Host Mika Brzezinski — who happens to be Catholic — weighed in, saying that while “most people I know who are Catholics would not agree with me,” she’s no fan of the fact that the mandate includes religious institutions (it should be noted that the mandate applies to non-church religious employers who primarily employ people from other religions, not necessarily churches).

RELATED: Contraceptive Mandate Is Not About Religious Liberty, It’s About Female Liberty

Her MSNBC colleague Al Sharpton, however, felt that while “the politics of it is tough,” he doesn’t think this was a “political decision.” Host Joe Scarborough agreed, adding that it just “doesn’t make sense, politically.”

That said, “they’re not telling them what they must do,” Sharpton explained, “they’re telling them what they can’t ban.”

As Brzezinski laughed, Scarborough leaned over to tell the Rev. Sharpton, “You just won’t admit you’re in a really tough position here… You can admit it on the air.” He then turned it back to Brzezinski, asking her whether contraception — and abortion and the matter of voluntary sterilization — go “to the heart” of the Catholic Church’s teachings.

“Absolutely,” she replied. “It’s black and white; it’s what they believe to be true. I hate to get into some language here that can be, you know, seen as extreme, but they believe that abortion is murder, and they believe it as a fact.” She also noted that, of course, individual Catholics don’t always agree with the Church’s official dogma and edicts.

Take a look, via MSNBC:

Cornelius, 75, was found dead today in his home of a gunshot wound, one that investigators have tentatively labeled as self-inflicted. It has prompted a flood of condolences and odes to the music pioneer, none of which understate Cornelius’s importance to the media world in general as we experience it today.

The NPR obituary notes one exchange Cornelius had on the program with the legendary James Brown, who kept asking Cornelius who was financing this show. Author Dan Charnas puts it best: “That the man who wrote the song ‘Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud’ and who recorded the soundtrack to the Black Power movement could scarcely comprehend that a black man like Cornelius both owned and helmed this kind of enterprise without white patronage is a testament to the magnitude and the improbability of Cornelius’ achievements.” Everyone always says of the dead that their work in creating enterprises and creating role models was unique; few can actually claim it. But much of the analysis has been limited to the music world. There is another notable bit of that interview mentioned in NPR, however, that speaks to the scope of this enterprise even further– Cornelius explaining how he appreciated Brown’s music for what it expressed about the black community, and how it did so in a way that had not been done before (enjoy also, in this video, a cameo appearance by 70s Al Sharpton):



For those of us in the post-1990s Gangsta Rap world, it is difficult to imagine a time in which the open discussion of violence in inner cities and the disproportionate burden by race was a new topic, one almost taboo in any other venue, more out of apathy than outrage. In 1974, it had been a decade since the Civil Rights Act passed, and while there had been significant improvement in the standing of the communities vis-a-vis white communities, Cornelius had the foresight to look internally, to ask Brown not about the relationship between white people and black people, but intra-black violence that, as Brown so eloquently put it, lay asunder much of the work of the Civil Rights movement. That recognition of issues that did not concern white people, lay bare and intimate in a national audience that spanned all ages, incomes, and colors, was not just new to the musical dance show circuit– there just wasn’t anything on television like it, not even in the news. This was not just an endeavor to promote and celebrate the music of a community, but to promote, celebrate and help improve upon said community’s issues, and to be forthright about them.

Charnas continues in the NPR obituary to note that “Don Cornelius proved a truism about America and race that so few people, even today, understand: Black culture, expressed in undiluted form and unapologetically, will by virtue become accepted by the American mainstream.” He is correct, but his scope is too narrow: it is absolutely true of America that any “alternative” or minority culture, anything outside of the accepted norm “expressed in undiluted form and unapologetically” will be received with open arms. Alexis de Tocqueville writing in the 1830s, worried that American culture was far more difficult to challenge because the enforcement mechanism for what was proper in society fell to “public sentiment” rather than any law– just because Americans won’t arrest you for defying norms, he wrote, doesn’t mean they won’t sentence you to something worse: social isolation. This phenomenon still exists, but has been flipped on its face; the only “undesirables” in American society are those too closed-minded to accept America’s diversity– think the KKK or Westboro Baptist Church. How we got to being intolerant only of intolerance has a lot to do with individuals creating culture like Don Cornelius– from Walt Whitman to Marvin Gaye–proving what Americans were capable of by challenging social boundaries. Time and again, authenticity won out in all its forms– it just took an elite courageous enough to bet on that truth to make it obvious. And thanks to Cornelius, it is a little easier for everyone in any part of American media to take a chance to something new.

But Soul Train was only tangentially political, in the way that any bold cultural statement necessarily is. It was much more about fun than introspection– or, at least, more about introspection through fun than anything overtly serious. It was a display of some of the most beautiful music and impressive dancing America has to offer, and an intensely, uniquely American phenomenon. And to construct a cultural brand as iconic, to create a phenomenon as American as Mark Twain or Truman Capote or the frisbee or apple pie– is a mark few people leave behind.

RELATED: Maddow Brands Gingrich’s Attack On Obama’s Singing ‘Racial Allusions,’ ‘Minstrelsy’

“There’s a pattern here of very obviously racially-coded language,” Maddow replied. “That has nothing to do with the parties in the civil war!”

“I don’t understand this!” Tyler sniped. “The president sings, the president — Newt Gingrich makes a little thing, and all of a sudden it’s a racist thing! More people are on food stamps today because of Barack Obama. They fail in the schools, you can ask Al Sharpton! The Democrats have failed in the public schools with the African-Americans, they abort their babies, they’ve done nothing to lift them out of poverty!”

Sharpton angrily responded to Tyler’s remarks. “(Newt Gingrich) said, and I’m quoting here, that he would ‘go to the NAACP and tell black people to stop being satisfied with food stamps,’” Sharpton replied. “He didn’t say people on food stamps, he said black people!”

Watch the heated interview below via MSNBC:

RELATED: Newt Gingrich: ‘If Obama Is Re-Elected, It Will Be A Disaster For The U.S.’

“He’s going after a southern mentality, and racial allusions, always wrapped around when he refers to the president, when he talks about this food stamp stuff,” MSNBC anchor Rev. Al Sharpton observed. “These are — Newt Gingrich is many things, stupid is not one of them. He knows exactly what he’s saying, he knows exactly who he’s playing to, when you look at that map, when you deal with the northern border of Florida, which is southern Alabama, he knows what card he’s playing.”

Watch the MSNBC panelists call Gingrich out below:

RELATED: Drama Clubbed: Jan Brewer Says ‘I Felt A Little Bit Threatened’ By President Obama

Rev. Al opened the segment by calling Gov. Brewer’s finger-pointing “unacceptable” and “disrespectful,” noting “but she’s not apologizing.”

