” is the liberal media’s absolute shamelessness about Sharpton’s cynical exploitation of (and lying about) race. He’s not only benefited from gooey liberal media coverage. Comcast hired him into the media as a nightly talk show host on MSNBC – even as they continue to subsidize his activist day job at the National Action Network.

If Republicans have public relations problems from radical race-hustling figures, what about the president? In August, Politico reported that Sharpton was Obama’s “go-to man on race,” exchanging texts and phone calls with top administration officials. “There’s a trust factor with The Rev from the Oval Office on down,” a White House official familiar with their dealings told Politico. “He gets it, and he’s got credibility in the community that nobody else has got.”

He’s not a cynical race hustler, says the White House. He’s Captain Credibility. “Sharpton – so often criticized for being a self-promoter – finds himself in the unusual position of being too close to a White House that seems to be losing power by the day, ” Politico concluded.

Sharpton is magic, according to Obama.

In November, The New York Times reported, “Sharpton has regularly sidestepped the sorts of obligations most people see as inevitable, like taxes, rent and other bills. Records reviewed by The New York Times show more than $4.5 million in current state and federal tax liens against him and his for-profit businesses.”

Sharpton is so shameless that he attacked the Times as some sort of conservative outfit: “A lot of people don’t like the fact that President Obama is the president; a lot of people do not like the fact that Bill de Blasio won for mayor.” The Times ran that quote themselves, as if they thought it had some merit.

How magical. Fox host Greta Van Susteren wondered why Obama’s IRS isn’t garnishing Sharpton’s wages. Silly Greta: The IRS is too busy hounding conservative groups to worry about left-wing groups Obama favors.

In December, National Review reported that Sharpton has visited the White House more than 60 times (through August 2014), underlining “the extraordinary access Sharpton has had to the president and his top advisers.” Many events were personal, such as the 2011 Super Bowl Party thrown by the Obamas, movie screenings and the president’s birthday party in 2011, which would indicate “a close personal relationship between Sharpton and the first family,” they wrote.

There’s absolutely no one on the left today who’s apparently “toxic” to Obama or ruinous to the bizarre notion that he represents racial healing.

The Patriot Post® · Al Sharpton's Magical Mystery Tour