I still remember reading a truly shocking exposé of Reverend Jesse Jackson on the Judicial Watch website in 2006. This narrative related in detail how the head of Rainbow PUSH and his son physically assaulted Jesse Lee Peterson, a pious black minister who was revealing Jackson’s misdeeds. From this and other similar stories, it seems that Jackson was an extortion artist who went around large American cities demanding that wealthy business owners and corporate executives pay him bribes. Otherwise, the good reverend would unleash disruptive demonstrations around their property. Unless those being shaken down paid the demanded sum, which would typically go into Jackson’s slush fund, all hell would break loose against those “racist” misers who resisted Jackson’s call for “social justice.”

I also recall when, in 1984, Jackson mocked New York as “Hymietown” and Jewish civic leaders went hysterical denouncing the anti-Semitic comment uttered by this unsavory race-hustler. In fact, back then, there seemed to be a profound distaste for Jackson that ran across most of the political spectrum. Although self-described conservatives, like the editors of Judicial Watch, disliked him the most demonstratively, I don’t recall many of my acquaintances on the left apologizing for Rainbow PUSH. The trial that Reverend Peterson brought against Jackson and his son ended in a hung jury, but not because any of the jurors (to quote USA Today’s fawning obituary) thought the plaintiff “breathed justice.” The evidence Six jurors believed the evidence fell short of the “reasonable doubt” standard, but none of them, at the time, expressed the kind of drooling reverence for the now-deceased “civil rights icon” that appears to be the required posture in most mainstream and even many so-called conservative outlets.

 To their credit, National Review, Red State, and other Republican-leaning publications at least did not hold back in telling us what a scoundrel Jackson had been. None of these publications hid his “polarizing politics” or race-hustling, or even the fact that he was forced in 2001 to admit that he had fathered a child out of wedlock. Similarly, and to his credit, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson refused to allow Jackson’s body to lie in state in the Capitol rotunda and heroically resisted the caterwauling of his Democratic colleagues, who treated this failure to worship their deified race hustler as a symptom of continuing white racism.

Some “conservative” celebrities, however, led the way in extolling “the iconic civil rights leader,” and not at all surprisingly, they were all linked to the Murdoch media empire.  Bret Baier on Fox News couldn’t get enough of All-Star Juan Williams lauding this “icon,” who prepared the way for the epiphany of Barack Obama’s transformative presidency. Others in the Murdoch media lavished praise on Jackson, whom they once treated in the same way they do the far less reprehensible Nick Fuentes. The Wall Street Journal commented positively on Jackson building the “empire of hope,” and preparing the way for a multicultural America. As I read such encomia, I felt like repeating the taunt that Robert Welch hurled at Senator McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency?” Of course, in this case, the taunt would be genuine, not a rhetorical gesture made by a far-leftist lawyer against a Midwestern anti-communist senator.

The New York Post predictably gilded the lily for the “civil rights hero” and kept out of its account any negative statements. It also recycled President Trump’s words of praise for Jackson as a “force of nature,” without providing a context for why our chief executive might have said what he did. This “icon” was a longtime friend of Trump’s from bygone years, whom he would not repudiate despite their clear political differences. But Trump also balanced his generous reference to Jackson as “a good man” with the comment that he was a “piece of work.” We might also note this tribute’s pointed reference to Jackson’s expressions of disdain for Obama, a president whom Trump clearly dislikes and one who credits Jackson with preparing the way for his election.

By the way, I was not at all surprised to find the leftist Jewish media organization Forward walking the extra mile to express sympathy for Jackson. At the time of his death, Forward interviewed former Anti-Defamation League head Abe Foxman, who praised Jackson as a “changed man” who had become a friend of the Jewish people:

But as Jackson changed in the face of Jewish uproar, so did Foxman’s criticism of him. In the late 1980s, when the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Jackson had been taking pains to grow closer to the Jewish community, Foxman told them that “It is a different Jackson in 1988 than in 1984.”

If Jackson, after his much-publicized clash with Jews, gave up consorting with Louis Farrakhan and stopped referring to New York City as “Hymietown,” everything else about him remained unsavory. We may therefore be led to reflect on ADL’s irrepressible enthusiasm for this controversial public figure. In her essay about the ADL for our magazine, Mary Grabar may have only scratched the surface of this unseemly, mystifying fanaticism. Would ADL and Forward let bygones be bygones if, say, Nick Fuentes or Richard Spencer wanted to make up with them? I’m only asking!