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The Multi-Platform Renaissance Man
These days he’s Al from Brooklyn the way Jennifer Lopez is Jenny from the Bronx. He’s come a long way from public housing and welfare. He can refine and repackage the Powell hubris, the Jackson brashness, even the hip-hop wardrobes and the James Brown hairdo. A world traveler – first class, thank you – he can wear expensive suits, hitch rides on corporate jets and live in a luxury apartment on New York’s Upper West Side. He can hobnob with Oprah and Diddy – and join the Obamas at the White House for a Super Bowl party. He can hold court in Harlem at Sylvia’s – a soul food mainstay where he dined with candidate Obama but probably wouldn’t find much on the menu to suit his new dietary regimen – or he can receive supplicants at the exclusive Grand Havana Room on Fifth Avenue, where he smokes his favorite cigars. He works out of 30 Rock, the building featured in the NBC sitcom of that name that starred another outspoken personality, Alec Baldwin, who briefly hosted a show on MSNBC last year.
The price of this access is too high, his old mentor Cornel West says on his own radio show and in public appearances. In his critique, he contends that Sharpton and two other MSNBC commentators, Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown professor, and Melissa Harris-Perry, a Tulane professor who hosts a weekend show on MSNBC, "have sold their souls for a mess of Obama pottage” and have become “apologists for the Obama administration.”
Sharpton insists that West’s criticism of him is misguided, as he regularly addresses matters affecting the have-nots. But he left himself open to such criticism in the aforementioned 60 Minutes segment, where correspondent Lesley Stahl described him as “a trusted White House advisor who’s become the president’s go-to black leader.” Sharpton acknowledged that he modulates his comments about the president’s performance and had urged other civil rights leaders to exercise discretion. “I’ve learned to pick my fights and also to be more strategic about my fight plans,” he said then.
That position troubles not only social critics such as West, but also the guardians of the Fourth Estate, for the stance is not that of a traditional journalist covering the White House beat or, even, a traditional host of a public affairs program. Journalist Glenn Greenwald, best known for his groundbreaking reporting on NSA surveillance and his unrelenting criticism of the Obama administration, has challenged both Sharpton and MSNBC, noting in a Salon column that “it’s perfectly fine for a political activist to decide that the best way to advance an agenda is through unbroken fealty to the White House. But that is a bizarre attribute indeed for a featured nighttime host of a political program on an ostensibly journalistic outlet.”
In the annals of mass media and social justice struggles, Sharpton is sui generis, but he follows the code of first responders: He runs into the danger rather than away from it. In his view, a primary duty of the first responder who would be leader of a cause is to generate publicity. He is not the ambulance chaser, he says, but the ambulance; and because he is so skilled at what he does, people seek him out rather than vice versa. Between the high profile cases, he remains before the public on the radio, on Politics Nation and on entertainment shows like Saturday Night Live (SNL).
In November, he accepted the invitation of Lorne Michaels, the SNL creator, to poke fun at the show amid mounting criticism that it had no black women in the cast. Sharpton delayed traveling to a preaching engagement in Richmond so he could deliver the punch line to the skit and the signature opening line, “Live from New York. It’s Saturday Night!” Michaels had promised him that SNL would hire black women, he said. In January, Sasheer Zamata joined the cast and two other black women were hired as writers. For Sharpton, the fun and games were all for the cause: promoting diversity in hiring and raising his profile among young people who “never would be attracted to civil rights rallies.” His new fan base, he says, includes members of the hip-hop generation who disagree with his stance against use of the N-word, but do appreciate that he has opened doors for entrepreneurs like Combs.
Sharpton has journalism preservationists in a tizzy the way he once did government officials and reporters trying to keep apace as he dared them to follow the bouncing ball. His success offers them no measure of peace as he promotes his own brand of justice. g
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