Sharpton At MSNBC; A Quid Pro Quo?

When the question is asked, is Al Sharpton a good fit for MSNBC? The obvious answer is, of course not he's black. Why the hell would the last bastion of white liberal elitism want to sully it's perfect record of barring any black journalist from an anchor position to accommodate a mope like Al Sharpton? As deep throat said, "you got to follow the money". Brian Stetler of the New York Times notes; " Rarely, if ever, has a cable news channel employed a host who has previously campaigned for the business goals of the channel’s parent company." What does Mr. Stetler mean? It may well be that Al Sharpton did not get his anchor's chair on sheer talent but rather as a quid pro quo he extracted from Comcast Communications, the parent company of MSNBC. Before the FCC would approve Comcast's acquisition of NBC it sought an opinion from Al Sharpton's National Action Network, an amalgam of race hustlers who earn a good living shaking down businesses in the name of social justice.

Mr. Sharpton threw his organizational weight behind the Comcast bid for NBC twice, first in his letter to the F.C.C. in May 2010, which said that his group had “for several years” had a “productive, honest and open dialogue at the highest levels of the company,” referring to Comcast, “and we are confident that this positive relationship will continue to prosper after the joint venture is approved.”



In December 2010, in the final stretch of the merger review, Mr. Sharpton reaffirmed his support when the National Action Network and other African-American leadership groups signed on to a diversity action plan with Comcast. The plan included a commitment by Comcast to seek “the expanded participation of minorities on its news and public affairs programming.”



To that end, Comcast said it would consider suggestions from its newly established diversity councils, including the National African American Diversity Council. That council includes Dr. W. Franklyn Richardson, the chairman of the National Action Network, but not Mr. Sharpton.

MSNBC naturally denies that Sharpton's employment is the result of a deal but even its own standards, however lamentable they maybe, Sharpton just doesn't cut it. His voice is strained and strident, his grasp of the issues is farcical, and his opinions are imbecile. It looks as if Sharpton took Comcast beyond his company's idiotic slogan "Lean Forward" to its logical progression "Bend Over".