He played video of Brewer recounting the incident to reporters, calling the President “thin-skinned,” and saying she “felt a little bit threatened.”

To his credit, Rev. Sharpton is one of the few commentators to key in on the racial subtext of Brewer’s remarks. “Thin skinned? You felt threatened?” he said. “What does that even mean, you felt threatened? By the President of the United States? This is yet another example of disrespect and delegitimatizing this president.”

RELATED: Why Won’t Black People Let Newt Gingrich Help Them?

Rev. Al then played a fairly comprehensive rundown of clips that featured prominent Republicans behaving disrespectfully toward the President, including Rep. Joe Wilson‘s infamous “You lie!” moment. Speaking of lying, Sharpton also noted Gov. Brewer’s dueling descriptions of her 2010 meeting with the President, which was the genesis of the tarmac dispute.

“So Governor Brewer,” Rev. Sharpton said, “when were you telling the truth? When you just walked out of the meeting and told the press in front of the White House, with a smile on your face, how it was cordial and how the tone was very good, positive, or when you wrote a book saying it was condescending, and he was lecturing you?”

He also characterized Brewer’s handing of a letter to the President as political grandstanding. That letter centers around what sounds like an invitation for the President to be lectured by Brewer, to learn at her knee, if you will. “I’d love an opportunity to share with you how we’ve been able to turn Arizona around with hard choices that turned out to be the right ones,” it reads.

Joe Madison weighed in by pointing out that even a small child knows it is disrespectful to point in someone’s face, and related some suggestions he got from his radio audience, including bending back her finger, to having the Secret Service jack Brewer up. “I give the President of the United States credit for doing what?” Madison said. “Walking away.”

Madison also told Rev. Al to add to his dis list Newt Gingrich’s (and others) tendency to refer to the President simply as “Obama,” and Republicans’ demands to see the President’s grades. “Excuse me,” Madison said, “what 50-year-old-plus man has to provide his grades? What, getting elected as the president of the Harvard Review is not enough?”

He continued, “This is nothing more, and I’ll just say it straight up. There are some people, not all, in this country who cannot stand the fact that this is an African-American who is now one of the most powerful individuals on the planet. And there are those who cannot consciously and subconsciously handle it.”

“You know you’re not going to get a debate from me,” Rev. Al replied. “They brought race in. They put a race deck on the table. If you pull a card, it’s a race card because they set the deck.”

What you have to ask yourself is not whether Republican leaders have been disrespectful to this president, but whether they have done so in ways that white presidents have not had to deal with. The same holds true for liberal critics of the President, are they treating him as they would a white Democratic president?

This doesn’t have to mean that all of these folks hate black people. People like Gov. Brewer and Speaker Gingrich ought to ask themselves if they have succumbed to something more insidious, this tendency in white media culture (or as I call it, “media culture”) to promote, at best, informality with (and among) black people, the effect of which is to lower the inhibition to behave bluntly.

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC:

RELATED: Al Sharpton Plays Dr. Frankenstein To Create His Perfect GOP Candidate

“Is it fair that millionaires pay a lower tax rate than their own secretaries?” was the first variation of Sharpton’s question, to which the Congressman replied that he had seen the State of the Union address and “what we heard last night was a campaign speech.” Sharpton called his reply “talking points” and asked the question again. “They actually don’t, according to the IRS,” Rep. Huelskamp replied. Asked again, with Sharpton citing a statistic that the average American taxpayer paid around 30%, the guest denied it, once again. Sharpton finally gave up trying to assert the statistics as true and simply asked, “if those statistics that I reported are true, is it fair?” “It’s not true.” This gridlock continued for a bit.

“What I’m trying to bring home to the American people is that you guys can’t discuss fairness,” Sharpton finally argued. Sharpton then turned to the Congressman’s district in Kansas, and noted that most people there make less in a year than Romney would make in a day, and insisted again that Romney paid less than average taxes. “He’s paying 14%. We’re not guessing– he released it,” Sharpton said of Romney, and Rep. Huelskamp responded that “fairness isn’t the end result, it’s the opportunity,” so what rich people pay in taxes should not particularly matter.

After Sharpton continued in this vein for some time, the Congressman turned and asked if he could interrupt to ask a question. “I’ve got to go,” Sharpton replied, while he replied “let’s not be envious.” The mischievous glint in Rep. Huelskamp’s eye preceded this question: “What is your income a year?” “I can tell you my tax rate is the same as the people,” Sharpton replied. “What’s your income, what do you make on this show?” And with that, the segment ended in fireworks.

The segment via MSNBC below:

January 23 is also the birthday of Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who, it should be noted, only won that one morning, and perhaps most fittingly, late Battleship Potemkin director Sergei Eisenstein. Most DC media types will tell you that they’ve never met a Politico reporter who wouldn’t push a baby down the stairs to get a story.

The nearly six minute video includes roastimonials from the likes of David Gregory, Bob Schieffer, Donald Trump,  Katie Couric, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Willie Geist, Diane Sawyer, Tom Brokaw, Candy Crowley, Luke Russert, Greta Van Susteren, Chris Matthews, Jonathan Karl, Andrea Mitchell, Steve Scully, Jamal Simmons, Norah O’Donnell, Erin Burnett, Alex Wagner, Dan Rather, Al Sharpton, Mark Halperin, Dylan Ratigan and Arianna Huffington. FishbowlDC‘s Betsy Rothstein collects some of the funnier quotes:

Politico is “truly a news organization that acts its age: a petulant five-year-old concerned with only trivial matters,” host of “MTP” David Gregory says with a smile.

With a few repeats and some intensive listening, Arianna Huffington can be understood as saying, “Just as I was sitting down to write this, I saw that Mike Allen had already broken what I was going to say.”

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” host Willie Geist remarks, “I’ve gotta recuse myself because I don’t care for Politico, inside the Beltway gossipy garbage. And CBS “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer cracks, “The next thing you know, you’ll be getting your driver’s license.”

I don’t know that I can top any of them, but I will add this: Why did the Politico reporter cross the road? I don’t know, but give it 5 minutes, and FishbowlDC will have a plog post about it. Probably without a photo.

Even though we don’t go for this kind of self-promotion, the video is fun, and Politico has earned every second of it. Happy Birthday, Politico.

To remind everyone, here is what Phil Griffin said at the TCA concerning Buchanan.

“The ideas he put forth aren’t really appropriate for national dialogue, much less the dialogue on MSNBC.”

If that is now Griffin’s litmus test with regards to Buchanan, it will be one that people will use to examine the records of all other MSNBC contractual talent. And here’s where the trouble begins for MSNBC because if the person at MSNBC with the most baggage and history of controversial, provocative, and (some would argue) hate producing commentary at the network is Pat Buchanan, the person with the second largest amount of baggage and history of controversial, provocative, and (some would argue) hate producing commentary at the network is Al Sharpton. By using the “appropriate for national dialogue” litmus test on Buchanan, MSNBC is all but inviting the same litmus test to be applied to Sharpton. And Sharpton would fail that test just as Buchanan apparently has.

