And they said it wouldn’t last.
After critics bet on the immediate cancelation of Rev. Al Sharpton’s “PoliticsNation” when it premiered in 2011, the civil-rights-activist-turned broadcaster got the last laugh celebrating the MSNBC show’s 10-year-anniversary at an intimate bash at Rockefeller Center on Tuesday night.
“I’ve lasted longer than most TV hosts of shows,” he told Page Six.
And, he says, “I’ve never missed a show in ten years! I might be the only host who’s never missed a show.”
Sharpton’s MSNBC colleagues Ari Melber, Tiffany Cross, Joy Reid, former president Phil Griffin and current president Rashida Jones, who made history as the first black woman to head a cable news network, were among the guests who came out to celebrate. Sharpton told the crowd, which also included former New York Gov. David Paterson, Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams, and “Bevelations” author Bevy Smith, that working under Jones is “one of the greatest honors.”
“When I started in civil rights, it was not imaginable that you would have a black woman president of a major network, and to see a woman come out of a [historically black college] and take that position, and [me] growing up under Shirley Chisholm [the first black Congresswoman, for whom Sharpton campaigned], being raised by a single black mother, it really gets to me emotionally. I’m so proud to see her perform at the highest level,” he told us.
Sharpton was so moved by the celebration and milestone that he said, “I teared up after I got home. I looked at the poster from the event, and I just had to shed a tear or two because even I didn’t believe it would get this far, but thank God it has.”