The Sunday Conversation: The Rev. Al Sharpton

The Rev. Al Sharpton, 57, has evolved from outside political agitator to presidential advisor and host of MSNBC’s weekday news show “PoliticsNation,” which he took over last August. Sharpton, known to friends as “Rev,” also heads the civil rights organization National Action Network and Syndication One’s eponymous radio show that broadcast weekdays to 40 markets around the country.

How has having your own show on MSNBC affected your image?

I think people understand firsthand what I’m saying my positions are and those of my guests. And I think that absent that, people hear 30-second sound bites on other people’s shows. And they get a sense of who you really are and what you’re really about when they can see you five nights a week an hour themselves. It may not change their opinion, but it puts the opinion more in context. A lot of people have said, “I agree with you more than I thought I did.”

The other thing it changes is it gives me the ability to bring out issues we were never able to bring out before. Because now there’s a big difference in trying to raise an issue that I do with my civil rights group and trying to get somebody to let us get on their show and having a show and saying, let’s talk about the racial gap in education or whatever that many aren’t talking about.

So it’s like the ultimate pulpit.

In many ways it’s the ultimate pulpit and ultimate bullhorn for me.

Have your views changed since you became a public figure 30 years ago, and has that put you more in line with the powers that be and therefore you have a show?

What has happened is America is different. I’m at a different place because the country is at a different place. And I think that in the context of the country changing, what was considered extreme 30 years ago is more central now, and what was central is considered more to the far right now. And I think that once America is different, those they saw as saying something that was radical, they say, well, that’s not really that crazy. I’m not really saying anything different than I said 30 years ago, that America ought to work for everybody, it ought to be fair, it ought to be equal. Let me give you an example: If I say today that I support same-sex marriage, well, imagine saying that 30 years ago. So a lot of things that appear more acceptable today were unthinkable 30 years ago.

So how did you lose so much weight?

About 11 years ago, I led a protest in Puerto Rico on the island of Vieques and we were able to successfully stop the U.S. Navy from bombing exercises. For the sit-in, I was given 90 days in jail, so I decided to go on a hunger strike for 40 days. I just had liquid. Lost a lot of weight. I started feeling better and looking better.

I ran for president in 2004 and I started going back up because of all the dinners and room service. I was around 240, 250. So two years ago, I said, this is ridiculous. I know I can discipline myself. So I went on a self-imposed diet where I ate salads, chicken and fish and drank coffee and tea. In the last year, I cut that out, no coffee, no chicken. Fish twice a week, salads and fruit. And I’m down to 160, 165. And I feel better. I don’t need as much sleep. I look better. Now I don’t even have an appetite.

How do you think the presidential race is going to play out?

I think the Republicans are in real danger of losing a possible credible run because of self-inflicted wounds. Clearly Mitt Romney is not loved by the right. So whether it’s one month with Newt Gingrich or another month Rick Santorum, it’s like, anybody but him. This has to take a toll. Or if he can’t get 50%, it will be the first brokered convention in a long time.

That all accrues in my opinion to President Obama, whom I support and whom I’ve worked with since he was in the Senate. So to me right now, it looks good. But I don’t take it for granted. I think if the Democrats relax and their strategy is these guys will keep messing themselves up, I think that’s a poor strategy. I think you prepare for war in a time of peace.

I also think that you’ve got to fight to take back the House and the Senate. Because just having the president elected and you still have a majority Republican Congress and the tea party is still strong, we’ll still have a lot of obstruction. So there will be a lot of fireworks.

You did a five-city tour with Newt Gingrich to discuss education reform in 2009.

Right. What happened was right after the president was inaugurated, in May he had a meeting in the Oval Office with [Education] Secretary [Arne] Duncan, Newt Gingrich and me on education and civil rights. Newt Gingrich and I never agreed on anything, but we wanted to show that both of us and the president think education is a priority. So we went to five cities and talked about education, which was why I was so outraged when Newt Gingrich in this election started talking about kids in inner cities who didn’t have role models and the president was a “food stamp president.” Because he went to these inner cities with me and he saw parents that were bringing their kids to school wanting a better education. He saw people that had risen to become doctors and lawyers and professionals. They’re not just criminals in these communities. And he didn’t call the president a food stamp president then. So was he playing politics then, or is he playing it now?

And I think it is a tremendous thing for somebody to be inauthentic just to get votes. I’ve been unpopular, I’ve been popular, but what I’ve never been is inauthentic. You ought to be what you are.

What do you think of President Obama’s performance?

I think he’s done a good job. I think the problem he has had is that he has on every hand been blocked by the opposition. I think there are those that are frustrated, that want to see him confront them more. I think his fear is that they want to bait him into a confrontation. President Obama was not elected messiah, he was elected president and he has to deal with the Congress. So has he not been everything everybody dreamed he could be? I think sometimes we’re looking for more than is possible. No, Barack Obama cannot walk on water, but he’s the best swimmer in political America.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about you?

People don’t realize that no one does what I do just for publicity or self-gain. In my career, I’ve been arrested and jailed 30 times or more for leading protests against other people’s children getting killed or police brutality or racial profiling. I was stabbed once, almost killed, in ’91. So at least give me credit for believing what I believe in.

I’ve been doing this all my life. The first time I started preaching I was 4. When I was 9, I was ordained by the Church of God in Christ. I started in civil rights when I was 12. I became director for Operation Breadbasket under William Jones and Jesse Jackson when I was 13 years old. People had never heard of me until I was late 20s or early 30s. So I sure didn’t do it for fame. Who knew what you were doing at 13? I was a kid, so I grew up in the movement. One of the reasons Michael Jackson and I got along and I ended up doing the eulogy at his memorial is we used to talk about how neither one of us had a childhood. He grew up onstage; I grew up behind the pulpit.

You’ve said you learned how to be a man from James Brown. How so?

He kind of adopted me in my teen years. A lot of people have mistaken me for a road manager. I was never a road manager; I was like his son. He would sit and talk to me for hours: “This is what a man has got to do. You’ve got to be different; you’ve got to be unique. Don’t follow the crowd.” He created his own style. So I learned civil rights from guys like Rev. Jones and Rev. Jackson, but I learned personal manhood and personal discipline and personal branding from James Brown.

I was surprised by the reports on your tax problems, that you and your organization had a tax bill of $2.8 million that you’ve since settled.

The right wing said we were doing something wrong. They had all these investigations and came back and said, we can’t find anything criminal. What they come up with was that we owed some money, and then they put penalties on it, which became enormous. These are things they thought should have been taxed and we argued shouldn’t have been.

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