Al Sharpton wants to shut down New York.

Al Sharpton is an enigma (whose entire existence is divided exactly in half and shared with Jesse Jackson). He is a hatefully racist lunatic who has somehow manipulated his way into a public position that allows him to exercise enormous amounts of hypocrisy without any consequences. It causes my mind great stress to try to comprehend why people continue to listen to him. Apparently his popularity isn’t due to his shock value, because large crowds of people – perhaps equally unbalanced as he is – chant in agreement with his absurd claims and demands.

In response to last week’s exoneration of the police officers that shot Sean Bell, Sharpton said:

“We strategically know how to stop the city so people stand still and realize that you do not have the right to shoot down unarmed, innocent civilians,” Sharpton told an overflow crowd of several hundred people at his National Action Network office in the historically black Manhattan neighborhood. “This city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell.”

I’ve been writing and deleting a lot for this post since the weekend, and I think I’ll just make some bulleted comments.

• Sharpton acts like a spoiled child. He did not get the guilty verdict that he assumed was deserved, so he gets in front of a microphone and starts whining about corruption and injustice. Newsflash, Al, you weren’t at the shooting, you weren’t part of the trial, and you aren’t smarter than the justice system. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it is broken.
• He is an impotent, angry man who is incapable of stopping the city, “so people stand still.” New York City is still moving just fine, and even if the people most devoted to him stopped doing what they usually do, life would go on. Sharpton is arrogant to think he has the authority or capacity to stop the most famous city on the planet.
• “The city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell.” Why? Nearly 100 percent of the city’s residents and workers had absolutely nothing to do with the incident. Should they then assume accountability for the death of every questionably innocent person?

I think the most significant element of this case, however, is race. Sharpton has been wise (!) to avoid using the rhetoric of racial politics (so far) in his response. That is, of course, because it would be excruciatingly difficult and convoluted to try to pin the two black officers who were on trial as racist.

That said, Sharpton has stood by idly as the protesters have chanted about the justice system’s racism, calling for the deaths of the police offices, and likening the court to the KKK (see Connscript’s Face of the Day from the weekend).

I can accept how this incident might have spurred a discussion about the use of force, but for it to spiral into a call New York to shut down, fueled by Sharpton’s calls, is ludicrous.

UPDATE: I take back my comment about Sharpton having been wise. He apparently accused Obama of, “grandstanding in front of white people,” after Obama asked for peaceful rather than violent protests.

Read this article, and tell me it doesn’t sound like Sharpton is, in fact, calling for violence.