On Headline News with Kyra Phillips, Dr. Jason Johnson discussed jury selection in the trial of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Dr. Johnson discussed potential juror H-29, who criticized the involvement in of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in the case.
Al Sharpton
Rev. Al Sharpton in Ohio: Ya’ll were still dancing from Obama’s inauguration party when the GOP swept into office last year
There are not many benefits to living in the state of Ohio. The weather is completely unpredictable, athletes are always leaving and then doing well in other places, and the horrible Rust Belt economy has put state morale at an all time low. In fact, things are so economically depressed in the Northeast Ohio Cleveland region that a YouTube cottage industry has sprung up with videos like “Parma State of Mind” and “Cleveland: We’re Not Detroit” where residents try to outdo each other with just how miserable the region has become.
The one benefit, however, to living in the state is that Ohio is the petri dish for political battles in the United States. When the Reverend Al Sharpton spoke at an annual conference recently for African American elected officials there was no other place in America where you could better see the battle lines that will be drawn in next year’s election.
The Ohio Legislative Black Caucus was having their first annual state dinner, a time for various elected officials in the state to meet, connect and discuss various issues facing African Americans and minority legislators in the state. Think of it like the Congressional Black Caucus convention – but with fewer celebrities and no members of Congress over 55 trying to do the electric slide at the Essence after-party.
There were many critical issues put forth for discussion at the conference: the fact that Ohio only has one Democrat (who also happens to be African American and a woman) on the state supreme court, and that despite having Black mayors in Cleveland, Cinncinnatti and Columbus the state has never elected an African American to statewide office. But all of these issues were in the background as the keynote speaker, the good Reverend Sharpton, took to the stage. With a room full of eager and excited elected officials and staffers, Sharpton proceeded to open up the harshest can of whoop ass you have ever seen and dumped it on the crowd. He chastised them, critiqued them and scolded them for 45 straight minutes
And in the end he got a standing ovation.
Allow me to put this in proper context. Sharpton has no connection to the state of Ohio. He is nationally known – but not prestigious. He has no real standing other than a new and somewhat controversial national television show. Yet, Sharpton stood on stage and made the case that Ohio is ground zero for the political battles between the right and left in America. He noted that Governor John Kasich’s attempts to roll back collective bargaining rights, change voting laws to restrict early voting and refusal to fund infrastructure improvements are all attempts by the national right to test the resolve of progressives. And thus far, Sharpton found the efforts of the state’s black legislators lacking.
“Ya’ll are in the state of [Arnold] Pinkney and [Carl] Stokes and to see Kasich talk to you any which way. But he can because ya’ll have no self respect, no self-esteem!” Sharpton chastised Black Ohio leadership for rolling over in the face of opposition and failing to represent not just African Americans but the poor and disenfranchised. In particular, Sharpton criticized Black politicians for resting on their laurels during the 2010 mid-term elections which allowed John Kasich to squeak out a 1% win over incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland while eliminating Democrats from state-wide office.
“Most of ya’ll were still dancing from Obama’s inauguration party when the GOP swept into office last year. And now that they’re rolling back everything we’ve accomplished over the last 30 years you wanna blame Obama.”
With every jab, every incisive critique Sharpton got louder and louder applause from the audience. It was almost a cathartic moment in church where the pastor accuses everyone in the building of being worthless whoremongers and you beg him to give YOU more hell for your sins.
What struck me about Sharpton’s speech and the reaction to it is how much this contrasted with the news cycle after Barack Obama’s speech to the Congressional Black Caucus. President Obama simply asks African American members of congress to stop whining and get to work on passing legislation and they act offended.
Have these folks never been to church on Sunday? Or is something else going on?
What Sharpton showed, in a much smaller forum and much less fanfare, is that the Black community in America is ready for a good fighting song and kick in the butt. They want and need a fire-breathing, bible-quoting, mic-dropping president tell them he’s kicking down the door and waving the .44 with House Speaker John Boehner saying ‘Bama don’t hit me no more.’
Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus, however, are a bit less receptive to this. They’ve transcended the common masses, and are insulted to get the same type of speeches and exhortations that have motivated the Black audiences for generations. They want President Obama to pat them on the back and bring them a fresh cup of coffee; not throw it in their lap and say it’s time to get moving.
There is no question that President Obama’s disappointed many with his compromises and seemingly inept negotiating skills. However, his ability to galvanize the Black community is also hampered by the thin-skinned ego-tripping of a small minority Black politicians who would rather run to the press and complain than take a little in-house criticism that might reveal their own failings at the local level. Sharpton gave a fantastic speech, and it was harsher and more effective than what Obama gave at the CBC, and it was well received by local officials and leaders in Ohio.
My guess is that if Obama has any chance of re-activating the Black community he might have to circumvent his own colleagues in Congress and speak directly to the people. They are way too soft for the message he must deliver, but here in fly-over country people are ready to hear it.
This article originally appeared on Politic365.com under the headline “Can Obama Get An Amen? Lessons from Ohio.”
Al Sharpton, Cenk Uygur: MSNBC musical chairs leave black journalists left out
According to sources at MSNBC, Rev. Al Sharpton is about to have a slot on primetime TV news, and black journalists are not happy about it.
Now, there is a shortlist of things I never expect to see on television in my lifetime: An elected official openly admitting taking bribes, a sitcom about 30-something African-American professionals that doesn’t include a token white girl, and Sharpton with his own show.
How did we get here?
You can thank a healthy mix of politics, money and Keith Olbermann for Sharpton on MSNBC. The process began in January when Olbermann was removed from MSNBC for not playing ball. His departure dented the heart and soul of MSNBC.
After some schedule shuffling, the network placed Cenk Uygur, the firebrand host of the popular “The Young Turks” internet show, as a replacement, but he never seemed to suit the network’s needs. Despite improving on the ratings from last year, Cenk was offered a weekend time slot and a lesser role at the station, and he refused.
Sharpton, who had done pretty well as a guest host a couple of times over the last several weeks, has been all but announced as the new host. That should make black people happy, right? That should improve the progressive image of MSNBC, right? No, on both counts, and all kinds of wrong on others.
You don’t have to be a raging anti-affirmative action baby to smell just how odd and infuriating this entire scenario is to news watchers, black journalists and pundits in general. Nor do you have to be Conspiracy Brotha to note just how odd and quick this change has occurred on nightly television.
Two weeks ago, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and the NAACP released statements criticizing CNN for it’s lack of diversity in nightly news anchors. The organizations rightly pointed out that there are no African American hosts in primetime television on any cable or network news station.
I’ll go one step further and point out that until the Sharpton hiring, there were more openly gay (Rachel Maddow) and foreign born (Christiane Amanpour and Fareed Zakaria) hosts on primetime news shows than blacks or Hispanics.
Of course, it’s odd that the NAACP went after CNN when you consider that they actually have black anchors and heck, Don Lemon is the hottest thing at the network right now. Why didn’t they go after MSNBC who has even less prominent black anchors?
Could it be because all of those stations have cozy sponsorship relationships with the NAACP (in particular during the Image Awards)? Along the same lines it can’t just be a coincidence that Sharpton’s National Action Network gave a “Keepers of the Dream” award to Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC, just four months ago and now suddenly Sharpton is the black face of primetime news.
Did giving that award give Sharpton the job? Of course not, but did it sweeten a deal that likely cancelled out another black journalist? Yes.
The NABJ is not feeling this decision and rightfully so.
The lack of opportunities for African Americans on nightly news is long and storied. Sharpton represents a trend that is not only detrimental to news but to black journalists trying to advance their careers the old-fashioned way.
In Richard Prince’s “Journal-isms” column he quotes a disgruntled NABJ member who said, “This would still be just another non-journalist media ‘celebrity’ receiving a TV show based upon their name recognition, not their years of experience, training, ability and talent.”
Though not all black journalists are mad about this. Freelance journalist Jeff Winbush told Prince “I was not attacking him personally. I bear him no ill will. I simply want to see Black journalists get a fair shot as well.”
