About the most shocking email we’ve ever received here at TBL arrived late last night, while we were catching up on ‘Scrubs’:

“After appearing on the CNN programs Lou Dobbs and Anderson Cooper 360, Jason Whitlock may be on his way to national stardom not as a sportswriter but as a pundit and political commentator.€

The hell? We went to Youtube for evidence and by jolly there it was. Among Whitlock’s greatest hits on Tucker Carlson (and we’re paraphrasing here): ‘Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are domestic terrorists lighting fires and picking everyone’s pocket on the way out of town. Jackson should be down at Duke apologizing to those lacrosse players - he owes them an apology for stirring up that mess. Black America is tired of Jackson.’

Wow. Tucker Carlson, clad in that annoying bowtie, closes with: ‘I nominate you, Jason Whitlock.’

Hold up. Let’s check the trajectory here: KC Star to ESPN, ESPN to Sports Reporters and PTI, and then losing the ESPN TV gigs for talking to a blog. Six months later, he’s becoming a social and political commentator who is having a say in dictating the agenda of black America.

Minutes ago, the wife just called out, ‘there’s a sportswriter on CNN totally destroying Al Sharpton.’ Curious, we checked it out. It was Whitlock! We’ll say this - dude knows how to put Al Sharpton in place. We half expected Sharpton to respond the way Scoop Jackson did when Whitlock blasted him in the interview with us - ‘what’s with the black on black crime?’ Instead, Sharpton remained mostly silent.

Don’t think we’re quite ready to summarize Whitlock’s actions - it’s not even freakin’ 9 a.m. - but this story has consumed us all morning. A sportswriter on the Today show is kind of a big deal; the real good news here is nobody ordered our blog to be blown up.

[Update: After the jump, we've got the transcript of Whitlock vs. Sharpton]


S. O’BRIEN: Well, Don Imus, as we’ve been telling you all morning, is now out of a job. Leading the charge to take him off the air was the Reverend Al Sharpton. But “Kansas City Star” columnist Jason Whitlock says Sharpton’s outrage is focused in the wrong direction.

Both gentlemen are joining us this morning.

Nice to see you. Thank you for talking with us.

First and foremost, Reverend, let’s begin with you. How do you feel today? I mean, what happened was exactly what you had asked for from the get-go. So is vindicated the right word? Do you feel progress was made?

AL SHARPTON, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: No. I think that it’s a lot more to do.

You know, we’ve been fighting this battle the last couple of years, and it intensified about what’s happening on the airwaves, what’s happening in many of our communities. National Action Network, my group, two years ago at our convention said we were going after some of these music companies, some of these people that have polluted airwaves. Have had meetings with the FCC.

Imus fell within the whole spear of that, and certainly within the spear of what we fight, civil rights. So when the National Association of Black Journalists came out and looked and called for his firing, we came out right behind them, and the rest became history. But I think it’s really sad that we have to address these issues.

This is 2007 and have to still talk about these kind of things. How could we feel good about it?

S. O’BRIEN: At the same time, Jason, you said that you actually thought in all of this Imus was “irrelevant and insignificant”. I’m quoting you on that. What do you mean? Why?

JASON WHITLOCK, “KANSAS CITY STAR”: To us. To us as black people, he carries no weight in our community. He has no influence over us. He doesn’t define us.

He’s not the one defining our women as bitches and hos. We know who that is.

Don Imus is insignificant, and we’ve turned him into this all- powerful figure, and actually have put these young women at risk. They’re now being harassed, death threats because people don’t…

S. O’BRIEN: So let me stop you there. Are you saying then it was wrongheaded to go after Don Imus in the way that…

WHITLOCK: I think that an apology should have been demanded from Don Imus, and we should have asked MSNBC and CBS, you guys deal with him. He’s an idiot. And then moved on from there.

The press conferences, the over-the-top picketing, reaction, all, it just all went way too far. Don Imus doesn’t — doesn’t move us, doesn’t carry any weight in our community. He doesn’t define us.

S. O’BRIEN: Then let me get to the Reverend Sharpton, because, of course, you talk about the picketing and the calls for protests. I mean, he’s talking about you.

SHARPTON: Again, my argument is not with him. I think when the young ladies had their press conference they made it very clear when Essence spokes that they were aware of what we were doing and was happy with what we were doing.

So, I mean, again, these girls are very intelligent and speak for themselves. I think the issue now is where we go from here.

Imus was just a portion of preserving the airwaves. And I think you can’t, at one hand, as we have, challenge the hip-hoppers and challenged those that are doing this daily in our community, but I’m also challenging others, saying, because you are big and because you have these presidential candidates and senators on your show, we will take you on.

And he says that MSNBC and CBS should have been told to deal with them. That’s what we did. We told them to deal with him.

S. O’BRIEN: Well, at the same time, though, there are certainly many rappers who use those words all the time, all the time, and have for a long time. And those rappers who, in many cases, are, you know, represented by Universal. Universal is owned by NBC.

I mean, there’s a big connection. That’s a big corporation.

SHARPTON: Exactly.

S. O’BRIEN: So, what’s…

SHARPTON: And that’s part of two things in both the NBC CEO meeting and the meeting with CBS. We said, we’ve got to talk about your other side here, your entertainment side. We’ve got to talk about the fact that many of you are in the business of this whole climate that is devastating our community. And we’ve got to talk about the lack of inclusion of people of color on the airwaves. I mean, if you look at America and look at most of our primetime shows, you don’t even see us. And you don’t see us behind the camera, where maybe if someone was in the studios, then Imus would not have gotten away with this for years.

S. O’BRIEN: Let me give a final question to Jason this morning.

And it’s going to be about a case that we followed, as well, which are these three young men from Duke University who really had their lives ruined for the last year, to put it pretty simply. Do you think that there should have been people marching and calling for justice for them?

WHITLOCK: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

S. O’BRIEN: In all communities?

WHITLOCK: You must maintain the moral high ground. You must have some consistency about you.

Injustice for one is injustice for all. Those young men were exploited the same way these young basketball players have been exploited by Jesse and Al. They run around the country exploiting these young people, making problems where — making the problems much bigger than what they should be.

These three kids down at Duke, these basketball players have been used and exploited, and it’s unfortunate.

S. O’BRIEN: Well, we’re out of time, but I’m going to let you respond for a second.

SHARPTON: Well, I mean, first of all, the young ladies spoke for themselves in their gratitude to us. You never heard people that we fought for. It’s always guys that are not in the ring that want to call the fights.

And that — you know they’re going in the ring. You’re going to have critics. We try to win on behalf of the people we’re fighting for. You can’t satisfy people not involved in the fight.

S. O’BRIEN: Reverend Al Sharpton joining us this morning. Also Jason Whitlock from the “Kansas City Star”.

Gentlemen, I appreciate both of you. Thanks for being with us — Miles.

Imus isn’t the real bad guy (KC Star)