[lbo-talk] FW: NBC's Chris Matthews, Al Sharpton, and Donald Trump of NBC's The Apprentice

[Carl Remick]

>From: Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon at verizon.net>
>To: carlremick at hotmail.com
>Subject: NBC's Chris Matthews, Al Sharpton, and Donald Trump of NBC's The 
>Apprentice
>Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 10:12:11 -0400
>
>[Perhaps you can post this to LBO for me. I'm a sometimes lurker.
>Brian Shannon]
>
>Surprisingly, Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly did not manage to be the 
>most ridiculous of that crew last night. Chris Matthews, getting a trifle 
>desperate over on MSNBC, sank to an absurd new low when he hauled in actor 
>Steve Buscemi, who seemed to be visiting the convention on a whim, and 
>asked if he wasn't outraged at seeing Sharpton because Sharpton "built his 
>career lying about cops."
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23323-2004Jul29.html
>______
>
>Is Chris Matthews defending cops in the Abner Louima and other cases? For 
>Al Sharpton has defended African Americans against police brutality in 
>dozens of cases in New York.
>
>Al Sharpton has been fighting for the interests of African-Americans since 
>he was a youth. He became a better known public figure around the Bernhard 
>Goetz subway shootings of four black teenagers; the Howard Beach attack on 
>two black white men, one of whom was killed; in defending 15-year-old 
>Tawana Brawley who falsely claimed that white police officers abducted and 
>raped her; and the murder of 16-year-old Yusuf Hawkins by a white mob in 
>Brooklyn's Bensonhurst neighborhood. He has been in the forefront of the 
>defense of African-Americans ever since.
>
>If Chris Matthews of NBC wants to focus on a phony who has built his career 
>out of lying, he had better start with Donald Trump, the star of NBC's "The 
>Apprentice." Why does NBC make a hero out of the man who in 1985 took out 
>$85,000 worth of ads in several NYC newspapers calling for the death 
>penalty in the Central Park Jogger Case?
>
>The Central Park Jogger case is about 5 teenagers who were convicted after 
>the near-fatal beating and rape of a woman in NYC's Central Park in 1989. 
>All of the confessions were illegally coerced and repudiated by them before 
>their trials.
>
>Despite the absence of any physical evidence and obvious inconsistencies 
>and outright falsehoods in the original confessions, they were all 
>convicted. Thirteen years later another man, convicted of similar crimes, 
>made a full confession. This probably wouldn't have been enough to 
>exonerate the 5 original teenagers, but his DNA matched, and, despite 
>outrage from some in the police department and the original prosecutors, 
>the cases have now been overturned. In 2003, civil suits were begun by the 
>5 defendants against New York City.
>
>That case and those ads contributed to the renewal of the death penalty in 
>New York State in 1995.
>
>Sharpton has apologized and paid for his false accusation in the Tawana 
>Brawley case. What about Donald Trump? And will NBC's Chris Matthews take 
>him to task as a demagogic loud-mouthed real-estate tout who led the pack 
>in the racist frame-up of five black youth? And who was in the lead in the 
>public defense of those boys and of their families? Yes, of course, Al 
>Sharpton who, even among black leaders, stood almost alone in their 
>defense.
>
>from Brian Shannon

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