George Lucas (Getty Images)

Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network has announced a list of guests for tomorrow's Triumph Awards. Those to be in attendance include stars like Diddy, Samuel L. Jackson, Tamara Tunie, and director George Lucas. Though Mr. Lucas, whose second Star Wars trilogy featured a crude racial caricature in the form of pidgin-speaking alien Jar Jar Binks, may seem like an offbeat choice at first blush. However, he most recently directed a film about the Tuskeegee Airmen, Red Tails, which represented a rare chance for black actors to carry a big-budget film. After widespread criticism of the "stereotypical" Jar Jar, Mr. Lucas has seemingly redeemed himself. 

The speaker was the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Later, he recalled that he originally took a meeting with MSNBC executives believing that he would be pitching the network on a weekly series. Instead, he was offered a nightly program all his own. He started as a temporary replacement for Ed Schultz at 6 p.m. when Mr. Schultz moved to 10 p.m. in the rejiggering prompted by Keith Olbermann’s departure. Before long, the hour was rechristened PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton.

“The only thing I was worried about was my bosses,” MSNBC president Phil Griffin told The Observer of the decision to name Mr. Sharpton a primary host. “But he’d already been on for a month and a half. If we’d said that he was the permanent host on that first day, I’m not sure we’d have pulled it off.”

MSNBC was willing to let Mr. Sharpton travel (provided he gave enough advance notice to allow for a studio to be provided on the road) and wrote a provision into his contract allowing him to continue his activism, Mr. Sharpton said.

It was less of a leap than it might have appeared. As he pointed out during an interview at his MSNBC office, he’d been a talk-radio host for six years (Keepin’ It Real airs from 8 to 10 p.m. on 1600 AM in New York).

If it weren’t for his civil rights organization, the National Action Network, he added, “I had the background of 50 percent of the people doing this.” But he is Al Sharpton of the National Action Network. He is also the Al Sharpton who enthusiastically fanned a media firestorm 25 years ago with his advocacy on behalf of Tawana Brawley, a teenager who claimed—falsely, it now appears—to have been raped by a group of white men, an incident that cemented the young civil rights leader’s influence and brought him a measure of infamy. He ended up losing a defamation lawsuit filed by an assistant district attorney accused of raping Ms. Brawley and was immortalized by Tom Wolfe as The Bonfire of the Vanities’ “Rev. Reginald Bacon,” a shrewd manipulator of the city’s media. Then, there was his endlessly caricatured tracksuit-and-chains image, immortalized in a parade of Sean Delonas cartoons for Page Six that depicted the reverend as a Violet Beauregarde-like sphere.

Not to mention his unsuccessful, if impressive, run for the presidency in 2004.

Perhaps it was a desire to put his reputation as a firebrand behind him that accounted for Mr. Sharpton’s decidedly sober debut. “His first show was stiff,” Mr. Griffin told the crowd at the PoliticsNation party. “There was no Rev.”

Over the course of his first year on air, though, Mr. Sharpton has managed to uncork those cable-friendly “Rev” qualities—his undisguised political advocacy, for instance, and a compelling style of oratory that finds him punching rhetorical questions with a furious solemnity that lends the daily news churn an unusual hint of gravitas.

Still, his reputation notwithstanding, Mr. Sharpton is far from the angriest man in prime time.

“He's controversial,” Mr. Griffin told The Observer. “But a lot of people only know him from a few things. You don’t understand that he’s a good person. He’s fair. You don’t want to be judged for just a few things in your life, do you?”

We noted that his missteps had been particularly public and might color potential viewers’ impressions before they even tuned in. “It’s the civil rights movement! He has to do things that he’s misunderstood for. Maybe he’s made a mistake or two—but his heart is in the right place.”

He’s even happy to give airtime to his ideological foes. “I fought with Newt Gingrich,” Mr. Sharpton reminded The Observer at his party. He was puffing on a cigar, his only vice after he adopted a vegetarian diet that brought his weight down to a svelte 150 pounds. (He’d lost weight during his 2001 arrest on the island of Vieques, then gained much of it back while running for president—“room service when you get back to the hotel, South Carolina, fried chicken three times a day”—and lost it, once more, before he even knew he’d be on television each day.) He was looking good.

“I fought with Pat Buchanan,” he added. “And I had a good time with Michael Steele!”