This would put MSNBC in a real quandary. If it takes Buchanan out, but leaves Sharpton in place, it’s opening itself up for a whole bunch of questions it really doesn’t want to answer. It will be forced to discuss how Buchanan’s controversial history is not appropriate to the point that he has to be taken off the air, but Sharpton’s at times even-more inflammatory rhetoric and history, remains on. MSNBC doesn’t want to discuss that. It’s a lose-lose scenario.

The subject would next parry to how MSNBC could justify keeping Sharpton on the air if it got rid of Buchanan. Another lose-lose scenario. The conventional wisdom is Sharpton appeals to the Progressive demographic and that’s a core constituency MSNBC does not want to alienate right now because of the perceived threat from the even more leftward bent Current TV. Some would say MSNBC is paranoid about Current TV. I think the threat is vastly overstated because Current hasn’t shown that it can even do the most basic rudimentary cable programing things correctly. Look at Keith Olbermann’s set, or the network’s premature cut-out of the Iowa caucuses. And then there’s the hiring of Jennifer Granholm who isn’t exactly a progressive firebrand of the type that Olbermann and Cenk Uygur are. Given all that, plus the Al Gore-backed channel’s poor distribution, one could easily argue that Fox Business Network is a bigger threat to CNBC than Current is to MSNBC.

NEXT>>>>Continue to page 2 of the article here

The exchange was heated, but brief, as co-anchor Rachel Maddow comically saved the day with the cheery declatarion, “Look! It’s Rick Perry!”

Rev. Al Sharpton began by observing that, rather than heading into New Hampshire with a focus on President Obama, Mitt Romney now “has got to run against Santorum, and the longer that narrative plays, the better it is for the President.”

Sizing up the danger that Santorum presents to Romney, Schultz said “I’ve seen him on the stump. He does talk about manufacturing. He talks about repatriating money coming back into the United States. Zero percent when it comes to corporate tax. I mean, he does have a manufacturing plan, which is going to play well in New Hampshire.”

“That is not a manufacturing plan,” O’Donnell cut in. “That is a big corporate tax break that produces absolutely…”

“That is his pitch, Lawrence,” Schultz replied. “I’ve seen it. I was there.”

After a few more seconds of heated back-and-forth, just when it started to get good, The Rachel Maddow Show‘s Rachel Maddow cut through the tension by cheerily exclaiming, “Look! It’s Rick Perry!”

The segment resembled nothing so much as a heated Thanksgiving dinner that ends with mom piping up “Who wants pie?!?”

To many liberals, it may seem as if Schultz is getting carried away with Rick Santorum, whom he has compared favorably with President Obama, and whose retail politicking earned raves from Schultz last week. Santorum is so despised by liberals that they tend to dismiss him, as Maddow does, but if you’re going to cover a Republican primary, you can’t think like a liberal. The things that make Santorum repugnant to liberals are the very keys to his success in GOP primaries, particularly Iowa.

Schultz’s point, I believe, wasn’t about the merits of Santorum’s plan, but about the appeal of manufacturing rhetoric, while O’Donnell was having a different conversation entirely. The plan calls for tax-free repatriation of profits, as long as the funds are used to purchase manufacturing equipment. Santorum says this will spur manufacturing, but critics say it’s just a giveaway to corporations that will be used for purchases they were going to make anyway.

Ed’s assessment of Santorum’s retail skills is dead-on, and he’s right about how Santorum’s plan will play with voters, but it is also necessary to go over the substance of the issue. I’d have been interested to see if Schultz would have done that, had O’Donnell given him the chance. It’s also worth considering whether O’Donnell jumped all over Schultz out of anti-Santorum zeal, or because of some sour-grapey unresolved resentment over Schultz’s takeover of O’Donnell’s 8pm time slot. Maybe it was a bit of each.

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC:

RELATED: Some Dude In The Background Of This Live Fox News Segment Reeeeeeeeally Likes Mitt Romney

Hilariously, the camera lingered for what felt like an eternity on this random guy behind Yepsen. While Yepsen answered questions, a star was born when this bewhiskered young man (a potential caucus voter?) was caught in the background gazing off into the distance.

Admittedly, as a Brooklynite, regularly checking in on Foursquare at Williamsburg’s Barcade, I’ve been prone to sport the scruffy, ragamuffin look myself, but I’d probably try to avoid broadcast cameras while engaging in such bohemian revelry. Though perhaps producers intentionally framed the shot in this way without the guy’s knowledge. In any case, it made for a surreal live shot.

Watch some random hipster dude photobomb legendary Iowa political reporter David Yepsen below via MSNBC:

The fact that the Klan used such a phrase isn’t surprising. “Keep America American” does have an unmistakable nativist ring to it, and on that basis, perhaps Romney has earned some criticism. He and his fellow candidates have turned immigration into a third rail with a nuclear reactor on it, mercilessly attacking any candidate who shows a scintilla of reason on the subject.

However, the AmericaBlog piece, entitled “Romney adopts KKK slogan: ‘Keep America American,’” is a bit of a stretch, and it’s kind of meant to be:

He’s said it repeatedly for over a year now.  Here is Romney a year ago, using the Klan slogan in a campaign ad.

Romney said it again four days ago.

In an era in which it’s apparently okay for Republicans to accuse President Obama of being a socialist, I guess we now need to ask if Mitt Romney is a Ku Klux Klansman.  Not whether Romney inadvertently is using the KKK’s number one slogan from the 1920s on the stump, no, the Republicans would say, if this were a Democrat, that clearly the candidate was a closet member of the KKK.  So, is Mitt Romney a closet member of the KKK?  Keep in mind, that even Romney is now claiming, between the lines, that President Obama is a socialist.  So why shouldnt’ America be asking if Mitt Romney is a Klansman?

First of all, there are only two examples of Romney using the phrase given, and I couldn’t find any others. That hardly constitutes “adoption” of a phrase, and the headline also implies that Romney has adopted it as a slogan, rather than that it’s a slogan that he has taken to saying. As far as that goes, I’d prefer almost anything to Romney’s actual slogan, Believe in America, as if our country is the Tooth Fairy, or a leprechaun, or science.

Also, the “campaign ad” they embed in the story doesn’t appear to be anything of the sort. It’s definitely not a Romney ad, and it doesn’t even look like a PAC ad, but rather, a homemade video by a supporter. It’s a small point, perhaps, because Romney did actually say “Keep America American” in that clip from CPAC, but it’s worth noting.

