Al Sharpton reminds me of the Maltese Falcon.  At every tragedy, he shows up on a shelf of tears next to the serious grievers, the family members, looking like an imitation of the real bird. 

But all the suckers are happy to have him there.  Maybe their mental faculties have been weakened by their grief?  Maybe they don’t see that he is not the real thing, that he is a fake, a charlatan, an imposter trying to use their grief to his own purposes – getting enough fame and money to make up his four-million-dollar debt to the IRS.

So who could not respect and applaud the family of wrongly shot Akai Gurley for saying that Sharpton’s attending Akai’s funeral would turn it into a circus?  Gurley was shot in Brooklyn’s Louis Pink Houses by a cop who fired blindly into a dark stairwell. 

The family rebuffs Sharpton: “Who made you the spokesperson of our family?  We just want to bury our nephew with dignity and respect.”  They  feel that Sharpton’s appearance at Akai’s funeral would be embarrassing and an insult to the memory of Akai. 

Sharpton pretends that he is the great protector of human rights, but he was involved in the fake Tawana Brawley case, ruined the career of Steven Pagones, and inflamed the Crown Heights riots.  He was behind  the shootings at Freddie Fashion Mart, was a coke dealer and a snitch for the FBI, and fanned the flames at Ferguson and everywhere else he spreads his divisiveness.

Instead of being regarded as a pariah, he works for MSNBC and is a regular guest at the White House.

Enough fake Falcons at tragedies.  It’s time that families imitate the Gurleys and retain the dignity of their sadness.

Humphry Bogart helped to expose that the Maltese Falcon was a fake.  He didn’t want anything to do with it.  But Sydney Greenstreet is off to the Mediterranean to look for another phony Maltese Falcon, as Sharpton is off to the next tragedy to use to puff his feathers up and promote his antagonistic National Action Network, as he stands on the shelves of other people's tragedies.