Motus Mentis

The Sony affair has revealed, in many ways, just how appallingly far our culture’s wasting disease has progressed, but this is by far the direst symptom of all:

Sharpton to have say over how Sony makes movies

Excerpt:

Hollywood ”‹came to the Rev. Al Thursday as embattled Sony exec Amy Pascal ”‹met ”‹privately with the ”‹black leader for 90 minutes ”‹in a bid to fix the fallout from the ”‹cyberhacking ”‹leak of embarrassing, racially charged emails.

Pascal agreed to let Sharpton have a say in how Sony makes motion pictures…

Sharpton added:

“So the jury is still out on where we go with Amy.”

So in addition to pulling the wires at both Gracie Mansion and the White House, Al Sharpton — this huckster, this mountebank, this racist carnival barker, this moral and intellectual pygmy — now controls the film industry. (Along with Kim Jong Un, of course — which should make for an interesting showdown, somewhere down the road. Whatever else you might say about the DPRK’s porcine pasha, I rather doubt that he’s given to penitential race-groveling.)

I must ask: what the hell is wrong with us? In particular, how did white Americans become such sniveling invertebrates?

John Derbyshire had a good item on Sharpton last month. I quote it in full:

Here’s a word for you: “kakistocracy.” That’s an actual word; you can find it at Dictionary.com, where the definition is, quote, “government by the worst persons.” From Greek kakistos, “worst,” superlative of kakos “bad”; and if you suspect it’s all somehow related to a common infantile expression for nasty dirty stuff, the lexicographers say you’re probably right.

Be that as it may, public figures don’t come much worse than the Reverend Al Sharpton. Having decided early on in life that while working for a living was all very well for the suckers in his congregation, it was not for him; and having further perceived that preaching the word of God wasn’t going to provide the kind of lifestyle he sought for himself; Sharpton inserted his young swelling bulk into the zone where Mob bosses and drug money met the rap music business and boxing promotion.

That didn’t end well. It ended so unwell, in fact, that Rev’m Al wound up wearing a wire for the FBI, after being caught in a drug sting. He thereupon changed careers to “community activist.”

In that new career he attached himself to two rape cases: the bogus one of black non-victim Tawana Brawley, in which Rev’m Al slandered a County Prosecutor so flagrantly the prosecutor won a judgment against him, which the holy man never paid, and then the genuine one of the Central Park rape victim, in which Sharpton organized a mob to disrupt the trial of the rapists by shouting insults at the victim.

There followed further incitements of mob action, leading to arson and murder. Sharpton worked here with a very skillful touch, whipping up the black mobs against whites and Jews, then deftly withdrawing himself into the shadows when things got ugly.

You know the rest of the charge sheet. Doesn’t pay his taxes, doesn’t pay his rent. Parlayed a handful of cheap rhetorical tricks into a TV show on one of the Cultural Marxist channels ”” the trick, for example, of repeating someone’s declarative statement in the form of a question.

All right, Rev’m Al isn’t the worst person in the world, nor even the worst person in the U.S.A. If you compute a ratio of prominence as a respected public figure divided by actual merit as a useful member of society, though, I’d restate my original claim that on that ratio, Sharpton is the worst person in our public life today.

And yet he wields great power, or certainly influence.

Example: New York City of course has a uniformed police force, and the police force has a Police Commissioner, name of Bill Bratton. Bratton has a second in command, official title “First Deputy Commissioner.” This guy ”” his name was Rafael PiÁ±eiro ”” retired end of October, so Bratton picked a new man, a black named Philip Banks.

Banks at first accepted, but wanted more power than actually goes with the second-in-command slot. He thought he’d get it because he had the support of Al Sharpton and Mayor de Blasio’s wife, to whom the Mayor defers on anything to do with race ”” or according to some accounts, on anything at all.

Bratton denied him those powers, Banks retired from the force in a huff, and poor Mayor de Blasio faced the wrath of his wife. I tell you, New York City politics right now is more fun than reality TV.

Anyway, on Wednesday Bratton appointed a new guy to this second-in-command position ”” also black, of course. This is probably going to be an affirmative-action slot for all eternity now. Benjamin Tucker is the new guy’s name.

Here’s the thing to fix your attention on ”” the shameful, outrageous thing.

Mayor de Blasio signed off on the appointment, and called Al Sharpton to tell him about it. Quote from Sharpton:

Today I met for an hour with President Obama ”¦ about his plans for his fourth quarter. While entering the West Wing I talked by phone with Mayor Bill de Blasio about Commissioner Bratton appointing Benjamin Tucker.

End quote. Got that? Rev’m Al got a respectful call from the Mayor of New York while entering the White House to consult with the President. This ridiculous clown, who can’t even speak English properly, who knows nothing, pays for nothing, and has been elected by nobody, this shyster who plays white liberal guilt like Yehudi Menuhin played the violin, is deferred to by the highest in the land. The real power is his ”” kakistocracy.

Charles Dickens describes two of his characters as men who lived by their wits. Then Dickens adds in parentheses: “or not so much, perhaps, upon the presence of their own wits as upon the absence of wits in other people.”

That’s Rev’m Al: Not a smart man in any conventional way, but by comparison with the cringing, guilt-crazed liberals he preys upon, a towering political genius.