For the significant portion of the nation that identifies as liberal (and the smaller number that watches MSNBC), Rev. Sharpton—cast as a clown and a villain throughout the late 1980s and 1990s—is, at 57, suddenly an establishment figure. “The Rev is only going to grow, because more people are going to accept him,” Mr. Griffin noted. “He’s going to break all these notions of who he is.”

Mr. Sharpton, who early in his career served as the tour manager for James Brown, borrowed more than a hairstyle from his mentor.

According to Mr. Sharpton’s lawyer, Sanford Rubinstein, “he’s the hardest-working man in show business.”

Mr. Sharpton's office is decorated with blown-up covers of Newsweek and The New York Post bearing his image, and a smaller frame containing three separately matted photos, portraits of the reverend as a younger man. One shows him preaching at age seven. One has him posing with James Brown. The third is of Mr. Brown and Mr. Sharpton meeting a young Michael and Janet Jackson.

Asked what the biggest misconception about him is, Mr. Sharpton cited the notion that he craves media attention and fame for its own sake. He left his role as James Brown’s tour manager in order to focus full-time on organizing and activism. “If you had a young guy out of Brooklyn, out of welfare, dead broke, who starts flying around the world with Jay-Z, then tells Jay-Z, ‘I know I ain’t got no money but I’m committed to social justice’—that defines him! If I had wanted money, I could’ve stayed with James Brown. You can disagree with me, but at least give me credit for having sacrificed. Because there was no guarantee that when I went to Howard Beach that it was going to be a national issue. Or Bensonhurst. Or whatever! Or that one day I would get MSNBC and radio and all that.”

James Brown, he added, thought his young protégé was crazy.

Mr. Sharpton came to prominence during a period of extreme racial enmity in the city, speaking out on one notorious case after another, fulminating before the news cameras and leading crowds of protesters with his now-familiar rallying cry: “No justice, no peace!”

His reference to Howard Beach recalled the 1986 death of Michael Griffith, who was struck by traffic after being chased by a white mob in Queens (Mr. Sharpton’s activism resulted in the appointment of a special prosecutor in the case). In the Bensonhurst incident, in 1989, a mob of white residents beat four black teenagers, killing one, Yusef Hawkins. Mr. Sharpton’s outspokenness in that case resulted in an attempt on his life.

After a few decades of dancing on the city’s racial fault lines, jousting with guests on basic cable must seem like a pretty low-key gig.

Mr. Sharpton’s 2011 television debut occurred as MSNBC was finding its footing as a liberal answer to right-leaning juggernaut Fox News. Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times recently referred to the network’s mission as “counterprogramming, not coverage,” and counted Mr. Sharpton as part of “a growing cast of anchor-bloviators.” At his party, the host didn’t deny that MSNBC and Fox had similarities: “We’re people with opinions,” he said.

“People don’t watch Bill O’Reilly or me for the weather report,” he went on. “They know we have an opinion. We said in the beginning I wasn’t objective. No one who watches my show thinks I’m objective. Fox is not objective.”

He used the weather-report crack, again, at a recent Saturday broadcast from the National Action Network’s “House of Justice” in Harlem. The crowd roared its approval, as they did with most of his laugh lines; an elderly woman in the audience remarked, “I call him the next Chris Rock.”

Before Mr. Sharpton’s entrance at 10 a.m. sharp at the Saturday NAN gathering, which is a hybrid of sorts between church service and activist meet-up, a female speaker decried Nicki Minaj’s apparent endorsement of Mitt Romney (which the rapper herself has disavowed). “When I look at certain celebrities, I look at what they’ve done. How engaged are you in community activism? If you’ve never seen them on the ground, why would what they say matter?”

A choir member announced, “We should be thankful that we are blessed, that we are educated, that we can tell somebody something.” Then Rev. Sharpton took the stage, swaying to the beat but unsmiling.

“What do we waaaaaant,” he sang. The room was packed with guests who knew the answer: “justice.” Rev. Sharpton added, “Some people cheat and come at 10, because that’s when I get up here. But you don’t have a seat this morning.”

He discussed, briefly, the Trayvon Martin killing this year; he was frustrated, he told the crowd, that he had been perceived to be seeking publicity from a case he took credit for bringing to the public’s attention. (After Mr. Sharpton urged due process for George Zimmerman, Martin’s shooter, he was criticized by some media observers for full-throated political advocacy on top of his journalistic duties.) “Later the press tried to act like we rode in on the publicity,” he went on. “No. We started the publicity. Was I an ambulance chaser? No, I’m an ambulance.”

