WHITEWASH?

By Jack E. White

IT TAKES ONLY A GLANCE AT THE REV. Al Sharpton to know that he is a man of considerable heft. What the rotund rabble rouser from New York City would like you to conclude from his autobiography, Go and Tell Pharaoh (Doubleday; 270 pages; $23.95), is that he is also a fellow of considerable substance. If only his critics could "look at me as a man and a person," he proclaims, they would realize that his racial grandstanding, inflammatory rhetoric and alleged corruption have been part of "an effort to live the gospel." By his own estimation, Sharpton has emerged as a peer of Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson.

With the aid of his collaborator, Anthony Walton, he casts himself as a sort of "Sharpton Lite." He writes with calculated candor about aspects of his life that can be counted on to spark empathy--for instance, his early career as a traveling Pentecostal "boy preacher," which began at age four. But when it comes to his forays into racially charged controversies, Sharpton's account is self-servingly selective. Take his rendition of the saga of Tawana Brawley, the black teenager whose sensational claims of having been raped by a gang of white men kept New York City on the edge of racial meltdown for months. Nowhere does Sharpton mention his ridiculous allegation that she had been victimized by an Irish Republican Army conspiracy organized in a suburban sheriff's department. Even though Brawley's story has been thoroughly discredited not only by law-enforcement agencies but also by courageous black journalists, Sharpton continues to insist she was telling the truth.

Sharpton owes his celebrity and influence to his willingness to do whatever it takes to be noticed by the media, from leading marches to being arrested to allowing himself to be photographed while his famous James Brown hairdo is being dried--in short, by being a rascal. If he were really as pious and responsible as he comes across in this book, no one would have paid any attention at all.

--By Jack E. White