Al Sharpton

Generally when a broadcast journalist interviews an activist about a hot-button political issue, it's customary and in accord with sound journalistic practice to interview someone from the other side of the issue for balance. Except, of course, if you work for MSNBC, which has essentially become DNC-TV. On the August 17 MSNBC Live program, news anchor Thomas Roberts interviewed his fellow…

For a hot minute, it looked like Joe Biden might have lost Al Sharpton. And just as quickly, Sharpton returned to the fold. Biden has another possible entry to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, along with his open-mic boast to President Obama in 2010 that passage of Obamacare was "a big f***ing deal." (audio clip after page break)

An MSNBC host and the Chair of the Democratic National Committee walk into a bar . . . Al Sharpton, uttering one of the more absurd laugh lines of this political season, actually claimed on his MSNBC show this evening that his campaign in Florida against voter ID laws is "non-partisan."   Debbie Wasserman-Schultz apparently hadn't gotten the memo about pretending Sharpton was non-partisan. …

In an unintentionally hilarious variation on the some-of-my-best-friends-are line employed by people defending themselves against accusations of prejudice, Elizabeth Warren—lefty Dem candidate for Senate from Massachusetts—has claimed that various people close to her have started small businesses. Warren let loose her laugh line on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show this evening, responding to an ad…

On his "Keeping It Real" radio show on Wednesday, Rev. Al Sharpton introduced new lingo. He said Rodney King would be "funeralized," but Sharpton used that event to then turn and crassly plug he'll be in Los Angeles to receive an award from BET (Black Entertaintment Television). "Rodney King will be funeralized this Saturday in Los Angeles. I’ll be going to Los Angeles as you will," he said…

You'd think he wouldn't have such persistent trouble with the "illegal" part of that. Bad enough, as far as "the Rev" Al Sharpton is concerned, that Republicans want to rein in entitlement spending before America morphs into Greece and brings down much the world with it. (video clip after page break)

Interviewing Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the liberal Catholic group NETWORK, on her Thursday MSNBC show host Andrea Mitchell touted the organization's effort "to rally opposition to Paul Ryan's proposed health care cuts" with a nationwide "Nuns on the Bus" tour. In part, Campbell ranted that they wanted to make sure "our nation's soul is not corrupted further by the House Ryan…

Al Sharpton, the veteran Democratic activist and racial provocateur who hosts "PoliticsNation" on MSNBC, reviewed a James Brown biography for the New York Times Sunday Book Review and was interviewed in the Reviews' "Up Front" section. Sharpton credited the biography by RJ Smith for placing Brown in the context of the civil rights movement. But why would the Times consider Sharpton qualified to…

CNN's Howard Kurtz was astonished that MSNBC has allowed Al Sharpton to be both an activist and a news anchor in covering the Trayvon Martin shooting. Near the beginning of his 11 a.m. Sunday show Reliable Sources, Kurtz maintained that Sharpton should have had to choose between activism and journalism in that case. Kurtz asked "how on earth can Al Sharpton go there, and be an activist and…