To the editor:

Finally talk show host Don Imus is paying the final price for saying bad things about the Rutgers ladies basketball team.

It was not surprising that Al Sharpton emerged vilifying Imus for his remarks. This got me to thinking: Is this the same Al Sharpton who championed the Tawana Brawley rape case in 1987? Ms. Brawley accused three white men of repeatedly raping her, with one of them being a police officer.

Initially her story was viewed sympathetically to the country. When Sharpton took Brawley under his wing, racial tension climbed and a full-fledged media sensation was born. Sharpton claimed the entire case was a cover-up going all the way up to the state government. He named New York prosecutor Steven Pagones, specifically, calling him a racist and a rapist, among other accusations.

The bottom line is the grand jury determined Brawley’s assault was a hoax. In 1998, Pagones was awarded $345,000 through a lawsuit for defamation of character that he brought against Sharpton, in which the jury found Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones. Sharpton and Jesse Jackson joined forces with a stripper and, without proof, got the Duke University lacrosse coach fired, three innocent men stained and the program canceled.

Martin Luther King, who I consider a great man, would turn over in his grave seeing how Sharpton and Jackson have contaminated his cause.

Next time Sharpton and Jackson calls “foul,” please consider who is doing the fouling.

Ed White,

Lawrence