Tavis Smiley is a black radio/TV talk show host who takes himself waaaay too seriously. Check out Howard Kurtz’s column this morning, which spotlights Smiley’s fallout with NPR. Explaining why he didn’t choose to renew his radio contract with the left-leaning public radio station, Smiley said this:

What NPR is apparently upset about is not that I would not negotiate, but that I wouldn’t acquiesce. I do not do my best work in chains and shackles. For black kids and brown kids yet unborn, I felt I had to say no. They were being disrespectful.

The slave masters at NPR apparently angered Smiley when they turned down
his demands to tape his daily show a day early; control the rebroadcast rights, which NPR says is a violation of its federal funding rules; and spend $3 million on promotions (the station’s entire advertising budget is $165,000 — 80 percent of which, executives say, was spent on Smiley’s program in each of the last two years, according to Kurtz’s article). The piece also suggests that Smiley got irked when the station told him to return a free car(!!!) donated to him by Chrysler because it was an ethics violation.

The Man. Always trying to keep you down, huh, Tavis? Unborn black and brown kids are, no doubt, forever indebted to not-so-Smiley for rattling his oppressive chains and shackles and refusing to acquiesce to such disrespect.

Word.