Hip-hop star Wyclef Jean sailed down the red carpet to shouts and murmurs. “Wyclef! Over here!” a photographer barked. “Look right!”
Mariah Carey was running fashionably late. So down the carpet waltzed Mayor Bloomberg, twice mispronouncing the name of fellow guest Bill Cosby as “Crosby.”
“Look this way, Mike!”
Then the crowd parted and in sailed the star, drawing enough strobe lights to blind a hippo with sunglasses. Looking dapper in a tux six sizes smaller than the loud tracksuits he once favored, trading his gauche medallions for a bow tie, the Rev. Al Sharpton, in more ways than one, had arrived.
The Rev. Who?
Believe it.
“Smile, Al!”
Some might think the city last week had entered an alternate reality. But the man who strolled like a conquering hero to a starstudded dinner at the Sheraton New York had no desire to throw barbs. He desired a place on Fox News Channel.
With pared-down hair and tailored suits, Al Sharpton has emerged as the Lady Gaga of the civil-rights movement — undergoing a style makeover aimed at turning the Rev. into the thing he craves most: a player.
The man I once maligned, then ignored, spoke to me during his three-day National Action Network convention, which culminated on that carpet. The A-list event was populated by superstars, three of President Obama’s Cabinet secretaries, a mayor, the head of the Republican National Committee. And me.
Even Jesse Jackson, with whom Sharpton once sparred for the title of Top Civil Rights Banana, came to kiss his ring.
“If I’m accused of working with conservatives, I’ve been accused of far worse,” he told me after appearing on panels with Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and US Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
“Old friends can’t understand new alliances. New alliances can’t understand old friends,” he shrugged. “The aim is to put education out front as a civil-rights issue. I’m trying to bridge the illiteracy and entitlement gaps.”
Zzzz . . .
This was a far cry from Sharpton, circa 1987, who promoted the Tawana Brawley rape hoax, and the ’90s Sharpton, who revved up anti-Semites in Crown Heights. Four years ago, he stirred up anti-cop fury in the shooting of Sean Bell. Mayor Rudy Giuliani once treated him like poison.
That was then.
Now the president, who once snubbed Sharpton as divisive, needs him badly. Top administration figures these days regularly appear on Sharpton’s radio show. And the Rev. plans to go on tour to rev up black Democrats before the midterm elections.
Locally, he’s seen as something of a kingmaker. When Harold Ford thought of running for Senate, his coming-out party was held at Sharpton’s headquarters. “Get the hell in the car!” a dominant Sharpton barked at Ford as the pair fled the event, leaving reporters wondering if he’d grown a pair.
One City Hall wag was dumbfounded at the red-carpet hoopla, bigger and glitzier than Sharpton has ever attracted.
“Do you believe this?” he cracked. “This is quite a fete.”
“Despite the change of clothes, my guard is not down,” said Mike Palladino, head of the NYPD’s detectives union. “The true Al will come out during the next controversial police shooting.”
For now, a star is reborn.
That is, until Lady Gaga Sharpton reinvents himself yet again.
Rubber-room doom elation is a stretch
Educators facing disciplinary charges no longer will be assigned to the city’s rubber rooms. Yippee?
Before you shout with joy from the rooftops, let’s see if the teachers union puts its money where its maw is.
Under new rules, alleged incompetents and kooks will do busywork in school offices instead of sitting on their rumps, or dozing on their backs, in stifling chambers, sometimes for years. And those who face criminal charges will no longer get paid. This begs the question: How many monsters have we been supporting all these years?
The cherry atop the frosted cake has to go to teachers accused of such outrages as sexually touching students or drinking on the job. They won’t be working copy machines or killing time in rubber rooms. These teachers will be sent home, trading hard chairs for remote controls. At full pay, natch!
The union and City Hall insist that teachers’ disciplinary fates will be ruled upon a whole lot faster than before, which suggests plugging a glacier onto roller skates. This move is welcome. And long overdue.
But I dread the possibility of endless appeals and hand-to-hand-combat waged on behalf of incompetent souls. That’s what unions do, after all.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to be.
MIKE HAILS ART ATTACK
Mayor Bloomberg must adore a nice self-immolation, too.
The city’s chief art critic is crazy about “Event Horizon” — the project that last week featured a realistic statue of a man jumping off the Empire State Building that had schoolkids screaming, tourists retching. And cops scrambling to prevent a faux life from splattering.
“It’s great art!” cooed the mayor, unconcerned that (A) the stunt pulled police away from saving breathing humans, and (B) he knows as much about art as I do about presiding over a multibillion-dollar fortune and running a city in my spare time.
Makes me miss “The Gates” — the abominable, mayor-approved, vomit-orange shower curtains that defaced Central Park in 2005 in the name of civic beauty.
Buy some wife insurance!
Serial matrimonialist Larry King walked down the aisle for the eighth time — he married one blonde twice — without drawing up a prenup. That’s like Larry, 76, stepping into a blizzard in a bikini. How can he be so unprepared for the inevitable frostbite?
Some mature guys play the ponies. Others play with hookers. For his next few marriages, Larry ought to play it safe. Look out for No. 1, pal. That may not keep you warm at night, but you’re about to lose your blanket, anyway.
Naked truth about MoMA
The weirdest thing about the nekkid people posing in Marina Abramovic’s installation at MoMA is the way the gang of nudists prepared for the task of stripping off their clothes in public.
“For five days, they led a monk-like existence — fasting, not speaking and not reading — while doing exercises designed to help them develop self-control, including bathing in an icy pond, walking in slow motion and counting grains of rice,” The Post quoted an art rep as saying. One naked girl, lying beneath a skeleton in the exhibit, cried.
And these artists complained about being fondled on the job.