-By Warner Todd Huston
Percy Sutton, long-time Borough President of Manhattan passed away this week at 89. Sutton is famous for being Malcolm X’s lawyer and a powerful New York politician but he was also a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, a radio pioneer, and a civil rights activist. There is one more little thing that Sutton is known for and that is for revealing that Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, a member of the Black Panthers and a well-known Islamist, was the benefactor that paid for Barack Obama’s Harvard education.
In October of 2008 Sutton appeared on NY1, a cable news channel in New York City. On the Inside City Hall show Percy spoke on-air with reporter Dominic Carter.
Transcript:
Percy Sutton: I think he’s the brightest most wonderful person who has come across the starting line and I was introduced to him by a friend who was raising money for him. The friends name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas. He is the principal adviser to one of the worlds richest men. He told me about Obama.
He wrote to me about him. And his introduction was “there is a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends up there because you used to go up there to speak. Would you please write a letter in support of him?”
That’s before Obama decided to run.And he interjected the advice that OBama had passed the requirements necessary to get into Harvard and to become president of the law review.
And I wrote a letter of support of him to my friends at Harvard, saying to them I thought there was a genius that was going to be available and I certainly hoped they would treat him kindly.
Dominic Carter: And this is before the world knew about Barack OBama?
Percy Sutton: That’s right.
After the incident NewsMax.com published a story about this incident and of this al-Monsour, NewsMax said:
Although many Americans have never heard of Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour (his full name), he is well known within the black community as a lawyer, an orthodox Muslim, a black nationalist, an author, an international deal-maker, an educator, and an outspoken enemy of Israel. A graduate of Howard University with a law degree from the University of California, al-Mansour sits on numerous corporate boards, including the Saudi African Bank and Chicago-based LaGray Chemical Co. LaGray, which was formed to do business in Africa, counts former Nigerian President General Abdusalam Abubakar on its advisory board.
Naturally, none of the news of Sutton’s passing mentions this video appearance. This fact makes at least one person wonder why this incident has gone down the “media memory hole.” The American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson wonders why the media hasn’t made a single reference to this incident even as a “controversial contention.”
Of course, it should be noted that back in 2008 after Sutton’s TV appearance, several people disavowed Sutton’s claims. Ben Smith of Politico, for instance, reported in September of 2008 that al-Monsour denied ever having met Mr. Obama. Smith also noted that the Obama’s denied Percy Sutton’s entire story and ascribed his claims to Mr. Sutton’s advanced age.
As to the costs of Obama’s Harvard tuition, Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times reported during the late campaign that the Obama’s were “complaining about college debt.” She wrote, “Obama took out $42,753 in loans to pay for Harvard tuition.”
So, you watch the video, you decide if a mere $42,753 in tuition loans was enough to pay for a Harvard education and you decide if Percy Sutton accidentally revealed a tightly held secret or was just a confused, senile old man past his prime. Finally you decide if the Old Media was right to ignore Sutton’s late-in-life controversial statements.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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