Interestingly enough Sharpton is feels totally entitled to his new show and dares any black person out there, with or without a journalism degree to take away his shine. He started into the NABJ this weekend accusing them of jealousy and claiming that he was part of a long line of qualified talking heads.
“We can’t get into a crabs in the barrel mentality,” Sharpton told The Root. “We cannot let them play us off one another. There is a history here. Kweisi Mfume had a talk show. Jesse Jackson Jr. had a talk show. If someone can advocate nationwide, we need to do that given the pain of our people. We need to do that on television, in newspapers and magazines. And all of us need to be united.”
Sharpton’s history lesson is nice but it doesn’t take away from the awful state of opportunities for all to many journalists.
And the key thing here is that we’re talking about hosts and anchors, not talking heads, contributors and pundits. Yes, Melissa Harris-Perry, The Loop 21 contributor Kelli Goff and Jamal Simmons are asked to give commentary all the time, but none of them are being given shots as hosts of their own primetime shows.
In fact over the last five years, only two African Americans have hosted prime time shows on any cable network. Comedian D.L. Hughley had a poor man’s version of “Real Times with Bill Maher” that was boring, crude and not nearly as insightful as he clearly thought it was. The only other example is when a pre-ascot Roland Martin was baby-sitting the 6 p.m. time slot for Campbell Brown when she was on maternity leave. When she came back, Martin got dumped.
Sharpton’s radio show is fine to listen to but that doesn’t necessarily translate into him being a quality television host. It’s not a victory for black folks if Sharpton’s name, fame and award-giving landed him a job that many qualified African-American journalists can do.
This isn’t a victory for the Left either since Sharpton isn’t quite the Left Wing rabble-rouser he was in his Tawana Brawley days. Sharpton’s undergone the same transformation that moved Ice Cube from giving Lethal Injections to asking “Are We there Yet?”.
And while I credit him for smelling the Old Bay sprinkled all over Tavis Smiley and Cornell West, his staunch defense of the Obama Administration suggests that he’s not going to be breaking any ground on the Left that hasn’t be well tread before by any of MSNBC’s other hosts.
At some point one of these networks is going to realize that the way to win the ratings race is not to keep repackaging and re-hashing the same old talent, but instead cultivate your own.
The African-American news watching audience is a huge untapped market, and right now no one is tapping into it because no network has the common sense to hire talent that speaks to that audience.
If FOX, CNN and MSNBC combined can’t find anyone better to attract than a comedian, a Civil Rights generation activist and Roland then they’ve got bigger problems than just ratings.
This article originally appeared at TheLoop21.com under the headline “Sharpton Comes Up on MSNBC, Black Journalists Mad.“
Al Sharpton to MSNBC?
As rumors circulate that MSNBC plans to hire Al Sharpton to host a weekday news program in the MSNBC 5pm timeslot, we wanted to provide this flashback to Jason Johnson’s April 11th column “Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton turn “The Black Agenda” into MSNBC’s newest reality show”:
Maybe you didn’t notice while going about your post-almost-government-shutdown weekend, but MSNBC’s Ed Schultz (not to be confused with Hogan’s Heroes’ Sgt. Schultz) and Rev. Al Sharpton did a whole special thing on black folks. And, today at theLoop21, we found a convenient way to summarize all the important nuggets from that conversation so you can sound smart to your church friends while not worrying about all that complicated consumption of television news.
Don’t worry. Besides the fact that a white talk show head hosted a discussion exclusively about black folks, you didn’t miss much.
Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton turn “The Black Agenda” into MSNBC’s newest reality show
Maybe you didn’t notice while going about your post-almost-government-shutdown weekend, but MSNBC’s Ed Schultz (not to be confused with Hogan’s Heroes’ Sgt. Schultz) and Rev. Al Sharpton did a whole special thing on black folks. And, today at theLoop21, we found a convenient way to summarize all the important nuggets from that conversation so you can sound smart to your church friends while not worrying about all that complicated consumption of television news.
Don’t worry. Besides the fact that a white talk show head hosted a discussion exclusively about black folks, you didn’t miss much.