He exhorted the crowd to never lose the power to define themselves. “In my life I’ve had ups and downs. I keep going. You know why I like having my MSNBC show on at six o’clock? Not four o’clock or nine o’clock? I think about my critics, who said I’d never do anything. My show comes on at six o’clock, about the time my critics come home and put dinner on the table!”

Like his office, Rev. Sharpton’s House of Justice is decorated with images from his past. The Newsweek cover is there, as is a New York Daily News front page, “GIVE ME THE TRUTH,” about the reverend’s quest to learn about whether he was biologically related to Senator Strom Thurmond. Hung above the stage, to the left of the podium, is a framed picture of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., looking down and to the right. It appears he’s gazing approvingly at whomever is speaking.

Still, Mr. Sharpton is looking for real approval these days—and not just from his amen corner.

“We can get 300 or 400 in the room on Saturday,” he explained, “and 50,000 more on the radio. Okay. When do you stop playing to the 300 people in the room that’ll clap at anything you say? And when do you deal with the 50,000 that are listening, half of whom may not be on your side but would be if you make a sound argument?”

In September 2011, its first full month on air, PoliticsNation averaged 598,000 nightly viewers; in the first two weeks of this month, the show is hovering around 912,000 per evening. Viewership in the 25-54 demographic has nearly doubled as well. (The program comes in second in its time slot among cable news outlets in both metrics, behind Fox News’s Special Report with Bret Baier.) While Mr. Sharpton claims that his Saturday-morning audience is tuning in, PoliticsNation executive producer Matt Saal described the viewership of MSNBC as, traditionally, affluent. “He speaks for people who aren’t of means. He’s making sure we’re speaking not necessarily to those people—but for those people.”

Though he’s making fewer headlines these days, Mr. Sharpton finally seems to be achieving a measure of respectability. Knowing what he knows now, he was asked, does he regret anything about the fiery rhetorical style he employed back in the day?

“So, I was in my 30s when people first met me,” he said, “and I would say things, or react, or be personal. You learn over time, well, you may be more effective not making personal attacks. Not because it looks better—but because you may really want to win the case. You may really want to win people over. So, the question is, is you being flippant more important than winning? Or is winning more important than you being flippant?”

He leaned back, almost horizontal, in his desk chair.

“I regret personalizing the battles rather than keeping it on public policy,” he said.

By way of example, Mr. Sharpton recalled that he’d once had a habit of referring to then-mayor Ed Koch as “Bull Koch,” in reference to the Civil Rights-era scourge Bull Connor. “There are a lot of people who supported Koch who don’t see him as Bull Koch but would have supported us on not cutting services. Again, the question is, when do you put winning as your goal rather than just being flippant?”

Indeed, if anything, Mr. Sharpton seems not to take politics personally at all these days; he has dinner with Bill O’Reilly several times a year and is friends with MSNBC morning host and former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough. “He’s not a phony,” Mr. Sharpton noted. “And I get along with any conservative if they believe what they’re saying.”

Would a younger Al Sharpton have been able to say that?

“I don’t think I would have said that. I would have gotten along with them. But I wouldn’t have said it."

Now that he’s adopted a more conciliatory tone and taken his seat among the media elites, Mr. Sharpton was asked if he’d spotted any likely successors for the role of chief civil rights bomb-thrower he played so effectively for so long. He declined to name anyone specific, but he noted that whoever came after him would have opportunities he had never imagined. “A guy said to me soon after we started PoliticsNation, he said, ‘Rev. Sharpton, I always saw you as an activist, you came out of the post-King movement, would Dr. King have had a radio and talk show?’

“I told him that there was no MSNBC in Dr. King’s time, so we will never know!”

Some Occupy the Corners supporters with Jayson Williams, Al Sharpton and Tamika Mallory, NAN's national executive director.

Last Friday night, huddled together at the corner of 111th street and 5th Avenue in Harlem, a circle of about thirty individuals held hands. Their eyes were closed in prayer. The orange glow of the headlamps formed neon smudges against the black night sky. Two NYPD officers stood nearby, arms crossed, waiting. Opposite a church on the corner of 129th Street and 7th Avenue, a similar crowd looped around a stage, surrounded by blue lights and peace signs painted gold. Some youths lined up to perform raps and songs, which they had written themselves.

