Here are seven words guaranteed to spice up your afternoon:

“This is Al Sharpton returning your call.”

Sharpton, the reverend and national brand of racial unrest, returned my call one lazy afternoon more than a decade ago. It was a very short conversation. I was working as a reporter in upstate New York and asked him if he would comply with a judge’s ruling that he give pre-trial testimony in the slander lawsuit filed by Steven Pagones against him, Tawana Brawley and a couple of lawyers.

The short answer: No. He wouldn’t cooperate. He wouldn’t apologize. He wouldn’t explain. He wouldn’t go into detail about why he helped spread a vicious hoax into headlines around the world.

Steven Pagones had been a young prosecutor in Dutchess County, New York during the late 1980s, when Tawana Brawley, after conferring with Sharpton and a couple of lawyers, reportedly accused Pagones of an ugly racial and sexual assault. She did most of her talking back then through Sharpton.

Long story short: police and prosecutors looked at the girl’s claims and presented them to a grand jury even without her cooperation. The grand jury said it was all a hoax. Pagones – by then ruined – sued. Sharpton ducked the lawsuit against him for as long as he could but was finally found liable for defamation.

To this day he has never apologized.

Fast-forward to this week in Boston. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has agreed to give a plum, prime-time speaking engagement on Wednesday to Sharpton, the hoax-perpetuating defamer. (Speaking of hoax-perpetuating defamers, Joe Wilson isn’t on the official convention roster but is slated to appear at a campaign-related media event.)

Kerry has put forward Sharpton and Wilson as faces of today’s Democratic leadership. He’s given them web sites and microphones. (Although, evidently, the "restorehonesty.com" web site Kerry's campaign gave Wilson has now been converted to a standard Kerry-Edwards 2004 site.)

Kerry wants us to hear the words of leaders of his Democratic leadership.

Don’t count on “I’m sorry” being two of them.

MORE: Michelle Malkin: "The party of Al Sharpton, tonight's grand finale speaker, promises to give us a 'Stronger More Secure America.'

Is Jon Stewart in charge of the convention schedule or what? "