The Reverend Al Sharpton crossed my picket line today.
I wanted to get that out of the way so I don't get charged, down the line, with burying the lead, but before I go Reverend Al on you, I'd like share a little of what's been happening on the Writers' Guild picket line in New York.
I've just come back from my morning picket, a bracing workout if you are a New York writer picketing during what is called a "cold snap," a condition the weathermen here euphemistically refer to as "Nordic." This word has little to do with tall blonde Swedes and a lot to do with the 50 mph sub-freezing winds the ABC suits have apparently paid to whip off the Hudson River and cryonically freeze the dozen or so writers picketing The View every morning. If Dante had been thinking Frozen Tundra instead of Inferno, West 66th Street between West End and the River would be given its own circle. We may be at the tail end of the writer's strike, but it is the dead middle of the New York winter, another sorrowful example of the unfortunate luck we writers seem to be having this year.
We are a ragtag lot, we freezing morning picketers. We're spread across the universe of writing jobs: feature writers, TV writers, late night writers, with an actor or two and somebody's cousin thrown in. We're sometimes lacking in numbers, something we know our West Coast brethren can brag about -- numbers and the warm weather -- and we're not an especially vocal lot. The only chant I've heard since we began the strike was a small chorus of "Heigh ho, scabs must go!" during a large demonstration against All My Children, but I'm pretty sure that was led by a contingent of SAG members who were picketing with us that day. Although we're a fiercely committed group, pep on the picket line, it seems, is not a writerly thing. Mostly we walk in circles and wave our signs at garbage trucks that honk their horns at us in solidarity. For many of us it is easier to write a story than to be living in the red hot -- make that ice cold -- center of it. Early in the strike I had entertained the idea of suggesting a routine to break the boredom: every hour, writers would pair off and instead of singing, "...it's fun to stay at the "Y-M-C-A..." we would sing "...it's fun to strike for the "W-G-A...." The notion of seeing Tom Fontana and Tina Fey forming the letter "W" amused me for two quick picketing turns around the Time-Warner Center until I realized that unless you were that double-jointed girl from Cirque du Soleil, the "G" was going to be just about impossible, especially in winter gear.
I like picketing The View. The audience members waiting to get into the studio are supportive and friendly, Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg have walked the line with us and there's a donut truck nearby. All in all, except for the wind, it's a good picket site. When I arrive this morning, the picket line had been moved from the audience entrance to the front of the building, where celebrities enter. The Reverend Al Sharpton, who has an afternoon call-in radio show in the same studio we are picketing, has been scheduled to appear on The View this morning and we want to make sure he sees our picket line because we know he will not cross it. Sharpton has become something of a national figure since he inserted himself into the 2004 presidential race. He's spent a lot of time working his way up to some sort of level of political acceptability after wandering for decades, reviled and ridiculed, in the Tawana Brawley desert. No way Al Sharpton crosses a picket line. He likes to present himself as a fighter of injustice, a defender of the underdog, and you don't get more underdog and injusticed than a dozen shivering striking writers on an windy winter morning in New York City.
New Yorkers know Reverend Al has never met a camera he didn't like. Today, however, the news photographers who usually hang around the line are missing, no doubt warming themselves at some Starbucks nearby, so we call the New York Times, the Post and the Daily News and ask each of them to send a photographer to cover the event. As we wait, it occurs to me that Al Sharpton is just about the only African-American leader Bill Clinton hasn't invoked when talking trash about Barack Obama. This must be driving Sharpton nuts. In the 2004 Democratic primaries he was a very amusing and soundbite-able debater, but you know your party is in trouble when Al Sharpton seems more interesting than your front runner. Sharpton is a Pentecostal minister and he knows how to deliver a speech. I am an Obama supporter, but I have a friend who is not, and she always says to me, "If all it took to be president was the ability to give a knock-out speech, Al Sharpton would be president."
The View airs live at 11AM in New York. It is 10:15 and there is no sign of Al Sharpton. Someone points out that he might have been made aware of the picket line and canceled his appearance. Certainly, if Al Sharpton were coming to The View he'd have to be at the studio by now for hair and make-up. (Write your own hair joke here; I'm on strike.)
A minute later, an SUV with a carbon footprint the size of, well, Al Sharpton, pulls up to the studio. A burly driver opens the door and Reverend Al gets out. He looks at us. We wave our picket signs at him. "Reverend Al, be a pal," someone on the line says to him, but Sharpton walks right past us, crossing the picket line.
It was, I hate to admit, kind of surprising, the sight of Rev. Al Sharpton crossing our picket line. But what happened next was even worse.
Sharpton came back outside. He was in a rage. He began to scream at us, and I mean really scream, apparently furious that we had put a moral decision between him and Barbara Walters. "What do you want me to do, picket my own radio show?" he yelled, and as Sharpton was yelling that he's only there to do his radio show, a New York Post photographer arrives on a bicycle, and in what must be a first in New York City history, instead of walking toward the camera, Al Sharpton turns on his heels and vanishes into the building.
Most of us didn't know what to make of this confrontation. We were confused, we were hurt, we were angry. Okay, so nobody tried to run us down like they do in LA, but for New York picketing, this was fairly dramatic. One of us thought Sharpton might be telling the truth -- that he was not going on The View but only doing his radio show. Let's call that person "Candide." If Candide were right, that would have excused the picket line crossing, but the rage and the screaming was still unexplainable.
Some mysteries, apparently, are not meant to be solved, so after my picketing shift was over, I went home and turned on the TV. There on The View, dressed in a suit he had possibly borrowed from Nathan Detroit, was Al Sharpton talking politics with Barbara Walters.
Why should this bother me? Why should I be surprised that a guy who lied in 1987 about the rape of a 15 year-old girl and turned it into a racially divisive circus that has dogged both him and race relations in New York City for two decades, would cross a picket line and lie about it? Because somehow, at heart, we all like to think people can change. That no matter how low someone might have fallen there is something inherent in every one of us that attracts us to the light and forgives our years in darkness. I like to believe this is also true about Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone and all the other poobahs who keep me out in the freezing winter with my picket sign and my hopeful New York heart. Pentecostal preachers preach the possibility of change from the pulpit every Sunday morning. Maybe it's time for Al Sharpton to go back to church with the other sinners and learn the lesson, for real this time.
Read more strike coverage on the Huffington Post's writers' strike page.