This was the last weekend of Occupy the Corners, an initiative created in response to the recent wave of shootings and organized by National Action Network (NAN), a not-for-profit civil rights organization. For the past four weekends, community activists, politicians, church leaders and local civilians have stood in solidarity at the most dangerous corners in New York, watching for any signs of violence.

On Friday, NAN founder and president, Reverend Al Sharpton, joined the campaigners.

“It’s important that our presence establishes that we are not going to give our corners to the hoodlums and the thugs,” Mr. Sharpton told the hushed crowd. “I’m glad to see the response. We had no idea we’d get to sixteen corners every weekend from 11 PM to 1 AM, but we’ve done it… Tomorrow night we're going to spread national.”

“Amen!” chorused the locals.

“This is our last week of Occupy the Corners but this is not our last week of working together,” assured Tamika D. Mallory, the national executive director for NAN.

“Young people don’t have to live the way that they are living, ducking bullets,” chipped in Iesha Sekou, the executive director of Street Corner Resources.

Reverend and anti-violence activist Vernon Williams told The Observer why he was supporting Occupy the Corners.

“I know that people in this particular area say, why are you standing in that corner right there, and I say, because I know what goes down on this corner,” he declared. “When we leave here, like last week when we left here, there was a shooting. The week before that there was a fight. We know that our presence makes a difference.

“Unfortunately, I’ve done a hundred-plus funerals of young people in the community,” Mr. Williams added, his voice shaking with anger. “This is my nephew’s mother, Reggie Andrews. He was murdered right here, in front of his house on his birthday, and that’s why I’m on this corner.”

A number of parents were present whose children had been killed in shootings. Nathan D. Allsbrooks’s mother and father set up a charity, the Nathan D. Allsbrooks Foundation, in memory of their son, whose life was cut short at fifteen. They were wearing T-shirts with a photograph of Nathan printed on them.

“My son was killed in 2008, just walking by. Someone senselessly came by and…” Cherise Smith trailed off, her eyes glistening with tears. “I see a lot of stuff on the news… It’s all in close proximity, you don’t know until it hits home, how horrific it can be. It ran on the news the whole week.”

Professional basketball player, Jayson Williams, who served an 18-month prison sentence for the manslaughter of Costas Christofi, offered a few words of comfort to Nathan’s father as he made a speech to the crowd.

“Dad, I can feel your pain, I’ve caused a lot of pain in my life and I’m here to try to make as much amends as I can,” Mr. Williams said softly. “I don’t pretend to have all the answers here, I’m still learning as I go, but I can assure you that I want to be a part of this, and anything I can do to reach the young people, and not-so-young people, to help stop the violence in our community, please call on me on me whenever.”

Basketball coach, Chez Williams, was present on behalf Taylonn Murphy, the father of Tayshana “Chicken” Murphy, who was murdered last September.

“She played basketball for me,” Mr. Williams explained. “Apparently, she was out late. Her brother got into a fight with another kid… and they came back after the fight to retaliate, and instead they shot Chicken, because she was outside. Chicken was eighteen. She had offers from all types of colleges.”

Over the weekend, NAN campaigners gathered together all over Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island, lighting up the darkest corners of New York City.

Illustration by Peter Arkle

We were waiting in line outside Red Egg, an unassuming Chinese restaurant in Nolita, a little before 1 a.m. on Saturday night, when we overheard something we wished we could unhear.

“I just love waiting in line like a nor-mal person,” said a female voice, dripping sarcasm.

We knew where she was coming from. There is a certain terror involved in toting one’s friends to an unheard-of ethnic restaurant in an unfashionable neighborhood with the promise of a good party and then finding oneself stuck in a line. In her defense, she was an abnormally tall, abnormally symmetrical and abnormally blond person.

But such is the hazard of clubs like Red Egg, especially tonight, with a party thrown by Interview’s hunky creative director Karl Lindman underway.

“I like the old New York mix,” Red Egg partner Travis Bass told The Observer. “Young, old, rich, poor, beautiful, ugly.”

He trusts Vance Brooking, another former model, to filter for the club’s 2,000 or so “friends and family” and keep the “GP,” or “general population,” to a minimum.

