Talk:Al Sharpton

As one who has never read anything about Al Sharpton, this article seems to paint him as anti-semitic, without clearly stating any arguments for that point. POV? User:Greggae

Is it me, or is the whole article an anti-Al piece? -- User:Varitek

It is not just you. This is a laundry list of stupid allegations scooped up from god-knows-where. Probably two-thirds of it has little basis in fact.

This article could use some reorginization. I sure am helpful, huh? I'm pretty bad at that sort of thing. But if someone feels up to it, it would do a great deal of good. Or at least a good deal of great. --Spikey 18:57, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

In response to comments above, I agree that this article is very un-NPOV. Tuf-Kat 06:35, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)

Since I have added the eutrality disclaimer, I feel obliged to be more specific here:

In the 1980s he was known as the well-fed preacher in the brightly colored jogging suit with the lacquered pompadour hair-do who was involved in the racially charged Tawana Brawley rape hoax -- this is a sentence out of some bizarre film noir, not an encylopedia article.

Since the mid 1990s, the former child preacher and civil rights activist has tried to moderate his rhetoric in the hopes of becoming a respected statesmen Implies that one needs to "moderate" "rhetoric" in order to become a "respected" statesmen (sic). I, for one among many, would prefer to see unmoderated rhetoric from statesmen.

As a child Sharpton was obsessed with preaching, going on tour with Mahalia Jackson and others. Or perhaps he was a devout and reverent Christian who liked gospel music. Obsessed implies some kind of psychiatric disorder which has not been proven (nor even seriously claimed, AFAIK).

The later years section contains the following facts:

Sharpton was involved in some complex drug money laundering issue that is somehow related to working undercover for the FBI on some un-named subject, and a lawsuit to HBO over what I can only presume is the FBI video (how the hell did HBO get it?)
Sharpton who is "brash and outspoken", rose to prominence after speaking out against the white mob responsible for the death of a black man. How could someone be "brash and outspoken" over that, one wonders... How "inspoken" is appropriate for racially-inspired murder?
Oh, but, the "most controversial" issue Sharpton has been involved in is his defense of a woman who claimed to have been sodomized by several police officers. By the way, the rape never happened and Sharpton continued to make "wild claims" and compared a Jew to Hitler. He also accused Mario Cuomo of "ties to organized crime". For reasons I can't possibly imagine, he has never recanted any of these accusations.
Lost a lawsuit from the above-rape victim's prosecutor over something he said which is quoted only in a highly-abbreviated form contained several ellipses, sourced to some website which does not itself include sources and presents a clear point-of-view.
Sharpton apparently doesn't like "diamond merchants", like the Hasidic Jews, especially the one who carelessly killed a black child through his own incompetence... Surprisingly enough, Sharpton is opposed to the careless murder of black children, and even launched a civil suit against the one who did the killing! Imagine that!
I have no idea what the paragraph regarding his stabbing means. As a licensed EMT, I am aware that clothes are often cut off in providing treatment. I see scant reason why his leather jacket should need to be cut off, however, though I suppose it depends on where he was stabbed. In any case, if Sharpton was able to "jump off the gurney" and take his own coat off... nevermind, I can't possibly reconcile that with reality. If he "jumped off the gurney" before treatment began, then there was no gurney to jump off of. If he did so after treatment began, the jacket was either already removed or deemed irrelevant. EMTs don't filly-fart around with debating whether or not cut a particular piece of clothing. They may have told him they were going to cut the jacket off, and he may have been capable of removing it, but not before they put him on a gurney (if the jacket needed to be removed, it would be part of the first actions of emergency treatment in order to get at the wound, and would not wait for the victim to be placed on a gurney). The external link does not provide any special help in deciphering this paragraph, or what its purpose is, and the leather jacket is not mentioned.
Sharpton protested a Jew who raised rent on a black tenant. At some point later, somebody murdered the Jew -- and BTW, Sharpton later denied involvement.
He tried to keep Amadou Diallo protests peaceful.

Tuf-Kat 08:00, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)

This article needs a lot of revision to make it more neutral, but I fixed the quote about "terrorists" to add context.

[160,000 m²]. Dumbass.

I would also like to chip in that Al Sharpton stood and applauded Khalid Abdul Muhammad, the notorious racist anti-semite, at the Million Youth March in Harlem, when he was making openly anti-semitic remarks. So I don't quite see how anyone is going to defend Sharpton's past.

Quote Section

I disagree with the quote section in this article. The quote section has little useful purpose, except to portray Sharpon as foolish and contribute to the general negativity of this article on the part of the author/s. Just to confirm my supposition I checked out the George W. Bush article and it contains no section on the notable remarks made by Bush, even though Bush's remarks even garnered their own moniker, "Bushism", a term that made its way into popular vernacular.

POV section

This sounded a little too pro-Sharpton

Sharpton's platform includes 10 key issues:

Increase voter registration.
Increase political consciousness and awareness.
Stimulate more people to get involved in the political process.
Raise issues that would otherwise be overlooked—for example, affirmative action and anti-death penalty policy.
Strengthen our national security by fighting for human rights, the rule of law, and economic justice at home and abroad.
Fight to ensure women's rights.
Deliver Universal Health Care for the nation, not hidden benefits to the health care industry.
Provide a solution to the current educational crisis in the nation caused by Bush.
Help working people by giving them the biggest tax cuts - not the rich.
Fulfill American democracy by supporting voting rights or statehood for the 600,000 disenfranchised citizens of the District of Columbia.

(My emphasis added)