April 2, 2001

SECTION: The Week; Vol. LIII, No. 6

LENGTH: 3911 words

BODY:
The night riders of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy are in full gallop, or so says the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who stood perspiring before television cameras on March 8 and declared that latter-day Kluxers are hot on his trail. Who are these
racists? Why, Fox News, the New York Post, the two Chicago dailies-all of which have been breaking stories related to Jackson's peculiar financial arrangements-and especially the National Legal and Policy Center, which has filed a complaint with the IRS, requesting an audit of Jackson's organizations. And no wonder people are interested: There are scores of irregularities and suspicious omissions on the tax returns of the Rev.'s non-profit Citizenship Education Fund-including, as Jackson was forced to admit, the six-figure salary of his mistress Karin Stanford ("An oversight," said Jackson). There is also the matter of Jackson's lucrative relationship with major corporations, many of which were publicly denounced as racially insensitive-until they made hefty contributions to the CEF and became the reverend's-how shall we put this?-prayer partners. "They don't relate to us out of fear, they relate to us out of hope," Jackson said, Corleoneishly. The cagey cleric is certainly right about one thing: Having gotten away for years with behavior that would have had most any
other public figure indicted, Jackson has demonstrated in his career that equal treatment under the law really is an unrealized ideal in America.