The blog post itself is intended more as a way to call Romney (and other “mainstream” Republicans) out for leveling the ridiculous charge of “socialism” at President Obama than it is about actually making the case that Romney is a kloset Klansman.

From there, though, the narrative has graduated to MSNBC’s dayside news programming, although briefly. Anchor Thomas Roberts followed news of Christine O’Donnell‘s endorsement of Romney by saying, “So you may not hear Mitt Romney say ‘Keep America American’ anymore. That’s because it was a central theme of the KKK in the 1920s, it was a rallying cry for the group’s campaign of violence and intimidation against blacks, gays and Jews. The progressive blog AmericaBlog was the first to catch on to that.”

Here’s the video of Roberts’ brief report, followed by the “campaign ad” cited in the AmericaBlog report:

Update: Inside Cable News points out that, according to Robert Sickels‘ The 1940s, Republic Steel encouraged the use of the phrase in a GI-themed ad campaign, although Sickels doesn’t say whether it ever caught on.

Update 2: An NBC insider tells Mediaite that NBC News President Steve Capus addressed this story this morning at an editorial meeting, and stressed the need for accuracy, fairness, and caution before proceeding. Capus is reportedly furious at the way the story was handled, and MSNBC is in the process of apologizing to the Romney campaign.

Update 3: On Hardball tonight, host Chris Matthews issued a public apology to the Romney campaign for the “appalling judgment” used in reporting this story.

“During the 11AM hour on MSNBC,” Mathhews said, “we reported on a blog item that compared a phrase used by the Romney campaign to one used by the KKK in the 1920s. It was irresponsible and incendiary of us to do this and showed an appalling lack of judgment. We apologize to the Romney campaign.”

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC:

Update 4: Rev. Al Sharpton reinforced the apology on Politics Nation, agreeing that MSNBC “did the right thing” by apologizing:

RELATED: SNL Mocks Al Sharpton And His MSNBC Show

Sharpton teased his own SNL segment with several seconds of his own imitation of Thompson’s imitation of himself, pretending to be confused about what camera to speak into and chiding his producer with “you guys don’t go to church! Where’s the health care package?” He then came back from commercial and asked how the audience’s weekend had been, playing an abridged version of the sketch– his insistence on calling Politico‘s Jim VandeHei “Jim VandeHeeho” and, later, asking if “Republicans are Nazis trying to blueberry steal pie out the box.”

Sharpton ceded that SNL “got me pretty good” and was happy to have fun with the show, noting that some Facebook fans thought the parody was harsh but “I thought it was hilarious. “I’m not a big fan of teleprompters and there’s a lot of red lights out there,” he ceded, but added a word of advice to Thompson: “if you’re going to do me, you’ve got to lose a little weight. Leave the blueberry pie alone.” Then Sharpton made one final, confusing cut to Hardball.

RELATED: Al Sharpton’s New ‘Lean Forward’ Ad Is About Republicans Stealing Blueberry Pie

Sharpton’s teaser and SNL end segment via MSNBC below:

RELATED: Al Sharpton’s New ‘Lean Forward’ Ad Is About Republicans Stealing Blueberry Pie

Thompson goofed on Sharpton’s idiosyncratic mannerisms, and jokingly called the Republicans blueberry pie-stealing Nazis. The skit’s coup de grâce came at the end though where Thompson quoted near-verbatim Sharpton’s legendary teleprompter flub . “But resist, we much… we must… and we will much… about… that… be committed.”

Watch Thompson channel the MSNBC host below via NBC:

It will come as a surprise to no one that the Rev. Sharpton firmly believes the rich need to pay more taxes, and that the poor and unemployed ought to be protected more. Sharpton has never claimed to be a “news anchor,” so seeing him advocate for a position on his 6pm program, PoliticsNation, is not just unsurprising, it is to be expected, and the show appears to be slowly building an audience.

Sharpton had on Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) to discuss a payroll tax plan bill that was being voted on in session last night, and during the segment, producers had a ticker run across the screen naming each state, and the number of tens of thousands of “millionaires protected” by the GOP, who ostensibly opposed Menendez sponsored bill, at the expense of some thousands or millions of workers in the state.

These are fair arguments for Sharpton to make on his show, and on his website, but on the ticker? Those tickers have always represented some form of breaking news, straight news, not advocacy, so there is a real and legitimate concern that a viewer watching a news network, like MSNBC, would and should expect news, not opinion, there. As a viewer, I now have to presume that not only are MSNBC’s prime time programs pure opinion, but the news tickers as well?

What’s next? Ominous music with a deep voiced announcer coming on and saying “this is a special report” and then Sharpton coming out and announcing that “It’s official, Newt Gingrich is a ne’er-do-well?”

Opinion media has its place in the cable news landscape, but when advocacy has breached the last protected vestige of infotainment – the Ticker — well maybe its time to stop calling it news at all.

Update: a Mediate tipster points out that The Ed Show has been doing these tickers for weeks. This, of course, doesn’t make Ed Schult or his producers any better (or worse) it just suggests that this Ticker-tainment style might be MSNBC policy and not just about Sharpton.

Watch a portion of the segment below, courtesy of MSNBC:

Cleaver felt that much of the commentary surrounding Gingrich’s comments aren’t “conservative statements” so much as “mean-spirited statements.” He continued:

I grew up poor; I know poor people. There are poor people who are in the Republican party who don’t deserve to have somebody say that the only thing they want to do is commit crimes. And it would seem to me that, if Mr. Gingrich is really interested in trying to stop crime, he would try to work to get some charges filed against the 25 top hedge fund managers who collectively earned 11.1 billion dollars. But he’s going to attack poor people, and the hope, of course, is that they’re not going to turn out to vote.

I don’t think that this is Republicanism. It is not conservatism. I think this is Gingrichism and that the public is going to eventually catch on and Mr. Gingrich will follow the people who also rose to the top of the polls in the Republican party.

Sharpton then showed a clip of Gingrich saying that people are now using food stamp money to fund trips to Hawaii, adding that food stamps are now being “given to millionaires.” Cleaver said this could be dealt with rather simply: By asking Gingrich for the names and addresses of the millionaires who have been committing fraud by accepting and using food stamps.

Have a look, via MSNBC:

RELATED: MSNBC’s ‘Lean Forward’ Promo Campaign Moves To ‘Next Level’ With New Spots

The spot consists almost exclusively of a Sharpton childhood story, when his mother and others in the neighborhood would make blueberry pie. Blueberry pie is very blue, making it rather obvious when one has stuffed one’s face with it. Nonetheless, little Sharpton would attempt to claim he was not the culprit, but to no avail.

“Guess what happens when I look at the GOP?” Sharpton suddenly asks. What happens [SPOILER ALERT] is that Sharpton hears Republicans claim they were fighting for the middle class– “they talk about ‘the economy’s bad’ and ‘we didn’t do it,’” he explains– but! “They got the blueberry pie all over their face! They were the ones eating the pie!”

