Culture Watch: The Rev. Thug.

The 22-year-old pop singer and actress Aaliyah died in the Bahamas when her plane crashed, after her entourage overloaded it with equipment. Her fans were stricken, and her funeral on Manhattan's Upper East Side featured a horse-drawn hearse, a silver-plated coffin, and the release of 22 white doves.

This struck Rod Dreher, a columnist for the New York Post, as a little much. "The family of Aaliyah," he wrote, "does the poor woman's memory no favors with this tasteless gesture."

This struck the Rev. Al Sharpton as much too much. Sharpton held a rally and a press conference at his Harlem headquarters, and hung Dreher out to dry. "What you really mean is, you should have a nice little Negro funeral." (Dreher had actually compared the singer's exequies with those of Princess Diana-"a ghoulish saturnalia of sentimentality . . . the epitome of modern celebrity worship.") "To say that she was less than someone else is abysmal, insulting, and racist." (This is Jefferson run amok-everybody is equal in every way.) But this was Sharpton's kicker: "We will bring down anybody who tells us how to mourn our own."

As if on cue-no, exactly on cue-the Post's phone lines lit up with threats to Dreher. Here is one beauty: "Look, white bitch, you're not answering your phone, but you can't hide forever. One of us is going to be waiting for you outside your building . . . We're gonna step out and choke your motherf***ing neck."

New Yorkers know better than to take these threats lightly. In 1995 Al Sharpton's National Action Network fastened on a landlord-tenant dispute in Harlem. A Jewish-owned store, Freddy's Fashion Mart, itself the tenant of a black church, was accused of jacking up the rent on a black subtenant. Sharpton set up pickets, manned by a lieutenant, which heckled black customers as "traitors" and Freddy's as "Jew bastards" and "bloodsucking Jews." Sharpton sometimes addressed his minions himself. One fine day, one of the mob, a nut with a criminal record, shot four people and burned the store down, killing seven (including a black security guard). When Sharpton incites, people die.

New Yorkers know Sharpton's record, but they will not speak of it. This dangerous clown has become a kingmaker in the New York City mayor's race, and he has announced plans to run for president in 2004. Sharpton is presumed to speak for black people-which is truly abysmal, insulting, and racist.

The New York Post, Dreher's newspaper, is one of the few outlets that have kept a spotlight on Sharpton throughout his dismal career. But now that one of its own has been threatened, the Post seems to have taken a powder. In response to the threats, the paper's new editor, Col Allan, made one minimalist grunt: "I stand by Rod Dreher. He had a right to express an opinion." The silence from the rest of the New York media has been deafening. Since a Democrat is almost certain to win in November, Sharpton will be given the keys to City Hall. The press does not want to offend the city's new lords spiritual, not even in the cause of defending the reputation-and perhaps the safety-of one of its own.