We understand that dedicated uppity black folks feel obligated to watch such programs. So, it is our pleasure to dutifully report that if you’ve ever watched any of Tavis’s State of the Black Union conferences, C-SPAN coverage of an NAACP or Urban League event or even gone to a well organized Martin Luther King, Jr. Day program at a local high school, you didn’t miss that much.
Some low flying big-ups to Cornel West and Jeff Johnson for trying to make it lively. But, the fact is that there just isn’t that much going on that isn’t already depressing and that we don’t already know.
Here’s a minute-by-minute replay:
First, can’t have a mainstream Black Agenda show without Jeff Johnson, Sharon Hunter, Marc Morial and Al Sharpton waxing about MLK.
19:00 – Pulitzer Prize winning writer Sharon Hunter manages to mention Nene Leakes and Oprah Winfrey … in a discussion on the recession. Moving on …
23:00 – Everyone should take a shot of Cruzan rum and Coke whenever the phrase “We Gots to do better” is used. Jeff Johnson alone would’ve gotten me drunk in this segment. Ed Schultz comes back from commercial break with a discussion of Healthcare with Velma Heart, Robert Traynham of RollCallTV, Cornel West and Al Sharpton
31:00 – “A Republican party [that is] mean-spirited and coldhearted which is just a right wing version of the wallstreet oligarchs and corporate plutocrats.” Every time Cornel West speaks, it’s time to pass around a collection plate.
32:00 – Velma Heart, famous for voicing “I’m tired of defending Obama” now wants you, her friends, family, neighbors and future employers to know that she’s not a GOP campaign tool and that she actually supports Obama. Someone must have changed their phone number.
35:00 – Sharpton and West are getting into it, about to come to blows. By the way, are we the only ones noticing Cornel West wears the exact same black scarf tie and shirt combo – like Charlie Brown’s black and yellow stripes? Waiting for the papparazi money shot of West winding up at Trinidad carnival, thugged in Akademik tee, Hawaiian shorts and Ray Ban sunglasses.
42:00 – Commercial break then same panel and a weird 5 minute mini bio of Rev Al Sharpton. A mixture of In the Actor’s Studio and This is Your Life. It disrupted the flow of conversation, and if you’re going to spend air time talking about Sharpton, where’s the footage of his run for Mayor of New York or President of the United States?
51:00 – With Obama as proxy, Sharpton and West debate where fault lies for little progressive power in the Congressional Black Caucus and other outlets when it comes to policy.
This degenerates into an “Ivory tower” versus “The Streets” fight, but it’s a real one. Sharpton argues that many of the same black members of government and academia who accuse Obama of not standing up for civil rights and the poor were the same ones bojangling for Bush’s war policies. Best Quote of an Increasingly Interesting Night goes to Al Sharpton: “If you SCARED, say you SCARED – but, don’t blame that on Obama!! Ya’ll making excuses for people who been there 40 years and ain’t done nothing – now they wanna blame Obama!!”
So Ed shuts off a really good discussion about activism to bore us to death with a discussion on education. Boring in the sense that nothing ever gets done with that. Discussions about education in the black community always devolve into fights over teachers or parents. Can we get a panel composed of successful teachers who have accomplished great things talking about schools that have improved? It’s not news anymore that tons of black men and women don’t graduate from high-school.
The second hour was pretty much a series of speeches about absent policy discussion and solution finding. Which begs the question: so, why were we here, again? There goes the player-hating groans of black pundits, commentators, activists and intellectuals consumed with self-righteous rage that the MSNBC booking producer didn’t call them. And while we can applaud MSNBC for its sudden recognition of a large black viewing audience that – yes – wants a black host for one of their persistently white-hosted programs, we have to wonder out loud if this helped any. African American lives aren’t really changed and most white people won’t care one way or another.
For the future, let’s figure out a better model for substantive discussion . Rather than endless diatribes on where ‘black folks’ are, let’s talk about solutions that have worked and can take African Americans where they could be.
The article originally appeared on TheLoop21.com under the headline “Move Over Housewives! MSNBC Presents The Black Agenda Reality Show.”