“It got a little too GP during Fashion Week,” Mr. Bass admitted.

In the months since then, Red Egg has become the brick-and-mortar refuge for the downtown crowd left stranded when Madame Wong stopped calling. After a series police run-ins and investor squabbles cut the pop-up party short, Mr. Bass, a Madame Wong’s planner, decided to invest in Red Egg, the slightly more upscale joint around the corner from Wong’s site, Jobee. The restaurant is slowly transforming into a hybrid space inspired by the devolving party scene from Jacques Tati’s Play Time.

But unlike Madame Wong’s, and Happy Endings before it, there is no irony here. Red Egg really is a nice place to have dim sum. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s favorite.

At about 11 o’clock Wednesday through Saturday night, the Zagat-rated restaurant strenuously hatches a night club, sometimes before lingering diners’ eyes. Tables are spirited away, constellations of ceiling lights are extinguished, and the deep red walls are softened by a smoke machine, commingled with cigarette smoke, the illicit yet ubiquitous badge of downtown nightlife.

Located on the ungentrified corner of Centre and Howard, Red Egg aspires to more than gimmickry and seems primed to become fixture in a nightlife archipelago forming on the Nolita-Chinatown border, anchored by Kenmare, dressed up by Mister H, fueled by Pulqueria and soon to be invigorated by Le Baron, the much-anticipated Andre Saraiva joint.

“I tell the DJs not to play any bad songs between 2 and 2:30,” Mr. Bass said, “because that’s when Kenmare gets bumping.”

Red Egg is chasing the balance of clubby exclusivity and homey informality that no venue has nailed since the Beatrice Inn (or so we’re told), while recognizing that without the economic insouciance of Beatrice’s era, it’s a much subtler game. They offer bottle service, but it’s not advertised, nor can it be leveraged to get past the bouncer. It is offered in a small mirrored VIP section adjacent to the dance floor. (Julia Restoin-Roitfeld was granted the convenience when she held her birthday there earlier this year.)

Simonez Wolf, a former Beatrice DJ who throws parties at Red Egg, told The Observer the club serves as an antidote to the inauthenticity that arose post-Beatrice, when the scene’s alphas landed gigs as paid hipster-wranglers at hotel bars deep in GP territory like the meatpacking district or the Lower East Side.

The resulting crowd is an eclectic, attractive mix of career club kids (the male elders distinguishable by their shaved heads), minor international celebrities (Guy-Man, one half of Daft Punk, went unnoticed sans helmet), models disguised as chemotherapy patients, and that class of youngish professionals working in art, fashion, music and media industries who are unified only by their ability to pull off hats: large-brimmed felt floppy hats, vintage snap backs, short-brimmed cyclist racing caps and a wider array of knit watch caps than this mild November merits.

At six months old, the venue is not entirely attenuated to the needs of this nighttime crowd. Metallic orbs lamps hang from the ceiling at a banquet-top dancer’s elbow height, and a row of seats near the front entrance with poor visibility but minimal privacy became a dumping ground for coats. But Mr. Bass, an apprentice of Limelight and Tunnel impresario Peter Gatien, told The Observer that trial and error is one of the luxuries of abandoning the pop-up circuit. Those front tables, for example, will soon be replaced by more intimate, high-backed banquettes, “good for doing bad things.”

For many, the existing ambiance is enough to set the mood. When The Observer dropped by on Thursday night, one dark corner (by day, the hostess stand) was visited by no fewer than four couples intent on swallowing each other’s faces.

The party had been billed, in a last-minute email blast from party planner Sydney Racquel Reising, as a Thanksgiving get-together for “misfit orphans,” but the attendees appeared to know one another as well as we know anyone who ever passed us a gravy boat.

The vibe was so friendly, in fact, that some seemed reluctant to reveal that they didn’t know us. On three occasions we were warmly embraced by complete strangers, with unspecific but familiar greetings.

“I love this look on you,” a Canadian photographer said, of our family holiday uniform of sweater dress and loafers. It was easy to get into the spirit of unqualified flattery.

“You too!” we replied.

For him, Red Egg’s allure was basic.

“I’m trying to find coke,” he said. In New York, he explained, one could easily find a late-night holiday dinner (his had been jerk turkey at model canteen Miss Lily’s) but it was impossible to score holiday drugs.

