It seems that during the time I was out of the country, The Powers That Be at MSNBC decided to replace "Young Turks" host Cenk Uygur with civil rights movement celebrity Al Sharpton as host of the 6 p.m. hour. This move was confusing at first -- I naturally assumed that what I was seeing on the teevee was a result of jet lag or drunkenness, or that my Virgin Atlantic flight had flown through a wormhole into a parallel dimension (Richard Branson features this option on a select number of international flights). But I've come to understand that this Al Sharpton-on-MSNBC stuff is actually a real thing happening in our lives.And that's pretty interesting, seeing as there's no evidence whatsoever that Sharpton has any real talent for hosting a television show or covering the news of the day. Sharpton's well known, of course, for being a fiery and exciting orator with genuine rhetorical talent. Being stuck behind a desk and staring at a teleprompter, however, doesn't seem to suit him at all. In a more restrained space, his speech is halting and tentative, his focus seems scattered, and but for the adequate amplification technologies being deployed, you'd have to term the show "mumblecore."More... (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/28/al-sharpton-msnbc_n_912436.html)