So remember, folks, as you prepare for Thanksgiving festivities tonight: if you count your blueberry pies before dinner and a few seem to have gone missing, Al Sharpton suggests starting your search in Grover Norquist‘s cupboard.

RELATED: Watch Keith Olbermann Write A Special Comment (And More From “Lean Forward”)

Watch the pitch-perfect for the holidays spot via MSNBC here:

[h/t TV Newser]

Remarking on the court’s failure to prosecute Sandusky in 1998 after he admitted to having showered with a young boy, Murphy noted that Pennsylvania considers it “child sexual exploitation” to shower naked with a child and that Penn State’s clout interfered with the court’s ability to properly seek justice for the young boys Sandusky victimized over a 15 year period. As Murphy continued listing Sandusky’s crimes against children, her voice grew higher and louder, her anger and frustration palpable. At one point, she referred to the school as “Perp State” university not only for its repeated failure to appropriately report and deal with Sandusky’s criminal behavior, but for actually protecting a rapist:

RELATED: Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher: Penn State Scandal Is ‘A Crime Against Humanity’

People at Penn State — ooo, I mean, PERP STATE — university knew what he was doing; he had a pattern. And they covered it up because they care more about their damn reputation and scandal and money and damn football than they care about little boys being anally and orally raped over and over again!

Penn State should shut its damn doors, if you ask me. They should hang their heads in shame.

Well. This is one case where anger on an evening is very much warranted. Also: Kudos to Murphy for referring to these crimes as rape and not a “sex scandal.”

Have a look, via MSNBC:

RELATED: Bill O’Reilly Asks Dr. Marc Lamont Hill: Where Are Jackson And Sharpton On Herman Cain?

Washington Times reporter Kerry Picket caught up with Sharpton and asked him for a few words on Cain. While he noted that “I don’t think anyone knows the ins and outs of it but him and the ladies involved,” he did say he was “troubled” by the fact that Cain had “given different stories in different times” in a way that had undermined his credibility.

As to O’Reilly’s suggestion that his silence on Cain had been partisan, Sharpton replied that there was no silence at all. “I’ve spoken on a number of platforms about his inconsistencies,” he noted. “I think Bill O’Reilly’s problem is that I’m not saying what he wants me to say… not that I’m not speaking, but that I’m not singing Mr. O’Reilly’s song.” He concluded suggesting O’Reilly “should check with me before he asks me to talk.”

The interview via Washington Times below:

RELATED: TheGrio Columnist On MSNBC: If Herman Cain Could Become The ‘Color Of Water’ He Would Do It

“There’s nothing to jump into the game for,” Hill replied when asked why Sharpton and Jackson had not done so, as “their interest is justice, just like my interest is justice.” “I don’t think anything unjust is happening to Herman Cain,” he argued, noting that, as a presidential candidate, “he’s getting exactly what he deserves.” O’Reilly asked him to clarify, as none of the sexual harassment accusations were specific, to which Hill noted he didn’t believe the presumption of guilt was fair, but that Cain wasn’t receiving that so much as the standard media scrutiny that comes with running for President. Here the two difference. “We have a presumption of innocence in this country, and that is not in play right now,” O’Reilly argued, noting that the presumption of innocence is a cultural courtesy aside from its legal function after Hill argued that Cain wasn’t being convicted of a crime.

RELATED: Jonathan Capehart: White Republicans Afraid To Criticize Cain Because He’s Black

O’Reilly insisted that this was a political issue, however, and not a race one. “If this were a liberal politician, you can’t sit there and tell me Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton wouldn’t be screaming bloody murder,” O’Reilly argued. As they were civil rights activists and this isn’t a civil rights issue, however, Hill contended they had no place in the matter. Neither did they then, O’Reilly replied, with Tawana Brawley or OJ Simpson. “What you’re saying is that they’ve been wrong two times,” Hill replied, “now they should be wrong again with Herman Cain.” O’Reilly replied simply, “that’s rich!”

O’Reilly gave Hill the last word after expressing his very strong disbelief in the idea that Sharpton and Jackson were acting out of a “lesson learned” from past experiences, a point Hill reiterated, adding that the media scrutiny was just for a Presidential candidate.

The debate via Fox News below:

The MSNBC host’s surreal segment — which must be seen to be believed — featured a deadpan Sharpton corresponding with his virtual body double using a matte special effect. “I need reinforcements to try to help us understand where Willard (referring to Romney) really stands,” Sharpton said, turning to a visual facsimile of the MSNBC host. “I’d like to welcome a very special guest to Politics Nation, welcome, Rev!”

“Hello, Al,” responded Sharpton’s splitting image. “Glad, I could join me.” The Reverend then played various instances where the Massachusetts Governor changed his positions, as when he said he would “preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose” only to later opine that he supported the “sanctity of life from the beginning to the end.” Sharpton also played similar clips relating to Romney’s flip flops on gun rights and health care.

“My head is spinning,” exclaimed the MSNBC host. “Mine too!” responded his twin. “I’m seeing double!”

Sharpton’s stunt was meant to underscore the inconsistencies of Romney, but the agonizingly goofy special effect sabotaged his underlying point. Has America’s attention spans dwindled so much that we need our cable news hosts using hokey gimmickry out of The Parent Trap?

Watch Sharpton’s segment below via MSNBC:

(h/t HuffPo)

“But you didn’t, at the same time, demand that Hamas give up terrorism,” Mr. Koch continued, “that it recognize the state of Israel, and that if there were successful negotiations, recognize it as a Jewish state, and also end its charter, which says that every Jew who came to Palestine after 1917 must be expelled.  You didn’t say that.”

According to Mayor Koch, the President replied, ”I thought I did.”

Koch says that he’s “back on board the bus” now, thanks to his conversation with the President, and to the speech that he gave to the United Nations general assembly a few weeks ago, which also saw the President’s approval surge among Israelis. Hizzoner says he will campaign for the President’s reelection. “He said he needs me, and he said my voice is heard outside of New York,” Koch told Sharpton.

Koch also said that the White House should take a very hard line with Iran over the recently-uncovered plot to assassinate a Saudi diplomat on US soil. “The United States, in my judgment,” he said, “should say to Iran that any attack upon Saudi Arabia or Israel will be deemed by us as an attack upon the United States, and we will retaliate immediately.”

“If he did that,” Mr. Koch added, “instead of getting 78 percent of the Jewish vote and hopefully 78 percent of the Arab vote, he’ll get 90 percent in both cases.”

Sharpton and Koch also waxed nostalgic about the Mayor’s 1977 jailing of Sharpton, and related it to the current Occupy Wall Street protests, of which Koch is supportive, “as long as they’re peaceful.”

