CEF - IRS Complaint

EXHIBIT F

FEBRUARY 19, 2001

SECTION: TRB From Washington; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 1198 words

HEADLINE: Endgame

BODY:

At some point you have to wonder who still takes Jesse Jackson seriously. This is an old, old story, of course, given new piquancy by his nimble pirouettes over a recently conceived illegitimate child. But the fact that he remains in public life, that he still commands respect from many quarters, that his words actually matter in the national discourse, is, on the face of it, incredible. No comparable figure would have survived the scandals, sleaze, failure, and sheer nonsense that have trailed Jackson over the years as tenaciously as the TV cameras. If he were white, he would have about as much prominence in national life as Jimmy Swaggart. Yet he endures and thrives, raking in vast fortunes from corporate America, betraying his family, casting racial aspersions on anyone with whom he disagrees, and inveigling his offspring in the corrupt and corrupting operation he laughably calls the Citizenship Education Fund (CEF).

Jackson's greatest betrayal, of course, is to the cause of civil rights. He once played a small but energetic role in the civil rights movement. But his actions in the last 20 years have trivialized its moral salience and dented its prestige. Unable to reconcile himself to the strides made in the political and civil equality of black Americans, Jackson has perpetuated the lie of permanent black victimhood, whatever the context. For Jackson, it is forever 1965. The expulsion of a few teenage thugs from a school in Decatur, Illinois, is the equivalent of Selma. So is economic stress in central Connecticut, a meat packers' strike in Minnesota, budget cuts in New York state, and, of course, Chocolat--a whimsical film about candy-making that, Jackson told The New York Times, "is really about us going to Birmingham to get the right to vote."

Similarly, the last election. A confusing ballot in Palm Beach, Florida, devised by a Democratic official in a misguided attempt to make it easier for elderly voters, was not a tragic error, a misfortune, a goof. It was equivalent in Jackson's eyes to the systematic and deliberate disenfranchisement of Southern blacks for two centuries. "We marched too much, bled too profusely, and died too young. We must not surrender," he said in West Palm Beach. "We will not let democracy down. We will stand tall." Even if you believe the Palm Beach ballot was a travesty of voting fairness, the comparison to Selma is worse than hyperbole. If Jackson believes it, he's simply unhinged. If he doesn't believe it, he's a trivializer of the very cause he once espoused.

The shaky finances and poor organization of his once-vaunted Rainbow/push Coalition are equally a matter of public record. Mark Hosenball effectively uncovered them in this magazine more than twelve years ago. But in recent years the excesses have grown even worse. The Chicago Sun-Times reported last Sunday on a whole litany of questionable donations to Jackson's sister organization, CEF. Public tax returns show that CEF saw its income soar from $2 million in 1998 to almost $10 million in 1999. Most of this money came from big corporations whose proposed mergers Jackson initially protested to the Federal Communications Commission. In 1998, for example, Jackson opposed the SBC-Ameritech merger, lobbying President Clinton and the FCC to block the deal unless the companies became more minority-friendly. SBC-Ameritech subsequently kicked in $500,000 to CEF, pledged to hire a minority firm to run its pension fund, and sold its cellular business to a group headed by Chester Davenport, a colleague of Jackson's. Jackson waived his objection to the merger, and, last February, Jackson's son Jonathan represented Davenport's company on a trip to Africa. (For good measure, Jonathan also heads up CEF and, with his brother Yusef, has a 90 percent stake in a lucrative Anheuser-Busch distribution company in Illinois. His father once boycotted Anheuser-Busch as alleged racists. Jonathan won't say how many minority workers his own company now employs.)

Jackson tried the same gambit on the proposed GTE-Bell Atlantic merger. The merger had to "include a stronger commitment to Internet and technology training targeted to the minority community," Jackson argued to the FCC. The companies chipped in a cool $1 million to CEF and gave Davenport a 7 percent share in the new $3.3 billion venture for just $60 million; and Jackson called off the dogs. The result was Verizon--and one reason your telephone bills are high is that you're paying to make Jackson's rich friends even richer. There are several other, similar deals behind CEF's recent windfalls. The Sun-Times has no smoking gun, but the entire process reeks of shake-down-- an accusation that has followed Jackson for decades.

It becomes even sketchier when you consider that the roughly $35,000 " moving expenses" paid to Jackson's lover came directly out of tax-exempt CEF's operating budget. Jackson has been given an extraordinary pass by the press for his sexual relationship with an employee and the use of tax-exempt funds to move her across the country and help buy her a house in Los Angeles. (An honorable exception was Time's columnist Jack E. White.) The New York Times buried the story and declined to editorialize on the matter at all. Some journalists have even credited him with taking responsibility--as if paying off a mistress with someone else's money is the definition of responsibility! But the issue here is not human frailty. It's not, to coin a phrase, about sex. It's about abuse of authority in the workplace (by having sex with a younger woman who owed him her job); hypocrisy (since Jackson has long preached--yes, preached--about the need for African Americans to restore the fabric of the family); gall (since he even brought his young lover with him to meet President Clinton); lying (Jackson explicitly denied the charge of fatherhood when it was first raised); abuse of taxpayers' money (the illicit use of publicly subsidized funds for a private purpose); and shamelessness. (Jackson's "retirement" from public life lasted a full three days before he announced himself redeemed. Last weekend, he was even in a pulpit again!)

It's unthinkable, isn't it, that a similar white figure, or black figure on the right, could get away with this. Imagine if Jerry Falwell or J.C. Watts had an illegitimate child and paid the mother using tax-exempt funds to keep her happy. There would be hell to pay: op-eds everywhere, cover stories in the news magazines, hand-wringing on NPR. But Jackson keeps on going, spewing accusations of racism at any critic, white or black, drawing sustenance from a black population that seems to have mistaken forgiveness for sanction, redemption for regrouping. But the bald truth is that Jackson is a joke and a fraud and a menace. No one should invite him on television again, and no corporation should do business with him. He should return the $35,000 to CEF, pay for his mistress and child out of his own pocket, and leave public life at the earliest opportunity for good.

It's been true for 20 years now, but surely it's never been as true as it is now. It is time--way past time--for him to go.

LOAD-DATE: February 14, 2001