The mainstream media like to fancy the faux-Reverend Al Sharpton as a civil rights leader even though he doesn’t believe in civil rights. His incitement of George Zimmerman is celebrated through the mainstream media even though it is devoid of facts.
In promoting Sharpton’s racial hatred, the media never talk about his history of hatred. For the past week we have taken on that role, discussing Freddy’s and Crown Heights, etc. Today we provide another tidbit from this media hero’s past.
Back in the day, a local independent TV station in New York City ran an original talk show called the “Morton Downey, Jr. Show.” The program featured screaming matches among Downey, his guests, and audience members. Literally, a big chunk of the shows was the audience and Downey yelling at each other. Using a large silver bowl for an ashtray, he would chain-smoke during the show and blow smoke in his guests’ faces. It was true train-wreck TV.
Downey’s fans became known as “Loudmouths”, patterned after the studio lecterns decorated with gaping cartoon mouths, from which Downey’s guests would go head-to-head against each other. Jerry Springer’s “trailer-trash in heat” show is classy compared to the regular Downey fare.
Thanks to Downey, phrases such as “pablum puking liberal” and “zip it!” were written on t-shirts all across America’s contemporary vernacular. Part of his shtick was fighting with the guests and provoking guests to fight with each other.
An upcoming documentary about the late Morton Downey, Jr. — the acerbic, chain-smoking talk show host — promises a meditation on the progenitor of trash TV, whose eponymous 1980s program was filmed in Secaucus, New Jersey, and whose audience was filled with current and future probationers.
For us, though, the highlight of the trailer for ‘Évocateur’ is the brief time capsule look at Al Sharpton, then a rotund Brooklyn reverend with a prodigious konk. As seen below during a commercial break — but while cameras continued rolling —the ‘civil rights’ leader is seen yelling at an audience member who likely had commented negatively on Sharpton’s weight, race, bow tie, or affiliation with Tawana Brawley. Perhaps all four.
Saying that he was ‘tired of them acting big,’ Sharpton told the unseen audience member, ‘You ain’t nothing! You a punk faggot!’ Gesturing for the Downey fan to come up to the stage and rumble, Sharpton added, ‘Now come on and do something.’
So enjoy this short video of Al Sharpton, before he was complaining to the FCC about bigoted journalists — you know, in the good old days when he was lying about Tawana Brawley and leading pogroms against Jews in Crown Heights and at Freddy’s Fashion Mart in Harlem.
