The New York Post’s Phil Mushnick Catches a 2008 Al Sharpton Lie That I'd Missed

By Nicholas Stix

I don’t read the New York Post’s Phil Mushnick much these days, because I don’t read sportswriters or New York journalists that much.

Most of the time, I'm not missing much.

What would Mike Royko say about these guys, if he were still alive?

They don’t drink, and they don’t think. Their politically correct self-righteousness is matched only by their lack of any sense of right and wrong. They hate cigarettes and booze, embrace bottled water, and obsess over health and living forever, but don’t know the first thing about living. Instead of dropping dead one day of a massive coronary at 56, or of a brain hemmorrage at 65 (like Royko), they’ll live to be 90. They’ll die in nursing homes with drool running their faces, wearing a diaper full of feces and urine that none of the racist black nurse aides has changed for hours, but in their state of advanced dementia, they won’t even notice the diaper rash or presure sores. The TV will be on all day, but they won’t notice that, either, with their glazed-over eyes, and brains as empty, curiously, as in their supposed heyday.

So as not to be too vague, I am particularly thinking of you, Mike DNC-talking-points-machine Lupica. But you’ve got lots of company.

Woo, that feels better.

But the foregoing decidedly does not apply to Mushnick (nor to the Daily News’ Bill Madden, of whom I’ll treat another time).

Mushnick is a scold, but then, so am I. Back in 1996, black racists tore into college basketball announcer-coach Billy Packer, for calling a young Allen Iverson, then playing for Georgetown, “a tough monkey.” The black racists (likely with an assist from the network suits Packer worked for) forced Packer to prostrate himself, and publicly degrade himself by apologizing, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong. It was one of those “teachable moments,” as in teaching a white man his place.

Mushnick wasn’t having any of it. Dripping with sarcasm, he mocked the whole business, recalling how during his childhood his late uncle would call him “a tough monkey,” and how he had been unaware that the uncle was actually calling him a racial epithet.

Speaking of Georgetown, when legendary racist Hoya basketball coach John Thompson suddenly retired without explanation in the middle of the 1998-1999 season that had just seen an academic fraud scandal involving the basketball team at the University of Minnesota (“tutor” Jan Gangelhoff confessed to having done academically-challenged players’ school work for them over a five-year period; former coach Clem Haskins and academic adviser Alonzo Newby were also named as participants in the conspiracy), Mushnick suggested that the same thing had been going on at Georgetown.

By the way, so that there’s no mistake: Back in 1996, John Thompson and Allen Iverson both defended Billy Packer against charges of “racism.” Iverson was a convicted thug, who had engaged in a violent mob against a few old ladies in a bowling alley, but not even he or Thompson was willing to sink that low.

Sure, Mushnick can be schoolmarmish, such as when he complains about football highlight shows that show films of “biggest hits”—last I noticed, football is a contact sport—but in a world of Mike Lupicas, he’s a treasure.

Mushnick opened his August 30 column by contemplating the wonder that is Jets defensive back Antonio Cromartie:

At this point, most New York football fans know that Cromartie, 26, has fathered at least eight children with at least six women who live in five different states, and that he has been named in at least five paternity suits. Shucks, that's the least he could do.

Yet this short, taped [CBS] chat with Cromartie dripped with his conceit and boastfulness, including this one: "In high school, I was a stud."

But Mushnick was just warming up. He then came to the matter of racial hoaxster, extortionist, and inciter of mass murder, Al Sharpton.

Big Stories, Short Memories: In February 2008, Rev. Al Sharpton made big news when he claimed the U.S. government was eager to persecute and prosecute Barry Bonds because he is black, yet was giving Roger Clemens a virtual free pass because he is white.

"When you are black," Sharpton said of the two men, during his radio show, "you are subjected to a different reality, and we are not going to be quiet."

Sharpton seems to have grown very quiet -- silent, even -- about his claim that Clemens has been given a look-away pass because he's white.

Last week, after Clemens was indicted by the federal government for perjury, Sharpton appeared on MSNBC. But his irresponsible, inflammatory allegations about Bonds and Clemens were never even mentioned. Sharpton was brought on to shout "Racism!" at something else.

Sharpton never has been held accountable for his wishful-thinking claims about sports, but those claims sure make big news when he first makes them. That's what happens when the news media can't distinguish -- or chooses not to distinguish -- an activist from an arsonist.

For the most thoroughly researched exposé that I know of on Sharpton, see bulldog researcher Carl F. Horowitz’ NLPC report, Mainstreaming Demagoguery: Al Sharpton’s Rise to Respectability, which not only makes for riveting reading, but which is free.