It has been over three months since Project 21 chairman Mychal Massie challenged Al Sharpton (along with National Urban League CEO Marc Morial and former D.C. congressional delegate Walter Fauntroy) to a debate over the incendiary remarks they made about the tea party movement.

There’s been absolutely no response from any of them.

Sharpton and his friends made statements likening the tea party movement to the Ku Klux Klan and simply walked away — unchallenged by the establishment media.  In ignoring Massie’s challenge to debate, they are now essentially refusing to explain themselves.

Yet it is now Al Sharpton who is complaining that Rush Limbaugh “pushed the envelope beyond free speech.”

In interviews on MSNBC’s “Ed Show” on December 6 and on Tom Joyner’s syndicated radio show on December 15, Sharpton talked about his current efforts to get the Federal Communications Commission (the agency that just voted to regulate the Internet) to force Rush off the air by denying broadcast licenses to the stations that carry him.  Sharpton says he wants the government to kick people off the air if they “offend” based on race, gender or sexual orientation.  But it’s apparently OK to smear people as racist and not justify that powerful accusation.

Sharpton told MSNBC’s Ed Schultz: “Rush Limbaugh has the right to say whatever he wants to say.  He doesn’t have the right to do it though on publicly-regulated airwaves.  The FCC has the responsibility to set standards to say the public cannot be offended based on their race or their gender in this country.”  He later told Joyner that he came to D.C. to ask FCC commissioners for hearings to set up such standards.

Considering the double-standard, Mychal just had to exercise his First Amendment rights before Sharpton sought to curtail his freedom of speech.

Mychal, still hoping Sharpton will debate him, said:

This is rich.  Al Sharpton has cowered in the bushes, refusing to step up and debate me pursuant to what I consider to be racist and factually distorted screeds against the tea parties.  Now he proposes to attempt to limit and possibly eliminate the free speech of an individual tens of millions of people from every walk of life and every age and social demographic listen to daily.

Sharpton’s past accusations of racism and police wrongdoing are the untoward social monstrosities we have come to expect from him as a way of seeking fortune and recognition.  Sharpton refuses to debate me and believes he can take on Rush?  He expects a pass for Tawana Brawley, the Freddie’s Fashion Mart bombing, the Korean grocer boycott and his involvement in the Crown Heights riots, but he refuses to defend his accusations of tea parties being racist in an open forum with me.

For shame!