Somebody Need to Tell Tavis Smiley Not to Call Out Rev. Al on the Radio!
Of all the people who should know better than to call out the right Rev. Al Sharpton, Tavis Smiley tops the list.
Rev. Sharpton is more than a civil rights blowhard with decades of impeccably coiffed hair to his name. He’s only one of the world’s most formidable debaters.
Young Tavis has worked up close and personal for ten years on his State of the Black Union meetings with Rev. Al, and he’s seen that when the Rev. gets to ducking, diving and signifying, ain’t nothing holy about it.
So why did Smiley think he could step to Sharpton and call him out, on live radio no less, Tuesday morning on the Tom Joyner Morning Show?
Black leaders, he said, “are singing a new hymn I never heard of, one that says the president no longer needs a black agenda.”
Tavis is fully aware of the connotations of singing, mind you, and all the shuffling and soft shoe imagery attendant with it. He went on to name “Al Sharpton, Ben Jealous, Charles Ogletree, Valerie Jarrett, Marc Morial, Dr. Dorothy Height” as offenders.
Tom could smell the brown storm coming, and having gone through his own incident with Tavis only last year, was steadfastly noncommittal. He maintained his professionalism and waited—he knew he wouldn’t have to wait long.
Rev. Al called in a scant few minutes later in a state of pure pomade fury, and was hardly as subtle as Tavis. He referenced the “Negroes” running around “buck-dancing” for Bill Clinton, blasting Tavis for famously calling Clinton the first black president, and said Tavis had misrepresented and distorted his statements.
Check out Tavis’s Olympic-worthy backpedaling on Al’s Keeping It Real show later.
Tavis: “What I said was, uhhh–”
Al: “Negro, is you crazy?”
(Not a direct quote)
I think Tavis learned his lesson. He may not be able to sit for a few days, but he learned.
My question is, does anybody think Al Sharpton won’t show at Tavis’s not-quite-but-very-similar-to-the-State of the Black Union discussion in March? What do you think?
