TAVIS SMILEY..'The Pragmatic Progressive'

Tavis Smiley is host of "The Tavis Smiley Show," an hour-long weekday program on National Public Radio (NPR), broadcast on approximately 62 stations. He is also host of "Tavis Smiley," a 30-minute weeknight program broadcast on approximately 104 TV stations (most of which air it late at night) of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

Smiley also heads The Smiley Group, Inc., a lucrative media conglomerate that co-produces his television show with KCET, the PBS station in Hollywood where the show originates, co-produces his radio show, and oversees Smiley's ventures in publishing, workshops, conferences and other activities.

The third of 10 children, Tavis Smiley was born in 1964 in Gulfport, Mississippi. At age two he moved with his family to Kokomo, Indiana when his father, an Air Force noncommissioned officer, was transferred to nearby Grissom Air Force Base. His mother was an associate minister in the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World church.


At age 13, wrote Smiley, he was "bitten by the political bug" when he met Democratic U.S. Senator Birch Bayh at a Kokomo campaign stop. Although Smiley later wrote that he never forgot Indiana once had been the headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan, he was elected class president of his predominantly-white high school and was voted "most likely to succeed."


While attending Indiana University Smiley was on the debate team, active in student government and became an intern for the Mayor of Bloomington. After graduating in 1986, he moved to Los Angeles to work as an aide to the head of the City Council and then with the local office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). From 1988-90, Smiley worked as an administrative aide to Los Angeles' first African-American Mayor Tom Bradley.


In 1990, eager at age 26 to launch his political career, Smiley ran for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council and lost. The neophyte finished fourth among 14 candidates. To build his name recognition and earn money for his next run, Smiley started doing a daily one-minute commentary on local black-owned radio station KGFJ, recruiting sponsors himself for "The Smiley Report." The commentaries were soon syndicated to other stations, and Smiley was then hired to do commentaries for ABC Radio.


In 1996, Smiley was introduced to popular leftwing African-American talk radio host Tom Joyner by President Bill Clinton. He became a regular commentator on Joyner's syndicated show. Two years later a first volume of his commentaries was published in Smiley's collection On Air. Smiley joined Joyner in the kind of shakedown tactics perfected by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, alleging racism to intimidate the computer company CompUSA into reallocating a portion of its advertising dollars to African-American publications.

In the fall of 1996 Smiley became host of "BET Tonight," a magazine show on the cable television channel Black Entertainment Television (BET).

The views he brought to this show, as to his radio commentaries, were summed up by Smiley during a 1996 Metro interview about his book Hard Left: "I don't waste time in my book, or anywhere else, defining terms…. The country needs to take a 'hard left' away from the policies espoused by conservative extremists."

Smiley was fired by BET in March 2001 after he did a provocative interview with former Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) member Sara Jane Olson, then sold the interview to ABC. "Recent actions by Mr. Smiley left us little recourse but to make this move," said BET founder and chairman Robert L. Johnson in a press release, adding that Smiley had been fired for "a number of public and private concerns."

Smiley's explanation of his firing to a group of African-American journalists: "They feed pigeons and shoot eagles."

Smiley promptly inked deals to be a contributor to the ABC shows "Prime Time" and "Good Morning America." He continued to do daily commentaries for the "urban" stations of ABC radio, and to appear on the Tom Joyner Show.

In April 2001, only weeks after he was fired, Smiley was hired to begin his own show on NPR with a $1.5 million annual budget of taxpayer dollars. This is the first predominantly black show in NPR's history of more than three decades. NPR's overall listenership is approximately five percent African-American. Smiley's audience is 30 percent black and significantly younger than that of most other NPR shows. On the other hand, Smiley's leftwing views fit comfortably within the NPR profile.


In a speech to black journalists, Smiley raised the topic of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 and asked why "African-American teenagers in New York City should make heroes of the policemen who have harassed them and the fire department that wouldn't let their parents or grandparents join." He also suggested that government anti-terrorist tactics might be used to violate the civil rights of minority groups.


In his 2002 book Keeping the Faith: Stories of Love, Courage, Healing, and Hope from Black America, editor Smiley included heartwarming stories of how Fidel Castro acolyte actor Danny Glover conquered dyslexia and of how radical Princeton professor Cornel West overcame three life crises.


To promote their works, Smiley and West teamed up with another frequent guest on his NPR show, University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Eric Dyson, charging attendees $50-60 apiece for their traveling "Pass the Mic!" tour. Both West and Dyson are self-proclaimed "democratic socialists." Dyson is a supporter of Palestinian Authority dictator and terrorist Yasser Arafat.


The Smiley Group, Inc. entered into a venture with Hay House publishers to produce under a "Smiley Books" imprint not only books but also other products such as mini-books, audio cassettes, CDs, success seminars and "Empowerment Cards." Smiley developed promotional ties with companies ranging from Microsoft to Wal-Mart. He signed with Buena Vista Television, which like ABC is owned by the Disney Corporation, to develop and star in a late-night television talk show.


In January 2004 PBS began airing "Tavis Smiley" weeknights. Each show typically features one or two interviews and, like most PBS shows, tilts left in its choice of topics and guests. He interviews occasional conservatives and Republicans as tokens, and talks with many guests from the leftwing entertainment community. He may yet revert to seeking political office, his original ambition. One interview Smiley references most proudly on his PBS show's web page was with Cuban Communist dictator Fidel Castro.

"Those of us who are left of center have allowed the Right to take control of the dialogue," wrote Smiley, who as a star of America's taxpayer-subsidized socialist radio and television networks NPR and PBS has built his own media empire and become a multi-millionaire. The Los Angeles Times was correct when it described Smiley as on the "fast track, left lane."

"I think the term 'pragmatic progressive' is an accurate description of what I'm about," says Smiley.

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