openpolitics.com

The public life and private doubts of Al Sharpton

After so much work, few things irked him more than the popular notion in the young black community that he was going about it all wrong — that the King model was out of date and the existence of a national civil rights leader was unnecessary, even insulting

.. A young woman greeted him at the entrance, took his jacket and handed him a box of his favorite cigars. “The usual table,” he said, and she led him to an alcove in a far corner of the room, a leather armchair under blue velvet drapes.

This was the Grand Havana Room, an invitation-only cigar club that Sharpton visited almost every night. The other members were mostly Wall Street bankers and advertising executives who left Sharpton to himself. Sometimes he came to smoke cigars and talk business with Michael Jordan, Jay Z or Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, but usually he came alone.

.. “I got a radio show, a TV show, a direct line to the president, and what good is all that if I still can’t get something done when they choke a guy out on tape?”