So sometimes, these Gregalogues write themselves.

I speak tonight of Al Sharpton, who just attacked Rush Limbaugh’s attempt to buy the St. Louis Rams (I believe it’s tetherball), sending a letter to commissioner Roger Goodell, saying the wildly popular conservative host has been “divisive.”

Divisive.

Now, I made a decision late in my odd career that any time Al Sharpton would enter the fray and make a charge like that, I would act as a one-man “Al Sharpton Historian.” My role: to give you background as to why there is no one on the planet less mentally or morally fit to make a statement about race (or anything, for that matter) than Al.

In a nutshell, he was largely responsible for the Tawana Brawley hoax. Now, if you were born in the 1980’s, you probably never heard about this 15-year-old black girl, but she went missing for four days back in 1987, eventually turning up covered in dog poop with racial slurs written all over her. She claimed she was repeatedly raped by up to six white men in the woods. One of them even had a badge. The then unknown and obese Al Sharpton saw an opportunity for quick fame (he was dead right on that one, by the by) and became an advisor to Brawley. Sharpton and his pals manipulated the event to horrific, freakish proportions, claiming Brawley had been raped 33 times by one prosecutor. Al also helped conjure up a conspiracy involving a creepy police cult that helped perpetrate the gang rape. But there was never any evidence, and the case fell apart. A grand jury called it all a hoax – and Sharpton was order to pay roughly 70 grand to the real victims. Others paid it for him.

So that concludes our “Al Sharpton History Minute.”

For the next “Al Sharpton History Minute,” wait patiently for a month or so – and whenever some kind of racial controversy arises, he’ll pop up like a blister, there to inflame but never heal.
At least he had good taste in track suits.

And if you disagree with me, then you’re probably a racist.

Tonight: Jim Norton, the lovely Anna David, Stephen Kruiser and Dr. Death himself, Michael Baden!

Yep, according to the caller, “maybe she did something to Michael Jackson,” and “maybe she’s stepping down because something’s about to come out.”

Now, crazy people calling into radio shows isn’t anything special – I used to call Loveline ten to twenty times a night just to complain about the pixies living in my urinary tract. However, what’s hilarious, is Sharpton’s thoughtful response to the caller’s intriguing theory. He says, “All right, thank you for your call, Ashley. That’s interesting. I’ll put it out, we’ll see. I don’t know.”

“I’ll put it out. We’ll see. I don’t know.”

Nice.

Now, I said it’s hilarious, but it’s not surprising, for Sharpton has never met a conspiracy he didn’t embrace, and possibly grope. After all, he was the man who helped push the Tawana Brawley hoax – a fabricated tale of rape and feces perpetrated by a 15-year-old girl – used to racially bludgeon six white, innocent men.

But that was years ago, so who cares – right?

Any poopers – I love conspiracies because they are as inevitable as death. When an event occurs that can be easily explained (like, say, a reclusive pop star overdoses on pills), the demented emerge from the woodwork like lurid worms with complex explanations that defy logic and Pampers. Look at the Truthers, limping along under an impervious dome of self-inflicted idiocy, convinced that only they know the truth – when all they know really are twin beds, canned food purchased from the dented bin, and reusing their underwear on alternate days. You gotta love ‘em, for they’re pure comedy.

My last point: why is it that people who cling to conspiracies never put that much effort into the things that might benefit their actual lives? Like their schoolwork? Their jobs? Their hygiene?

I blame the Jews. Only they could create a complex framework that keeps so many destructive minds busy contemplating nothing.

TONIGHT‘S GUESTS ARE:

the wonderful Greg Proops

the delightful Remi Spencer

the intriguing Rick Folbaum!

the shocking Harold Ambler!

and PINCH AND ME, episode 2!

(Thank you Newsbusters for the tip on this story!)

Director Spike Lee’s third film, “Do the Right Thing,” hasn’t aged a day since its 1989 release. The film’s misguided views on violence were wrong-headed the second it hit theaters. And the election of President Barack Obama surely puts some of the film’s victimization subtext in fresh perspective. But as sheer entertainment, “Thing” remains a blistering experience, the culmination of every one of Lee’s unique gifts as a filmmaker.

The film’s re-release on DVD June 30 reminds us Lee hasn’t come anywhere close to matching “Thing’s” raw power in the intervening years.

“Thing” stars Lee as Mookie, a disinterested pizza delivery man working on the hottest day of the summer in the Bed-Stuy section of Brooklyn. Pizza shop owner Sal (Danny Aiello) is thoroughly old school, and his bickering sons (John Turturro and Richard Edson) are hardly paragons of virtue. But Sal doesn’t have hate in his heart for his customers, who are almost all black. His food has fed them for years, he says with pride.

But a local radical (Giancarlo Esposito) doesn’t like Sal’s shop because it features a gallery of Italian-Americans on the wall – and no African-Americans. The disgruntled customer isn’t the only one on edge. The sweltering heat has everyone in a foul mood. It’s the perfect catalyst for what follows.

Lee’s films routinely polarize audiences and critics alike, but often at the expense of narrative and character development. Here, every Lee element falls right in place.

Cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, a director in his own right (”Bulletproof,” “Surviving the Game”), burnishes the screen with shades of brick orange to evoke a melting pot bubbling over.

Scene after scene crackles with out-sized characters, often anchored by terrific actors (Ossie Davis, Samuel L. Jackson among them). The film helped introduce Rosie Perez, Jackson and Martin Lawrence to the movie going public.

There’s not a wasted frame in the film. Every sequence has a purpose and a pulse, and the debates it inspired 20 years ago are still raging in one form or another today.

“Do the Right Thing” slips in a few telegraphed punches, like a brick wall emblazoned with the message “Tawana told the truth,” a reference to the racially charged Tawana Brawley case of the era.

The DVD features the usual gaggle of extras, from commentary by Lee and a self-congratulatory reunion of the cast.

Lee’s racial politics typically rub conservative audiences the wrong way. But with “Do the Right Thing,” Lee proved he could make a film that rose above ideological battle lines.

Al Sharpton has made a rich living for decades waking up every morning and asking himself, “What’s offensive today that I can make a buck on?” Today what he found was a NY Post cartoon lampooning that crazy killer monkey from Stamford, Conn. A cartoon that was clearly comparing the act of creating an out of control stimulus package by a bunch of crazed politicians too busy playing with their poo to read the bill, to that of an escaped chimp terrorizing the citizens of its community and biting the hands that fed it. 

I can see it now, Al rolling out of his goose down bed, thumbing through the local rags looking for a paycheck in the form of something he deems offensive. Well, he found it, and here’s what he saw in it from the spreadsheet box he’s lived his whole life in: Civil rights activist Al Sharpton called the cartoon “troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys.”

I don’t know about you, but when I see people who happen to be black, I don’t see what Al Sharpton sees. I usually see just another guy walking past me or seated in the car next to me. But then again, I’m not in the race baiting business like Al.

They always call him a Civil Rights Activist, huh? You’ve got to be kidding me. Remember Tawana Brawley and the innocent people she destroyed with the help of Al Sharpton? Well I lived through it in New York at the time and it was sad and criminal on Al’s part. And only a man who lives his life in the box his party has placed him in and with a resume like his could ever be treated seriously in a run for president. As a white male if I had my hand in some of the shit he’s spread around, I wouldn’t be given a chance at running for dog catcher.