“Even dealers have families,” he reasoned.

He nodded and surveyed the dance floor, momentarily subdued by the beginning of Pulp’s “Common People.”

“So do you want to go make out in the corner?”

We weren’t feeling that chummy. We excused ourselves with the intent of catching a cab. Outside, the line to get in was deep. A brunette in a knee-length red knit poncho stood spread eagle against the building next door, palms pressed into the brick tenement wall, elbows straight, head bowed. She murmured something in a French accent at the sidewalk.

We joined a handful smokers who watched as her companion knelt behind her and dutifully tended to her boots, which laced up the back and had come undone. He was about to tie one off into a bow when she rose violently, nearly tripping over him as she flung herself at a street lamp, Singing in the Rain-style.

“She’s always like this,” yet another stranger whispered in our ear.

From her perch on the street lamp, she took in the scene.

“Are these my friends?” she slurred, pointing at us, the witnesses to her Thanksgiving excess.

Actually, we thought, in America we call us family.

Tamika D. Mallory

Tamika Mallory, the 31-year-old executive director of Al Sharpton's National Action Network, has some words of warning for African-American reporters. On Friday, Mallory wrote a column titled "Time For Black Journalists To Stop Criticizing Rev. Sharpton."

Mallory's column, which was published on NewsOne.com and linked on National Action Network's web site, was addressed "to all the Black journalists out there." She begins by discussing her distaste for criticism of Sharpton's MSNBC show, "Politics Nation," which premiered August 29.

"Whenever I hear people question Reverend Sharpton’s new show, ‘Politics Nation’ on MSNBC, I find myself thinking of the theory known as ‘crabs in the barrel.,’" Mallory wrote.

Sharpton's show drew critiques from conservative news outlets in its first week on the air including Andrew Breitbart's BreitbartTV, which mocked Sharpton's language skills, and Newsbusters, which poked fun at his ratings. Mallory doesn't identify any criticism from African-American members of the media that may have inspired her column, but she does explain why she thinks black reporters shouldn't criticize Sharpton's show.

"Rev. Sharpton is and has always been an advocate and defender of the people, and I believe 'we' should support his new endeavor for it affords him the opportunity to continue to build on his years of struggle. An activist such as Rev. Sharpton doesn’t need to be fed information on the injustices in society, because he lives and breathes them every single day," Mallory wrote.

Mallory was named executive director of National Action Network in 2009. Her parents are founding members of the group, and Mallory has said she "grew up in this organization." According to National Action Network's web site, Sharpton created the organization to "to promote a modern civil rights agenda."

"After knowing [Sharpton] for over 20 years, I would bet my last dollar that he will continue championing justice in his new position with no apologies," Mallory wrote.

In front of a sign that featured Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. peering at the organization's logo was a wooden podium where, minutes earlier, Mr. Sharpton introduced the biggest guest he had ever welcomed. MSNBC hosts Chris Matthews and Ed Schultz were talking to Bertha Lewis, a housing advocate and founding member of the Working Families Party. A few feet away, former Tennessee congressman Harold Ford Jr. dug into his pockets for a business card to hand out to a man in a suit, before quickly making his way on to the next conversation. Several feet away, Earvin "Magic" Johnson was swarmed by a crowd of photograph seekers, which he patiently obliged. Mr. Simmons seemed to take no notice of the pandemonium, since he was engrossed in his own conversation with two gentlemen. Nearby, in a front-row table, NFL legend-turned-actor Jim Brown sat undisturbed.

For some politicos, the image of the "no-drama" president together with the reverend-whose career, at one point, seemed to have been foreshadowed in the pages of The Bonfire of the Vanities-was unexpected.

The one person who didn't find it unusual was Mr. Sharpton. "I never turn down a front page," he said in a recent interview, referring to the covers of both the New York Post and the New York Daily News, depicting him shaking hands with the president, "but I was like, why is this such a surprise to everybody?"

