It was a routine Saturday morning at Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH forum, broadcast nationally on the Word Network.  He was all over the map.  Jackson trashed Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney.  He warned that enterprises such as black funeral homes and black insurance companies are “under attack.”  He condemned a proposed change in Grammy Award classifications.  Jackson also spoke out against Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who, he said, “did the ultimate insult.  She put her finger in his (President Barack Obama) face.”  Jackson wants people to call and complain (video here):

Also, while it’s on my mind, Gov. Janice K. Brewer, the finger person.  Gov. Janice K. Brewer, who gave President Obama the finger, governor of Arizona, call 1 800 253 0883.  Keep that line real busy.  1 800 253 0883.  We’ll give you the number later a little later today and this week on the email number of her press secretary.  We want to keep Arizona. . . until she can put her hands in her pocket and have some good. . . do you know how insulting it is to put your finger in somebody’s face?  Try it with the cameras rolling, she knew the cameras.  She knew what she was doing.  She was telling him off.  She was cutting him down to his size.  She must never get away with that.  Even George Wallace did not put his finger in Dr. King’s face.  Say, enough is enough.

Being the pious, innocent, saintly man he is, perhaps the Most Rev. Jackson deserves a pass.  Maybe he doesn’t actually know the difference between giving someone the finger and waving one’s finger in another person’s face.   But does he really consider the latter to be “the ultimate insult”?  For a man who’s referred to Jews as “Hymies,” said in the last campaign that “Barack’s been talking down to black people” and that he would like to cut Obama's testicles out, and admitted to, as a young waiter, having spit into the food of white customers he didn’t like, Jackson has a remarkable notion of what comprises the ultimate insult.

Naturally, Jackson’s blunder will be ignored by the mainstream media.  He’s always given a pass.  But the very next time “the black view” is needed on a story, he’ll be front and center and ready for his close-up.  

On yesterday's Rainbow PUSH Saturday Morning Forum, broadcast nationally on the Word Network, Jesse Jackson spoke of Christmas.  The activist, 1984 and 1988 Democratic presidential candidate, and former Clinton spiritual adviser told
(video here) of "non-Christian" merchants who "use Jesus to lure you in to Santa Claus's birthday party."  Here's what he said:

"This (Christmas) is a holy day for the poor, not a holiday for the merchants.  I once heard some people that I know say that when Christmas Eve is over, they have midnight services in the back of their shops.  These were non-Christian people I was, they say we, say every December 24th around midnight we have, we close our shops and we're not Christian but we start singing "What a
Friend We Have in Jesus." We use Jesus to lure you into Santa Claus's birthday party and unless you have the holiday spirit, which is his songs, his wine, and his stuff you're not welcome at the party of the man whose party it is.  This is, Christmas should be a poor people's holy day."

He then went on to say that Jesus was "born under the cloud of who is his Daddy?"

If Pat Robertson or any other former GOP presidential candidate had said something along these lines, you can bet it would have received considerable press coverage.  But this is Jesse Jackson, self-styled spokesman for the downtrodden and Leftist hero.  So he gets a pass from the mainstream media.

Christmas had been of particular interest to Jackson for many years.  In 1969, he announced his second "Black Christmas" boycott of white merchants.  According to the Chicago Tribune at the time, Jackson claimed his initiative would include "a parade and the appearance in Negro areas, hospitals, and jails of 'Soul Saint,' a black Santa Claus."

In their 1985 book "Jesse Jackson and the Politics of Race," authors Thomas Landess and Richard Quinn write of the Soul Saint "who, according to Jackson, came from the South Pole rather than the North Pole and lingered along the equator sufficiently to take up wearing a dashiki of black, with yellow, red and green trimmings — the colors of the flag of Ghana. Henceforth, the Soul Saint would preside over the season of Christmas, a black figure whose gifts were not toys or sugar plums but 'love, justice, peace, and power.'"

Who wants an iPhone as a gift when you can have love, justice, peace, and power instead?  Plus, you don't have to give your money to those non-Christian merchants who close their shops at midnight on Christmas Eve after a rough season of using Jesus to lure you into Santa Claus's birthday party.  Sounds like a win-win for the Rev.  But don't expect to see a story about it on network or cable news anytime soon. 

On April 15, The Chicago Sun-Times reported on its Web site, "Jesse Jackson denies gay worker’s harassment, discrimination claims."  The article began:

A spokesman for the Rev. Jesse Jackson on Thursday denied a claim from a man who says he was fired from the civil rights leader’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition because he is gay.

Tommy R. Bennett filed a complaint with the city of Chicago’s Commission on Human Relations last year, alleging Jackson fired him unjustly and that the civil rights leader forced him to perform “uncomfortable” tasks, including escorting various women to hotel rooms to meet Jackson for sex.

The piece ended noting that a gay publication, The Windy City Times, had reported Bennett's allegations earlier in the week.  The Windy City Times story included more salacious details, such as the complainant's charge that Jackson directed him to apply cream to a rash between Jackson's legs; the minister told Bennett about one of his high school instructors, a gay man, who served as Jackson's teacher with benefits; and Bennett's allegation that Jackson wanted to have sex with the Rainbow Coalition employee.

The Chicago Tribune on its Web site also covered Bennett's complaint on April 15, with fewer particulars than the Sun-Times had included.  Don Imus and Lou Dobbs mentioned the allegations on each of their Fox Business programs.  By and large, however, this story has been ignored by the mainstream media.  A review of the NewsBank database, covering media outlets nationwide, indicates fewer than a dozen reports on the Jackson story.

Why the silence?  Last September, megachurch leader Bishop Eddie Long was accused of sexual improprities.  Among many others, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, CBS Evening News, and MSNBC covered the story.  It even found its way into a Jay Leno monologue.

Yet allegations against Jesse Jackson, longtime liberal activist, former Democratic presidential candidate and spiritual advisor to President Clinton, aren't newsworthy.  As someone once pointed out, if not for their double standard, liberals would have no standards at all.