Update 12:45pm Eastern. “Thousands” are marching, according to WaPo.

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I told you last week about the Al Sharpton demagogue-a-thon hitting Washington this morning. They’re marching around the Department of Justice to protest hate crimes. My syndicated column earlier this week elaborated on the politics of racial insult:

The ululations of the aggrieved ebb and flow like the tide. If there’s an insult to be milked — Macaca! Nappy-headed ho! — the professional victims will rush in, sell some T-shirts, fire up their bullhorns, make the media rounds, issue their 21-point demands, and then recede until the next race-hustling opportunity comes along…

… As for the members of the Jena Six, they seem to have learned to do the victim hustle quite well from mentor Sharpton. The Chicago Tribune’s Howard Witt reported this weekend that some of the defendants are literally rolling in dubious dough. Robert Bailey, one of the Jena Six youths, posted photos of himself mugging for the cameras with $100 bills stuffed in his mouth and covering his bed. “[C]ontroversy is growing over the accounting and disbursing of at least $500,000 donated to pay for the teenagers’ legal defense,” Witt reported. “There are definitely questions out there about the money,” Alan Bean, director of a Texas-based group, Friends of Justice, told the Tribune. “I hate to even address this issue because it inevitably will raise questions as to all of the money that has been raised . . . ”

Inevitably, those who dare ask such pesky questions will be accused of racism and blaming the “victims.” Sharpton and company will continue to deflect tough scrutiny by hiding behind rope imagery. Indeed, they’re invoking the recent Columbia University noose-hanging incident to promote their nationwide fight against “Confederates” — never mind the lack of suspects and the suspicious odor surrounding the Columbia case, which remains unsolved despite 60 hours of security tape and more than a month of probing.

The inexorable rhythm of the politics of racial insult is interrupted only when the insulter doesn’t fit the left-wing grievance narrative. Which explains in part why former GOP Sen. George Allen’s infamous “Macaca” gaffe was covered by the national news media like it was Armageddon, while a female Louisiana Democrat who this week called a black civil rights leader’s mother “Buckwheat” (after the stereotypical “Little Rascals” character) barely warranted a blip on the outrage-o-meter. No pockets to pick, no bribes to extract from protesting a case of abject stupidity that can’t be spun into institutional racism for partisan gain.

Sometimes, a thoughtless insult is just a thoughtless insult. Sometimes, the hate is fake. When will we stop allowing hoax crime king Al Sharpton and his ilk to make every single one of these incidents a federal case?

There will be one interesting counter-protest this morning:

When demonstrators rally on the steps of the U.S. Justice Department Friday to protest the government’s handling of hate crimes, blogger-turned-activist Shane Johnson will be waiting for them with a protest of his own.

Johnson and a modest band of supporters are pushing back against the outpouring of black support for black male offenders, such as the Jena 6, saying it comes at the expense of female victims of black-on-black crime.

ORDER IT NOW

The group is leading a Jena 6-like grass-roots movement through e-mails, blogs and rallies. It wants to call national attention to the beating and rape of a 35-year-old Haitian woman and the beating and sexual assault of her 12-year-old son by up to 10 assailants in West Palm Beach, Fla.

In June, armed attackers broke into the woman’s apartment in Dunbar Village, a public housing project, where they repeatedly raped and sodomized her and forced her to perform oral sex on her son, according to a grand jury indictment. They poured household chemicals on the victims’ eyes and threatened to set them on fire, police and media reports say.

Four teenagers, ages 14 to 18, have been charged. Police are searching for other suspects.

Johnson organized the rally after he read about the assault on the blog, “What About Our Daughters?” He questions why national black leaders and black media who supported the Jena 6 and the alleged victim in the Duke lacrosse case have ignored the Dunbar Village attack, in which the mother, son and alleged attackers are black.

“This is one of the most horrific and barbaric crimes I’ve heard about,” says Johnson, 32, a social worker from Washington. “But if the victim is a black woman you seldom hear about it … especially if you have black victims and black perpetrators.”

Ditto with crimes by illegal aliens and gang-bangers targeting black victims.

Won’t hear a word about that out of Al Sharpton’s big mouth.

Doesn’t fit his narrative or his shakedown criteria.

Glad to see folks willing to stand toe-to-toe against Sharpton and his ilk. We need more.