Throughout the four-day-long affair, Mr. Sharpton laid out an argument for reelecting Mr. Obama, often with top Obama aides looking on-including David Axelrod, one of Mr. Obama's top strategists. Before introducing Mr. Axelrod, Mr. Sharpton had a few words for his audience, with whom he was slightly disappointed. Referring to the "shellacking" Democrats took in the 2010 midterm elections, Mr. Sharpton said, "What happened was you was home. Now, everybody wants the president to come in like Superman to undo what we should have helped protect in the first place." He jokingly suggested they have a "national practice day" for voting, but quickly warned them about the dire need to show up at the polls. "Many black mayors went down because their percentage remained the same but the amount went down," he said. "We got to have turnout." Preemptively, Mr. Sharpton addressed the dissatisfaction among those considered to be Mr. Obama's base: voters who are African-American, living in cities and facing the brunt of the economic recession. To them, the message was clear: Stick with the president, and be patient. Change is coming, eventually.

"The boycott in Montgomery was in '55," Mr. Sharpton reminded the crowd. "They ain't got the Civil Rights Act until '64. Nine years later. Nothing ever happens the next day or the next year."

The introduction Mr. Sharpton gave the president was even more forceful. "He came into office when we had great challenges," said Mr. Sharpton. "And what many people have conveniently forgot is that this president took this nation from where it had never been in most of our lifetimes and put it back on a solid course, and now we forget where it was and where he has brought us. And some of us who are the most pained are being asked to make the most sacrifices and then are being demagogued into blaming him for standing up for all of us, and we are not going to be used like that." The crowd cheered.

Mr. Obama, whom Mr. Sharpton introduced as the "servant in chief," a Biblical reference, was wearing a nearly identical suit to Mr. Sharpton's (black jacket, black pants, white shirt, black-and-white tie) and borrowed some of the talking points that had just been delivered. "And as Reverend Al said, some folks have amnesia about this," said Mr. Obama, referring to the economic crisis handed to him by the outgoing Republican administration.

After Mr. Obama concluded his remarks, Mr. Sharpton waded into the audience. When asked if he'll start to play a larger role in advocating for Mr. Obama, Mr. Sharpton wrinkled his nose and shook his head. "No, not at all," he said. "I have no intention in taking on a wider role in his campaign at all."

But not everyone sees it that way. "There's no question about the fact that Reverend Sharpton will campaign loud and clear for Obama, in the community and all over the country," said attorney Sanford Rubenstein, a mainstay at Mr. Sharpton's rallies. "Sharpton says a lot of times that people have got to take their path. And there's a path for Sharpton to take in this campaign, and that's the path to energize the base." The next day, as Mr. Obama and Mr. Sharpton graced the cover of the city's major tabloids, those within Mr. Sharpton's organization were basking in their newfound glory.

The significance of the moment was reinforced in subsequent talks. "The National Action Network is operating at a new brand after our celebration last night with the president," said the chairman of the group's board, Dr. W. Franklin Richardson, speaking before a panel on organized labor. "Not only with the president. All day yesterday we had four of the cabinet members, including the attorney general, the secretary of education, the secretary of HUD, the political adviser to the president. Today we have two members of the cabinet, secretary of labor and secretary of health and human services."

The power in the room had Dr. Richardson feeling heady about Mr. Sharpton's new standing. "Our president, Al Sharpton, is the leading voice in America for African-Americans," he said. "Undisputed. That can not be disputed. That's not debated."

Norman Seabrook, the president of the Correction Officers' Benevolent Association, said the president's appearance at the organization sent a clear message about Mr. Sharpton's role on the national stage.

"[Mr. Obama] showed you the vehicle last night," said Mr. Seabrook. "Al Sharpton was your vehicle. So you give your grievance to Al and say, 'Al, go on to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and take our agenda forward.'" Mr. Seabrook implored the attendees to "use the vehicles that you have that make it work for you. You use the vehicles that you have."

But Mr. Sharpton was somewhat coy about being that vehicle. "There's some people who want a permanent place as the ones having access. It had nothing to do with the community," he said.

On Friday, Mr. Sharpton was accompanied by two men in dark suits, part of his security detail, who walked on either side of him during his stroll down the hallway. They hovered around him during our brief interview. He had just finished his daily radio show and was juggling the demands of the last few panel discussions, as well as those of being a celebrity, posing for photographs with well-wishers.

"In many ways, part of the reason why I could identify with [the president] even though we are so much unalike, or dissimilar," said Mr. Sharpton, "is the crowd that was attacking him for not being black enough was attacking me for being too black. Because it was about them, it was never about our people."

Those unnamed critics that stymied his own presidential ambitions in 2004 weren't the only ones Mr. Sharpton felt stood in his way.

