No, I'm not talking about Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Michael (God rest Michael's tortured soul).  I'm talking about the Chicago Jacksons, Jesse Sr. and Jesse Jr.  The Jackson 5 in their heyday gave plenty: music, entertainment, and joy to their fans.  The Chicago Jacksons are another story.  Jesse Sr. (The Right Reverend) and his son (the erstwhile congressman) have done a lot more taking than giving.    

"Taking" may be too charitable a word.  Shaking down and wheedling may be better descriptors for the Chicago Jacksons' acts.  Parasitism is a fancier way to say it (as in aggressively and obscenely leeching). 

The elder Jackson's stage show has managed to skirt illegality (it doesn't hurt to have friends in high places or play the race card).  Jesse Jr. crossed the line brazenly and stupidly enough to run crosswise the Obama Justice Department.  Quite a feat for Jesse Jr. that fellow Democrat and Chicagoan Barack Obama would let his Justice Department pursue criminal charges against Jesse Jr. and his bride, Sandi (she for filing false tax returns).  There wasn't a rug big enough to sweep under the Jackson couples' criminality. 

The Jackson father and son duo have procured oodles of money, perks, and privileges.  Old man Jackson has done so for decades now, leveraging his leadership of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition (or maybe that should be "POSH?"  Jesse Sr. never lived at the "hellish" Cabrini Green, ministering to the downtrodden; not lavish enough).  Jesse Jr. is heading to the slammer to do a stretch (after the ink dries on a plea bargain deal with the feds).  Misuse of campaign funds (fraud) is the rap.  Evidently, slyness isn't genetic.  

The tragedy in all this isn't what befalls the younger Jackson (or what befalls Jesse Sr.'s reputation in years to come -- more on that anon); it's what these and other scammers do to the people gulled by them.  In this case, poor blacks, who've been led down a primrose path by Jesse Sr. and various and many iterations of him (the Reverend Al Sharpton is a more notorious and monstrous spawn of Jackson Sr.). 

Scammers -- flimflam artists, conmen, you pick -- appear in every generation.  Anybody remember Ferdinand Waldo Demara (better known as "The Great Imposter")? 

From Time magazine:                                

In 1957, TIME Magazine described him [Demara] as an "audacious, unschooled but amazingly intelligent pretender who always wanted to be a Somebody, and succeeded in being a whole raft of Somebody Elses."

Jesse Sr. never had to go to Demara's lengths, being "a whole raft of Somebody Elses."  The threads running through Jesse Sr.'s scam have been that of a Man of God and Civil Rights leader, starting as an aide-de-camp to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.   In the wake of Dr. King's assassination, Jesse Sr. became "Somebody," and has ridden his con into his seventy-second year of life. 

It's the Jacksons and Sharptons (black elites) who've gone into league with white liberals to let inner-city America decay and wallow in crime (violent and non); who ripped apart poor black families for the sake of aggrandizing government, starting back in the 1960s; who, having shredded poor black families, pushed out-of-wedlock births among blacks to appalling heights; who've trashed urban public education (but protect teachers' unions), leaving poor black kids functionally illiterate and skill-less, making drug crime the best route to incomes (short-lived though those incomes may be); who, consequently, have populated U.S. prisons and jails with young black men; who turn blind eyes or excuse black teen flash mobs today, in Chicago and elsewhere; and who blame every ill suffered by the black underclass on white America, writ large (or nonblack America, given the growth in the Hispanic and Asian populations).    

Black elites are the faces of the Democratic power structure throughout much of urban America.  They act shamelessly -- and corruptly, in too many instances -- to accrue power and influence and enrich themselves.  Theirs is a loose, de facto confederation with white liberals.  The few but brave black conservatives willing to speak out are quite right when they accuse black Democrats of exchanging ante bellum plantations for the white liberal plantation.  The twist is that black elites get to play the very visible roles of "Massa" and overseers, on city and county councils, in mayors' and county execs' offices, in state legislatures and Congress.  Or play the black ruling elites' facilitators, like Jesse Sr. and Sharpton.  The black underclass suffers, while black elites thrive.

The depth and magnitude of the ruin of poor blacks -- particularly the urban poor -- is graspable today, but won't be fully appreciated as the societal scourge it is until more and more of the ills that are largely confined to black communities spill out into the broader society.  Black-on-black crime is still disproportionately high.     

The flash mob phenomenon, largely comprised of urban black youth, and aimed predominately at whites and other nonblacks, may be a frightening harbinger of things to come.  It is, in part, an outgrowth of decades of anti-white invective and fear-mongering on the part of Jesse Sr., Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright, and the like.

This from the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center about flash mobs:

Whether the black flash mob trend is a manifestation of anti-white hate -- as white nationalist commentators eagerly affirm with breathless self-righteousness -- or just a familiar spilling over of boredom and frustration from a teenage class that is still wracked by high unemployment and minuscule prospects for opportunity and advancement, one thing appears certain: Thanks to digital-speed social media, its consequences may be felt virtually anywhere, at any time -- and with very little warning.

Black mobs attacking whites and nonblacks isn't a "familiar spilling over of boredom and frustration" among black youth.  Riots and rampages were the "familiar" outlets for bored, frustrated, and aggrieved blacks in cities like Los Angeles, Detroit, and Newark back in the 1960s.  Those riots did far more damage -- lasting damage -- to black communities than white. 

What's happening with flash mobs is that black youth are beginning to turn their anger outward, toward the very whites that they've been indoctrinated to believe are the root cause of their oppression.  Jesse Sr. and his cohorts have long stoked this anti-white resentment and fear as a means of exploiting their own people.  Social mobility and advancement may be good for poor blacks, but it's a killer for the race industry helmed by Chairman Emeritus Jesse Sr.    

But one day the worm will turn.  Truth has a stubborn way of prevailing -- eventually.  As Lincoln said, quoting Matthew (18:7): "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."

Woe unto Jesse Sr. and his ilk. 

A consciousness-raising -- Almighty inspired -- is a-coming among the nation's black downtrodden.  The lies, the fraud, and the gross exploitation of blacks by the Jacksons and Sharptons and Wrights will be seen in all its splendid stark ugliness.  Then a revolution will follow, but not against the whole of white America, but against black elites and their white liberal enablers.  Why, the leaders of this future revolution may be among us already -- children and teens who are processing the injustices being done to their own by their own.

The Osmonds, who were contemporaries of the Jackson 5, once sang: "One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch..."  Au contraire.  Jesse Jackson Sr., a race racket con artist, has contributed mightily to spoiling his son and his people.  The day will come when Jesse Sr. is no longer praised but ridiculed...  likely when the greatest of great imposters' body lies a-mouldering in the grave.  But come it will.  It's the fate of all con artists.