On Wednesday, NBC’s Today Show featured Matt Lauer doing an interview with MSNBC’s PoliticsNation host Al Sharpton on Sharpton’s new book, The Rejected Stone. “For decades,” said Lauer, “the Rev. Al Sharpton has been front and center on the issue of civil rights. Now the MSNBC and syndicated radio host is sharing the stories of his journey that make him the political figure he is today.” Then Lauer went into a softball interview: “Were you an outcast [when you were a child]?...You talk about learning from your mistakes, learning from your missteps. How did those lessons learned impact the guy you are today? More forgiving?”
Lauer then asked Sharpton about Tawana Brawley: “I’ve known you for a long time. You will forever be associated with the case of Tawana Brawley here in the New York area. For those who aren’t familiar, Tawana Brawley, a young African-American woman, accused a group of white men of beating her terribly and raping her. You made her case your cause, you were very rough on the special prosecutor back there, very hard on the men accused. Turns out Tawana Brawley was lying. And I would imagine in this book you could have taken the opportunity to say, ‘I’m sorry. I screwed up.’ You don’t.”
Sharpton said, “This book is not about cases, this book is about lessons.” Then Lauer jumped in to fill in the blank for Sharpton: “And the lesson you say about this is not let your emotions control you.” Sharpton said, “What I dealt with is that even though I believed her, and represented what I believed, you still don’t make it personal. I may believe you’re wrong but to get into name calling and to get into denigrating you, I think is something that you have to say is not going to help the cause.”
Lauer jumped in once again to help: “And the analogy you use in this book is what you say is the way you dealt with Trayvon Martin, in that you did not make that personal, you made it about the facts.”
That, of course, is nonsense. Sharpton demagogued the Trayvon Martin case just as he has demagogued dozens of cases in the past. Sharpton’s movement on Martin completely ignored the relevant facts. But in the view of NBC News, which infamously cut George Zimmerman’s 911 tape to make him sound like a racist, Sharpton was a truth-teller.
Sharpton jumped on Lauer’s question anyway, stating, “And there was a prosecutor there, there was an accused there, I did not demonize or denigrate the prosecutor, and I never went to the trial, I never went to Zimmerman’s trial…it was about pursuing the justice system to operate right.”
Lauer asked Sharpton if he was a double-edged sword. “I think some double-edged swords are needed if you’re going to draw the kind of attention you need. You need someone to go in and make people say, ‘We’re going to pay attention to that.’”
Then Lauer asked Sharpton how much power he wielded in the Democratic Party. “I mean I think that you hold a more powerful position by staying right where you are because that’s where I’m comfortable….I want to be part of the front guard of the social justice movement.”
Finally Lauer asked Sharpton about how he lost all that weight. Because when faced with one of the great race-baiters of the last several decades, that was a vital question. To which Sharpton immediately responded that he wanted to look good, like Lauer. One hand continues to wash the other over at NBC.