Firebrand preacher trips on own words

One of the most invigorating and infuriating aspects of American public life is the freedom accorded to even the most idiotic among the populace to shoot their mouths off with abandon, call each other names, scream epithets, accuse others of heinous acts.

No statement is too sophistic, no idea too silly. This essential right, based in the US Constitution's protection of freedom of speech, produces a lively culture, though not necessarily an informed one.

Over the years, people have said Arnold Schwarzenegger was a member of the Nazi Party and declared Eleanor Roosevelt a lesbian. People routinely call O.J. Simpson "murderer" although he was formally acquitted of criminal charges. Paula Jones said President Clinton had a tendency to drop his pants in hotel rooms.

It's all fair game, right or wrong. Defamation suits for libellous speech are uncommon, and when they do surface, such as in the Oprah Winfrey-Texas cattlemen case, are not usually successful.

It is unlikely that America's Founding Fathers had in their minds a picture of a bouffanted Rev Al Sharpton when they drafted the constitution's provisions on freedom of expression. But Sharpton has been a good customer at the freedom of speech shop. A minister without a church, Sharpton has feasted at its most tolerant edges, accusing public officials and private persons of a variety of despicable acts.

Rev Sharpton's gluttony came to an abrupt end this week. A jury in Dutchess County, New York, ruled that Rev Sharpton and two others had defamed a New York lawyer 10 years ago when they accused him of kidnapping and raping a then 15-year-old girl named Tawana Brawley.

The Tawana Brawley case, which brought Al Sharpton firmly and permanently into the public eye, was a horrific and galvanising moment in New York and, indeed, for national race relations. In 1987, four days after disappearing from her home, Ms Brawley was found naked, curled up in a foetal position behind an apartment house in Wappinger Falls, New York, her body covered with faeces and racist graffiti. She claimed a gang of white law enforcement officers had kidnapped and raped her.

It was a time of particular racial tensions in New York. A year earlier, a 23-year-old black construction worker had been killed by a passing car in Howard Beach, New York, while trying to escape a group of white hoodlums. A series of violent protests followed, led by Mr Sharpton, who ultimately served 25 days in jail for disorderly conduct in connection with the protests.

Almost immediately, Rev Sharpton was at Tawana Brawley's side, a study in kinesis. Jabbing and bellowing, he and two other advisers, both black lawyers, named Ms Brawley's three assailants. Mr Steven A. Pagones, an assistant district attorney, was one of them, according to Sharpton. Mr Pagones and the others denied the charge. A grand jury convened by State Attorney General Robert Abrams in 1988 investigated the Brawley matter and concluded the case was a hoax, that Ms Brawley was afraid of punishment by her stepfather for staying out too late and had concocted the story.

Rev Sharpton would have none of it. In a statement made on a television show on March 31st, 1988, in one utterance the jury found Mr Sharpton made with reckless disregard for the truth, Mr Sharpton said: "We stated openly that Steven Pagones, the assistant district attorney, did it. His lawyers say he may or may not sue us. If we're lying, sue us, so we can go into court with you and prove you did it."

So Mr Pagones did, spending $330,000 (about £235,000) in legal fees over the last 10 years to endure an eight-month trial to clear his name. Sharpton's posture at the trial, which he attended intermittently, was vintage: "No matter what the verdict, it will not affect one iota the principles and the future of Al Sharpton."

And surely that, the future of Al Sharpton, is what is, and some critics says always has been, foremost in his mind. The early Al Sharpton of the Brawley days, all 300 pounds of him rolling around inside a baggy jogging suit, tresses bouncing and inflammatory rhetoric spewing, seems ancient. That vision is little more now than a pentimento behind a thinner, business-suited man who steps easily from chauffeured limousines.

The man who once called a Jewish store owner in Harlem "a white interloper", who disdained conventional politics, who was stabbed in the chest during a raucous protest march in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, has now run for political office three times. In 1992, he finished third in New York's Senate primary race, winning 15 per cent of the vote statewide, garnering 21 per cent of the vote in New York City. By last year, when he ran for mayor, he was endorsed by a host of community organisations and was considered a credible candidate.

"I see myself as a man who is growing as he gets older. I haven't changed my commitments. But all of us seek to mature around our commitments, to help bring them into reality," he told New York's Newsday newspaper.

For all his love of television cameras, many say Rev Sharpton's passions for the disadvantaged are the real thing, borne of his own struggles. Born in Brooklyn in 1954, Mr Sharpton's father was a carpenter who made a good living and the family soon moved to a middle-class section of Queens. They were a deeply religious, Pentecostal family, and Al was giving sermons by the time he was four. He was ordained as a minister at 10. But when his father abandoned the family that same year, his mother was forced to move to a tenement apartment in Brooklyn.

Perhaps Al Sharpton's most important relationship was with soul singer James Brown. From 1973 on, for about a decade, Sharpton managed Brown's concert tours. In the late 1970s, he married one of Brown's back-up singers, with whom he had two daughters. Brown's influence on Sharpton was apparent in his manner of dress and speech.

"James sort of adopted me as the son he lost, and he became the father I never had," Rev Sharpton told Newsday.

The Rev Sharpton has come a long way, and more than a few observers suggest he has nine lives. A few of them have been used of course. How many viable political candidates can boast of having once been indicted on 67 counts of tax evasion, larceny and fraud? He was acquitted on, and pleaded guilty only to one count of tax evasion, paying a $5,000 fine.

In 1990 a poll found 73 per cent of New York's black residents believed he was aggravating race relations; by 1997, the president of 100 Black Men, a conservative, 64-year-old organisation of successful black businessmen, was supporting Mr Sharpton. "Al Sharpton is the man with the proper message, healing this city. And at the same time, showing the importance of who we are across the board, regardless of what race we are," said Luther Gatling.

As for the impact of the defamation verdict? There is little chance that Pagones will collect much money from Rev Sharpton, who earns $60,000 a year as head of his own activist group. Sharpton, as usual, has his eye on the future.

"I will run for office and I will be elected," he says. With his new self and a new respect for the limits of the kind of speech the constitution will protect, few are betting against him.