JESSE’S ROD

Well, it took a news cycle for the paranoid spin on the Jackson scandal. (Silver lining: Jackson may well avoid calling W “illegitimate” for a while). A reader sends in the following report from Reuters last night: “The Rev. Al Sharpton, a New York civil rights leader, was questioned why the story came out just as Jackson was challenging the outcome of the presidential election and President-elect Bush’s nomination of former Sen. John Ashcroft to be his attorney general. “The timing of this is very suspect,” Sharpton said on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” “I really don’t think at this point, where we’re seeing a president being inaugurated who we feel lost the election, that we can afford to lose his voice.”