WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Was Martin Luther King a shakedown artist? Surprising as it might sound, he was -- in the eyes of, get this, Jesse Jackson. Yes, I know this seems improbable, but so many of the things the Rev. Jackson has said seem improbable. He is a man who has risen on the power of his own scandals.
Do you recall his grave appearances at the Clinton White House to counsel the Boy President on his sex scandal with Miss Monica Lewinsky? Shortly thereafter, it transpired that the Reverend brought along his very own mistress, and she at the time was heavy with child. The couple posed for pictures with the embattled president. Lewinsky is not in the pictures.
Do you remember the uproar when it was revealed that he paid his mistress off with monies from one of his charitable foundations? And do you remember the three pardons this man of the cloth wrested from the Great Pardoner just hours before the Clinton administration was no more? Two of those pardoned were brought back to the Rev. Jackson's employment, one a crook who had defrauded the homeless out of $5,000,000 and another a crook who had been convicted of soliciting sex with a minor. The chap had been a member of Congress, so maybe his transgression was understandable.
At any rate, Jackson hired the ex-congressman as a consultant on prison reform. When he did, it put me in mind of Jackson's response to O. J. Simpson's acquittal on charges he had murdered his wife. Jackson suggested that now Simpson would be an excellent spokesman in the campaign against wife abuse. I did not make that up.
Now, the excellent John McCaslin tells us in his "Inside the Beltway" column, published in the infallible Washington Times, that Jackson has taken umbrage to claims made by the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) that he is a shakedown artist. During a public interview, Jackson, when asked about NLPC's objections to his importunities upon corporate America, exploded, "These attacks by the policy center, these are unending attacks," and more, "Dr. Martin Luther King was called a communist. He was called a nigger. He was hated. He was killed. This kind of hate baiting is really a perversion."