Speaking to a conference of black newspaper publishers, Al Sharpton offered a unique take on advertising and the market process:

Sharpton said corporate America must get the message that their businesses are indebted to Black newspapers. “They’re not giving us a hand-out. They are in our communities. They owe us in our communities. We have to stop going to these companies like they are doing you a favor to advertise in a market where the margin of their profit comes from in the first place.”

So, if corporations aren’t buying advertising enough in the black press, how can they be indebted to the black press for helping them reap profits? The brilliance of the man’s logic seems to be blinding me. Sharpton also included taxpayer-funded advertising in his diatribe:

“The federal government, the Black President needs to be advertising with the Black Press. Otherwise what does it mean to us if we have Negroes in high places if those on the ground don’t have anything,” he said.

How progressive.