“I join them,” Koch said of the protesters’ ire at Wall Street. “I think that it is an outrage that no CEO, no CFO of any corporation, major corporation on Wall Street or the banks has been convicted and sent to jail for having engaged in criminality and bringing on the Great Recession.”

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC’s PoliticsNation:

He told his panel, “I just want to assure you at the outset I wasn’t trying to instruct anyone on how to handle themselves at that time in the South, or any parents.  And I think if I had been a parent in that situation at that time, I probably would have given the exact advice Herman Cain’s father gave his children.”

You would never know that from the way O’Donnell actually posed his question to Cain about his father’s advice.  His question, “Where do you think black people would be sitting on the bus today if Rosa Parks had followed your father`s advice?” was a clear indictment of that advice, and an accusation of racial cowardice. Whatever O’Donnell was trying to do, this is what he actually did, and he should have acknowledged that.

He also accused Cain of “sitting on the sidelines” during the Civil Rights movement, another clear implication of cowardice, and an obvious shaming tactic, although now he says, “I was trying to highlight, there was a moral question in front of you, history came to your doorstep.  Do you have regrets?  That`s all I was asking about.  Do you have any regrets about how you handled it?”

Had he actually asked that question, O’Donnell might have gotten an illuminating answer. As his panel pointed out, there are fair questions to be asked about Cain’s attitudes then, and now.

O’Donnell’s panel, meanwhile, fleshed out some of the contradictions of Herman Cain’s candidacy and personal story that illustrate just which opportunities O’Donnell missed by attacking Cain the way he did. Rev. Al Sharpton observed, “when he calls demonstrators in the ‘Occupy Wall Street movement,’ many of who are operating in the tradition of these same tradition of public demonstrations the civil rights movement did then and now, when he calls that un-American, I think that`s a legitimate question to ask him, because how can you call people un-American for assembling and protesting now and not then have considered those same tactics un-American then?”

Cain’s expressed gratitude for Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights movement also cuts against his view that people ought to “blame themselves” if they’re unemployed, or if they’re not rich, and also against the greater individualist narrative it illustrates. While Cain shouldn’t be shamed for following his father’s advice, and for working within the system to become a success, neither should he act like he did it all himself. The Civil Rights issue is a vivid example of collective action succeeding where “personal responsibility” could not, but the principle applies broadly.

Just as all Americans share in the building of successful businesses, so do those businesses share some responsibility for the inequity that has resulted. Every wealthy individual and corporation stood on our backs to get onto that ladder, and now that the rungs are all broken, fixing them is our problem alone. Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan, for example, overwhelmingly shifts the burden of maintaining that ladder onto the folks who can’t even reach it.

O’Donnell also missed a great opportunity when he nonsensically asked Cain when it was that he “chose to be straight,” a showboating question with no real value. Instead, he could have asked Cain to square his gratitude for the Civil Rights movement (which, among other things, recognized the rights of black people to marry whoever they wanted to) with his opposition to marriage equality.

With the benefit of hindsight, O’Donnell told Melissa Harris-Perry that he didn’t “want to oversimplify the menu of choice that existed for black families in the South at that time,” although that’s exactly what he had done when he suggested that Cain “sat on the sidelines” rather than participating in demonstrations.

Harris-Perry wisely identified the problem with the manner of O’Donnell’s questions. She said that she was “squirming with discomfort” while watching the interview, and in explaining that discomfort, kindly employed the “royal we,” rather than point the finger directly at her colleague. “When we are not facing the lynchers’ noose,” she said,  ”when we are not facing that imminent violence, ourselves, we have to be extremely careful about even the implication that those who did not participate were necessarily cowards.”

She pointed out that “it was always simply a minority of African-Americans who were engaged at any point in the civil rights movement because it was a life and death question.”

The implication of O’Donnell’s questions, though, was that any black person who didn’t participate was a coward, when in fact, just being black in the Civil Rights era was an act of bravery. The cowards were the people they fought, the people who sought to preserve a legacy of oppression and murder. The cowards were those white people who had access to the levers of power, who knew that system was wrong, and who did nothing.

Harris-Perry also nailed the inherently racist double-standard embedded in the Civil Rights line of questioning. “I can`t remember anyone ever asking a white politician who is of the same age where they were during the sit ins. As you pointed out in your interview, there were white students who came down to be part of freedom summer. There were white allies at every point.”

“Yet we don’t consider it a litmus test for white politicians to have had enough moral courage, ethical vision and American value to have participated actively in the civil rights movement,” she continued, pointing out that military service is a common such litmus test. “I”m worried when we don’t ask white politicians about their patriotism related to how they have or have not stood up for racial equality.”

Sharpton and Taylor went on to criticize Cain over his “brainwashing” remarks, but Harris-Perry extended that criticism, that black people don’t think for themselves, that they vote as a herd, to some liberals, as well. “…you hear a lot on the left these days calling African-American
voters Obamabots, or Obama drones, for continuing to support the president of the United States,” she said. “… that is precisely the kind of infantilizing of adult persons who are citizens of these United States that is so troubling…it was troubling to hear Herman Cain do it. It is trouble when it happens from white allies on the left.”

To be fair, O’Donnell obviously recognized some of the problems with his interview, as evidenced by the time he spent on this. He even closed the second segment by reminding viewers that “Melissa Harris-Perry is not the only friend of mine who had exactly that uncomfortable reaction to what they were watching.”

But for a guy whose stock-in-trade is to graciously offer interview subjects the chance to apologize for things, O’Donnell conspicuously took a pass here.

Here’s the video for both segments, from MSNBC:

Part 1:

Part 2:

O’Donnell replayed key parts of his interview along with comments Cain made at the Values Voter Summit yesterday accusing O’Donnell of veering into absurdity, and promptly gave the floor to Sharpton, who did not consider any of O’Donnell’s questions out of line. “I don’t see where you instructed him on how to be black or anything else,” he noted, but rather, “it is Mr. Cain who has decided to call blacks brainwashed,” which opened him up to criticism on his positions on the matter. He also argued that Cain attacking the Occupy Wall Street protests made his role in the Civil Rights movement fair game: “How can you call people unamerican for assembling and protesting now and not have considered those same tactics unamerican then?”

RELATED: Herman Cain And Lawrence O’Donnell Duke It Out On The Last Word

Harris Perry was far less comfortable with O’Donnell’s interview, though she did not say anything negative about O’Donnell’s performance but, rather, how his questions reflected the place black politicians have in American society. She told O’Donnell the interview had her “squirming with discomfort” because of the potential “implication that those that did not participate were necessarily cowards,” warning that “we have to be so careful when we are not facing that imminent violence ourselves.” She noted it was only a minority that participated in protests and, furthermore, this was a non-issue for white politicians. “I can’t remember anyone ever asking a white politician who is of the same age where they were during the sit-ins,” she noted, adding that it “worried” her when white politicians did not face the same challenges to their patriotism.

