An Ungracious Rev

Mayor de Blasio didn’t join in as the Rev. Al Sharpton celebrated Thanksgiving by bashing the previous two mayors, but it was still an unseemly way to honor the holiday. Perhaps de Blasio took to heart City Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s recent remarks about being “gracious” to his predecessors — CoJo’s pointed reaction to Blas’ poisonous comments as Michael Bloomberg entered the 2020 Democratic presidential race.

Sharpton, by contrast, seemed to feel the need to distance himself from Bloomberg, after having raised eyebrows by suggesting the former mayor’s mea culpa on stop-andfrisk meant the issue needn’t be fatal with black voters in the coming primaries.

In any case, the Rev praised de Blasio, his guest and fellow server at the National Action Network’s annual Thanksgiving dinner, by damning Bloomberg’s and Rudy Giuliani’s mayoralties: “After 12 years of Mr. Bloomberg and eight years of Mr. Giuliani, we went through two decades, almost three decades, of the city going in a way that we were ignored,” Sharpton told the NAN faithful.

Funny: Sharpton was conspicuously quiet in the Bloomberg years — a low profile that most observers attributed to the billionaire’s private giving to NAN.

And, let’s be clear: The historic drop in crime achieved under Giuliani and Bloomberg — and, yes, continued under de Blasio — was of the greatest benefit to the city’s minority communities.

The dropoff in homicides alone means that thousands more blacks and Hispanics are alive than would be if murder had stayed sky-high. And, by preventing crime, that proactive policing also means that far fewer minorities are in prison, or even jail, as well.

Appreciate this progress: Gentrification is now the biggest gripe in many once-suffering neighborhoods.

That transformation is surely worth a few thanks.