Jarrett-Carter.com

Usually when you have a person in a position of power trying to affect progress, the topic of discussion rarely falls back on that person. Issues, strategies and ideology has this funny way of moving ego and selfishness out of the way.

This is not the case with Michael Baisden.

Don’t get me wrong. I fully believe that his genuine intent is to help people better themselves. He knows he has a growing national platform, and he should be commended for using his platform to advance issues pertinent to minority communities around the country.

But when you listen to him, you realize that helping people is not his primary agenda. Letting people know that he is helping people is his primary agenda. You can’t go five minutes on his show without the shameless self-promotion of HIS personal website, how fortunate HE is to be on the air, and how much HE wants to be the foremost media presence and event planner in the country.

It’s his show, and he has every right to be as self-centered and obnoxiously confident as he wants to be. Lord knows plenty of people are buying into it. But Michael Baisden can’t and shouldn’t have it both ways. He can’t be a leader of men and an advocate for societal progress and simultaneously advance himself.

Baisden’s ideal is to build a fortress of unity and progressive movement around his personal master’s suite of wealth and fame. After a while, the room will be adorned with plenty of accolades and memories, but how strong will the fortress be?

When you think back to past civil rights leaders, athletes, actors and everyday folks who worked tirelessly for causes bigger than their own lives, the public persona was never one of “look at what I’m doing,” but rather, “look at what we need to do.” Martin Luther King Jr. never sang “I Shall Overcome,” Cornel West never speaks about how important his philosophy is to black people, and even though Maya Angelou is the one who knows why the caged bird sings, she spends her time gracefully translating its song to those in need.

Even Barack Obama told us that its not about him.

Baisden on the other hand needs a couple thousand more registered users on iseecolor.com before he will be satisfied. And don’t forget getting those tickets to his New Year’s party down in Miami. And if you haven’t heard from him prior to reading this, his contract is almost up and he’s trying to decide if he should do this radio thing anymore.

It is universally true that if we focus on what we should do together, we’ve got no time to think, speak or act out about what one of us is doing more than the other person.  Jackie Robinson said that a life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives, and while Michael Baisden has made plenty of impact,  its easy to see how he can take the most notable act any human can commit, service to others, and make it a self-aggrandizing, individualistic pursuit of affluence and recognition.

But don’t mind me. Maybe that’s just how grown folks get down.