RELATED: Lawrence O’Donnell’s Racially Charged Attacks A Political Gift To Herman Cain

On his end, O’Donnell justified his questions arguing that it was worth putting the questions on the table: “we can go into those conversations without presuming there is a right or wrong answer.” Taylor jumped in to add that had Cain not been “righteously indignant at the questions” but had explained himself in a more appropriate way, or fessed up to simply not participating without being angered by the question, he would have found his response more adequate. Sharpton also added that he felt the questions were appropriate precisely because Cain’s “brainwashed” comment had “totally discarded the fact that it was based on public policy” and the role of Democratic Party had in passing civil rights legislation.

The segment via MSNBC below:

Sharpton appeared to not be entirely surprised by receiving a birthday gift (there was a giant “HAPPY BIRTHDAY REV” sign behind him, after all) but did seem to have been taken by surprise that his gift wasn’t an on-air cake or dog and pony show, but… Newt Gingrich. Gingrich himself joked that “I figured I would be the least likely phone call you’d get tonight,” especially to praise him for his political work. The two had gone on a trip to promote education awareness where, Gingrich noted, Sharpton “did a lot of good things.” “I watched you speak up with courage and toughness on behalf of children,” Gingrich noted, telling Sharpton that, while he disagreed with him on most things, he was thankful for the enthusiasm.

RELATED: Classic Shoutfest: Sharpton And Steele Battle Over Rick Perry’s ‘Black Cloud’ Remark

It was a bizarre display of bipartisanship that, for fans of Gingrich and Sharpton alike, will only make them like their man more– a low-key if not entirely surreal birthday present from the Politics Nation team.

The segment via MSNBC below:

Mark Smith, the AP reporter who wrote the story, commented on the debate exclusively for Mediaite.

Hayes noted, at the top of the segment, that one of his producers had caught the subtle transcription difference, and made the comparison on-screen. As Hayes read the AP version, MSNBC contributor Karen Hunter reacted with a stunned, “Wow.”

Hayes asked John McWhorter, a contributing editor at The New Republic and a linguistics expert, what he made of this “interpretive transcription?”

McWhorter responded that the g-less version “is actually the correct one,” and noted that part of the President’s electoral success had been partly due to the fact “that he can switch into that dialect. Can you imagine somebody that wasn’t him trying to get away with the beautiful ‘Yes We Can’ line?”

Hunter interjected, “But it wasn’t the droppin’ of the g’s. I think it’s inherently racist to do something like that,” and told McWhorter, “and I think that, for you to sit here and defend it, as if it’s cool, when you know what they’re doing, to me is almost offensive.”

McWhorter argued that Black English is becoming the lingua franca of American youth, and that “America, including non-black America, loves that way of speaking.”

He added that President Obama’s use of that “Black English package” makes him sound “genuine” and “warm,” and “I wish that he would talk more that way while he’s on the trail this week trying to push the jobs bill.”

Hunter conceded that the President “knew who his audience was,” but for them to do that in a publication, you know what that is, and I don’t think it’s acceptable on any level. I teach a journalism class, and I tell my students to fix people’s grammar, because you don’t want them to sound ignorant. For them to do that, it’s code, and I don’t like it.”

McWhorter opined that this kind of folksiness doesn’t sound ignorant in the present day. “I don’t think that a little bit of leaving off a G is gonna make people think, ‘Well, apparently, he’s some sort of unlettered thug, after all.’”

Hayes got a laugh when he said, “I can go both ways on this,” then made the point that, journalistically speaking, the AP’s transcription gave a more accurate impression of the flavor of the speech.

The phenomenon of politicians attenuating their speech to a particular audience, or mood, is nothing new, and the particular habit of g-droppin’ has been noted, extensively, of Republicans like Sarah Palin and George W. Bush. However, not all dialectical observations are created equal, as Sen. Harry Reid will tell you, so Hunter’s concern isn’t completely out of left field. It’s a hackneyed cliché among black stand-up comics that even the most erudite black person can suddenly “black it up” when among black friends and family, but such an observation by an outsider can reasonably smack of contempt, and racial marginalization.

This isn’t simple. You have to evaluate these things on their individual, and sometimes subjective, merits. The “veracity” argument that Hayes makes is also used by the likes of Rush Limbaugh as a fig leaf to excuse things like the “Barack the Magic Negro” minstrel show, whose real purpose is to bait with the term “negro,” and to mock the dialect of Rev. Al Sharpton.

On the other hand, as McWhorter points out, if a journalist decides to leave the g’s in there, it can have the effect of whitewashing the President’s speech, in a way that suggests that there’s something wrong with such a manner of speech. In this case, it’s entirely possible that race played a part in the AP’s reporting, as Hunter contends, but that the effect and intent were not sinister, as McWhorter states. The fact that the President was speaking to the CBC probably made those flourishes stand out more, to black and non-black people alike. We were probably all listening for it, just as the President likely factored in his audience when he chose his manner of speech.

But I think McWhorter is correct, that such flourishes make him sound warmer and more genuine. The point I think they all missed is that the President does sound like this in other settings. After almost four years of covering his candidacy and his presidency, I would note, unscientifically, that the President’s choice of g-usage depends more on the context and purpose of his speech than on the racial makeup of the audience. Is the effect more pronounced in front of a black audience? Maybe, but it’s not as if he needs to bring out the little old lady from Airplane! to translate for him.

I’d also be willing to bet, though, that reporting on speeches with those non-black audiences doesn’t contain the apostrophized quotes, and maybe that’s a problem. As a writer, though, I’m inclined to leave it up to the individual reporter to determine how best to reflect events in his or her reporting. Blanket rulings are the enemy of creativity.

I reached out to Mark Smith, the AP reporter who wrote the article in question, and asked him what he thought of the discussion. Here’s his response:(via email)

Normally, I lean toward the clean-it-up school of quote transcribing – for everyone. But in this case, the President appeared to be making such a point of dropping Gs, and doing so in a rhythmic fashion, that for me to insert them would run clearly counter to his meaning. I believe I was respecting his intent in this. Certainly disrespect was the last thing I intended.

As far as that goes, I take a much more ad hoc approach to transcribing. Usually, if there’s an official transcript, I’ll use that, although if I hear something at a White House briefing that doesn’t make it into  the transcript, I will add it.

For interviews, the transcripts are normally done by our interns, and they are remarkably fastidious about leaving in every “um,” “like,” and other repetitive verbal tics. Paring them down is more art than science, as such spaceholders can convey meaning at times, or chronic brain-freeze at others. The same is true of colloquial tics like the dropped g, or words like “gonna,” “lemme,” etc. In this context, unless copy-and-paste laziness got the better of me, I likely would have quoted the President the same way that Smith did.

