Why do civil rights heroes cheer 'Rezko card'?

Obama's what they fought for, but they've got Clintons' backs

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- I happened to catch a piece of the round-the-clock primary campaign coverage, and who did I see in the front row at the recent CNN debate?

Georgia U.S. Rep. John Lewis shaking his head in agreement when Sen. Hillary Clinton gave Sen. Barack Obama a real tongue-lashing.

Surreal.

How did an iconic figure from the civil rights era, a man who was beaten upside his head by out-of-control police officers in Selma, Ala., end up carrying a white woman's water in a race against a black man who epitomizes everything civil rights activists worked to gain?

Clinton had lambasted Obama for legal work he did for Tony Rezko, a now-disgraced Chicago developer who contributed generously to a lot of Illinois politicians, including Obama. Rezko is set to go on trial for public corruption and fraud charges Feb. 25. The Obama campaign has given about $84,000 of tainted Rezko donations to charity.

During the debate, Clinton accused Obama of having done legal work for "your contributor ... in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago."

Given that the Clintons presided over a scandal-plagued White House, seeing Lewis co-signing Clinton's in-your-face attack on Obama's character was mind-boggling.

Really, if Obama had done in the Illinois General Assembly what Bill Clinton did in the Oval Office, white folks would have chased him out of office and barred the door.

But former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, himself a foot soldier in the civil rights movement, can now "clown" about "Bill being every bit as black as Obama" and probably having ''slept with more black women than Obama." And black luminaries such as Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Vernon Jordan and U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) are using their iconoclastic status to put the Clintons back in the White House.

Hillary, a lawyer herself, knows full well that an associate doesn't call the shots when it comes to fat-cat clients. They file appearances and stay up all night writing briefs that the firm's partners take credit for.

The truth is, over several years early in his career, Obama did "five to seven hours of billable work" on projects linked to Rezko -- not Rezko himself, according to Obama's former law firm.

What galls me the most is not Hillary's remarks, but the fact that so many powerful black men have lined up behind her despite her reputation for playing loose with the facts.

For instance, on March 12, 2007, after Hillary's speech in Selma, Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak noted a curious contradiction.

"[T]he real problem with her visit there a week ago concerned her March 4 speech's claim of her attachment to Martin Luther King Jr. as a high school student in 1963," Novak wrote.

"How, then, could she be a 'Goldwater Girl' in the next year's presidential election? The incompatibility of those two positions of 40 years ago was noted to me by Democratic old-timers shocked by Clinton's temerity in pursuing her presidential candidacy. Barry Goldwater's opposition to the 1964 voting rights bill was not incidental to his run for the White House but an integral element of conscious departure from GOP tradition that contributed to his disastrous performance.

"What Clinton said at Selma is significant because it betrays her campaign's panicky reaction to the unexpected rise of Obama as a serious competitor for the Democratic nomination," Novak concluded.

So, who is spinning fairy tales?

Although the Clintons have the support of influential blacks, African Americans know the "crabs in the barrel" syndrome when they see it. That's why Hillary Clinton's distortions will likely backfire.

Since the Clintons are seasoned campaigners in the black community, the only reason I can think of for Clinton to distort Obama's connection to Rezko would be to turn off Obama's white supporters.

Wednesday, former South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian, an Obama supporter, called the Clintons' campaign strategy "reprehensible."

And it is. Hillary isn't only playing the "Rezko" card and the "gender" card. She seems to be going for every card in the deck.

So while I can appreciate Obama's vow to keep personal attacks out of his campaign ... maybe it's time for him to turn over the Lewinsky card.