The Tragedy Of Charlie Rangel



He began with the best of intentions, and so it makes the tragedy all the more poignant. And the power involved gives the tragedy an Operatic score. Charlie Rangel, before he was a 19 term Congressman and Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, was a Harlem Community activist. He was sharp and hungry and "pure" before being corrupted by The Darkness. Adam Clayton Powell, who, at the time, represented Harlem, had gone corrupt. The power -- and the drink and the women and the money -- had blinded Powell to such a degree that he was making a proper fool of Harlem in the Halls of Congress, which, after censure he saw fit to rarely attend despite drawing a salary. Rangel, in due course, was part of a delegation that went to Bimini to bring Powell back from the brink. From The Tavis Smiley Show:

"But when Adam just went to Bimini after we - I was one of the petitioners that in a Supreme Court case - and just didn't come home at all, I told Governor Rockefeller he ought to take away this arrest warrant that he had for nonpayment of a court thing, and the governor told me that he wanted Adam back, 'Go tell him to come back.'

"I went to Bimini and talked with Adam, and after a lot (laughs) of humiliation and embarrassment, I came back convinced that if I didn't run against Adam, Adam was gonna get beaten and I could be beaten just for defending Adam. So he was not a great challenge. He came home, but he had been away a long, long time in Bimini. So during the campaign I never said I ran against Adam Powell. I said I was running for that empty seat, because Adam really quit."

That was then. Unfortunately, some of Powell's corruptions seem to have rubbed off on Rangel in the intervening years. Imagine the moxie to name a City College building -- the "monument to me" -- to oneself, while one is still living! And we will not entertain the latest, sleazy Upper West Side real estate dealings. This incredibly arrogant push to name public memorials to the living after oneself is not just "ghetto," it is borderline megalomaniacal. It is also tragic, but it is not too late for Rangel to clean up his act. We hope he does not fall victim to the same dark, negative forces that claimed his predecessor. But if the present trajectory is indicative of anything, the future does not look bright for the Honorary Charles Rangel.