But I also would not bristle at Karen Hunter, or Chris Hayes, raising questions about it. The type of “code” that Hunter refers to is the kind of thing that creeps up like water coming to a boil, and it’s better to test that water too early than to become a lobster dinner.

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC:

Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson came out of nowhere to become the star of Thursday night’s debate, but his interview with Sharpton could send him back to Republican primary oblivion, as he refused to make excuses for the ugliness on display at several of this cycle’s debates. Asked an unrelated question by Sharpton, whether  he was disappointed with the tone of some of his opponents, Johnson volunteered his feelings about the audience’s behavior at Thursday night’s debate.

“The booing that occurred last night at the event is not the Republican Party that I belong to,” Johnson began, and said that he “was chomping at the bit to be able to respond to that.”

Johnson said he regretted “not putting my fist down and pounding it” due to his outsider status, but  wished he had stood up and said, “you know, you’re booing a US serviceman who’s denied being able to express his sexual preference? That’s not right. That’s not right and there’s something very, very wrong with that and when it came to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, I think we should’ve repealed that a long time ago.”

Sharpton then followed up by asking about Republican audiences cheering for things like executions and letting uninsured people die, and Johnson, making no excuses for the debate crowds, agreed with him that “this stuff is ugly to the American public.”

“I don’t think there’s any question that we put innocent people to death,” Johnson said, “and I’m not in the camp that wants to punish or put to death one innocent person to put to death 99 that are.”

“And talking about health care and ‘let him die?’ No, that’s not this country. We’re a country of compassion.”

Whatever bump Johnson might have gotten from the debate will surely be blunted by all this talk of “compassion” and “sanity,” neither of which are particular selling points with this year’s conservative base. Perhaps Johnson can take solace in the possibility that not too many conservatives watch Al Sharpton’s show.

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC:

The British newspaper noted that his execution is opposed by Amnesty International, the European Union, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and quoted Al Sharpton as saying the decision was “one of the most egregious examples of injustice I have seen in years.”

Internationally, the plight of Davis has become a cause celebre for opponents of the death penalty, as thousands of rallies and vigils are being held for Davis in cities overseas, including Peru, London, and Hong Kong.

Davis was given the death penalty in 1991 for the murder of an off-duty police officer, but in the years since his conviction, according to Amnesty International, seven of key nine witnesses have recanted or changed their testimony, with several saying they were coerced by police.

But among the 3,251 people on death row in America, why has this case captured the imagination of the international press? The president of the NAACP, Ben Jealous, credits Davis’s media savvy sister, Martina Correia, for keeping his story alive, and harnessing new media to make the case for his innocence, reports the New York Times. Davis is presently a trending topic on Twitter, with users tweeting “Who Is Troy Davis?’

Ultimately, whether Davis is executed, or is saved at the 11th hour, this particular case will continue to fascinate media theorists for years to come for the power of its compelling narrative to net extensive coverage in the worldwide press.

Sharpton highlighted a POLITICO story from yesterday reporting that White House officials were “furious” with Boehner’s demand that President Obama delay his jobs speech. He contrasted this response from the White House’s attitude a few months ago, when they were trying to find common ground with Boehner and singling out tea partiers in Congress for their unwillingness to compromise. An anonymous White House official provided this quote:

“At first, I didn’t think it was Boehner, but his caucus. But maybe not. Maybe it is him.”

Ryan Grim, HuffPo’s Washington bureau chief, thought “a blind quote sent to a Washington publication” was not enough pushback from the White House if they wanted to send a message to the Speaker, and found it odd that Republicans potentially opposed to the President’s jobs plan would not even want to hear him out first.

Sharpton continued to flout the conventional wisdom that Boehner is a moderate Republican leader, pointing out that he pushed Paul Ryan‘s budget plan through the House and forced the chamber to cancel the initial vote on the debt ceiling bill.

“If you look at the track record of John Boehner, he really gives one persona, but the track record is much different than the persona.”

Sharpton and Grim seemed to agree that the president shouldn’t bother negotiating with Boehner, with Grim pointing out the president’s seeming frustration with the strong anti-tax beliefs of almost the entire Republican party. Sharpton thought it would be nice if Congress could show more “bipartisanism,” but it would be hard for the president to deal with “irrational” members of Congress.

If such is the case, Sharpton should take heed, because if Keith Olbermann and Joe Scarborough‘s experience before him have anything to prove, it’s that not knowing the rules at can very quickly cost you your seat. Can a man who has made a career of endorsing make it?

Michael Howard Saul writes for the WSJ:

But in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Mr. Sharpton said he wasn’t aware of any MSNBC rules that prohibit him from endorsing candidates. “I cannot write checks, but I can make endorsements if I choose,” he explained.

Lauren Skowronski, a network spokeswoman, said, “Rev. Sharpton will be adhering to NBC News policies now that he’s an MSNBC host. NBC News prohibits employees from campaigning for candidates without prior consent from management.”

When told that Mr. Sharpton believed he was free to endorse candidates—and just merely barred from making political donations—Ms. Skowronski replied, “I can let you know that Rev. Sharpton is aware of the policy and has agreed to adhere accordingly.”

And it will be important that he does, especially after last falls endorsement mishaps that resulted in the suspensions of Olbermann and Scarborough. One time MSNBC darling Olbermann was suspended after news broke that he had donated, in the maximum amount, to three different democratic candidates without network approval. The offense was reason for immediate and indefinite suspension, which eventually added to his eventual departure.

Meanwhile, Joe Scarborough was forced to serve a two-day suspension after it was pointed out that, like Olbermann, he too had made numerous and generous donations to politicians he had covered on his Morning Joe. Having already taken heat for giving space to Sharpton’s known leftist politics, MSNBC will need to keep an eye out, so as not to appear like a network helmed not by thoughtful pundits, but by a bunch of lobbyists.

Sharpton seems aware that he is is not allowed to “write checks,” the mistake that Olbermann and Scarborough both ended up paying for, but he will have to be careful to reign in his tendency to endorse — and often to endorse loudly — especially as the election approaches. Having acted as an activist and a broader public figure since that mid-1980s, Sharpton’s voice has become a common one in the politics. So common, in fact, that as WSJ’s Michael Howard Saul writes, “for many, watching a significant political race without a Sharpton endorsement will be like observing the Fourth of July without fireworks.”

If Sharpton wishes to maintain his new, nightly platform, it will be vital that he readjust, and having said his piece in the past, he sounds ready to do so. “I have been very supportive of the president, and that has happened pre-MSNBC, and I’ll be on the television dealing with how I feel about the policies.” And anyways, perhaps a short run is all he needs. After all, it doesn’t exactly sound like he’s thinking about staying around for ever: “Where I go after the presidential race, we’ll see.”