"I think that they always, some in the media, always perceived me more as someone who would not engage in the process more than I ever was. And they forget that I ran for office. I ran for Senate in '92, I ran for mayor. So why wouldn't I be involved in the electoral process?" He added, "Why don't they just admit, maybe we didn't understand what he was saying in the first place?"

            apaybarah@observer.com

Debates: Hannity's red-meat rhetoric doesn't fly at National Action Network. [Obama08jalu]

2012: After meeting with Trump, Huckabee says, "I seriously believe he's going to jump in." [Maggie Haberman]

2012: "I would be proud to give those disclosures," Trump says. [Katrina Trinko]

2012: Trump is to Democrats what Bloomberg is to Republicans. [Jeff Mapes]

2012: "I would not leave Iraq and let Iran take over the oil," says Trump. [Kelly Evans]

Carl Kruger: He was "excused" from attending the NYS Energy and Telecommunications meeting, which seemed oddly crowded today. [nysenateuncut]

Cuomo's Pen: Quietly signs vetoes. [Liz Benjamin]

Cuomo's Agenda: Republicans note Silver is in the way. [Ken Lovett]

Garbage: Cutbacks may delay a major Bloomberg plan; spokesman says they're still committed. [Courtney Gross]

Changing Chancellors: 9 people evaluating Walcott's application. [Beth Fertig]

Changing Chancellors: A teacher complains "Walcott will actually serve as a much more effective salesman for Bloomberg’s policies than Black ever could have been." [Liza Campbell]

Bike Lanes: A proposed one in Brooklyn is stopped. [Elissa Gootman]

Public Information: DoITT Commissioner Carole Post is CIO of the year. [nyconvergence]

Open Government: Senator Peralta asks why a bill isn't going to the Finance Committee. Among the answers he gets is one that is softly whispered and barely audible around the 2:45 mark. [nysenateuncut]

Sharpton said he was surprised his embrace of Obama made the front page of a few New York newspapers.

"Every time something happens, it's the re-invention of Al Sharpton," he said. "Why don't they just admit maybe we didn't understand what he were saying in the first place?"

2012: Obama acknowledged people sometimes "lose hope." [AP]

2012: "The president heartily embraced the once-embattled reverend." [Leonard Greene and Todd Venezia]

2012: "Obama is counting on Sharpton to get out the vote among African Americans and some liberals." [Josh Robin]

2012: "I wouldn’t imagine that he’ll make (New York) a frequent campaign stop, unless there’s fundraising involved," said Basil Smikle. [Erik Ortiz]

Obama's Staff: Holder should resign, says Rep. King. "Holder showed absolute disdain for Congress, New York and the will of the American people." [New York Post]

Supreme Court: Rejecting Wal-Mart discrimination suit signals "some companies are too big to be held accountable," say the editors. [New York Times]

Style: Cuomo "has governed less like his father than like the Republican who beat him, George E. Pataki." [Nick Confessore]

Redistricting: Cuomo says state has to "work out" who will defend them in lawsuit filed by GOP, since the legislation was championed by the AG when he was a legislator. [Casey Seiler]

Teachers: Union fighting Cuomo honors his ex-wife. "The New York State United Teachers union denies it's taking a swipe at the governor." [AP]

Education Staff: "Lousy week" for Chancellor Black as another top aide departs. [Rachel Monahan]

Education Staff: "[A]bout half of the city’s top education officials have left" since Black arrived. [Sharon Otterman and Javier Hernandez]

Education Staff: "They're falling like dominoes." [Yoav Gonen]

City Budget: "New York City is sitting on a $3.1 billion budget surplus," says Micah Kellner. [Our Town]

City Budget: Bloomberg drops crash tax; "coup" for Speaker Quinn. [Michael Saul]

Food: "My typical lunch is getting something from Popeye's or McDonald's," said Comrie, who wants to ban toys from happy meals. [Jeremy Olshan]

Food: "Comrie needs to resolve his own weight issues before he starts dictating how others eat," say the editors. [New York Post]

Evaluations: "Mayor Bloomberg, a virtual Democrat." [Arizona Republic]

Cars: Cuomo to reign in use of parking placards. [AP]

Roads: SI officials complain the city parks department illegally "built a barrier in the roadway." [Tom Wrobleski]