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Embracing Sharpton

"Teresa Heinz Kerry's weekend embrace of the Rev. Al Sharpton hints at a behind-the-scenes struggle between John Kerry and the Rev. Jesse Jackson," Fredric U. Dicker reports, citing anonymous "Democratic insiders."

"The insiders said Jackson has been aggressively pressuring Kerry's campaign to hire several of his key political aides -- as well as agreeing to give him a chance to address the Democratic National Convention in Boston this summer during a prime-time television broadcast," Mr. Dicker writes.

"'Jesse is up to his old tricks again, threatening to peddle stories that Kerry is hostile to blacks, if he doesn't get what he wants,' said a prominent New York Democrat familiar with the situation.

"'Obviously, Teresa Kerry's visit to the [Sharpton-run National Action] Network was a direct shot at Jesse, who has been noticeably absent from the Kerry presidential campaign,' the Democrat continued.

"Mrs. Kerry heard Sharpton say her husband's campaign was more racially inclusive 'in this stage' of the contest than was the Clinton campaign 12 years ago."

Good into bad

"After Friday's government announcement that 288,000 more jobs were created in April, reducing the unemployment rate by a point to 5.6 percent as job-creation numbers for February and March were revised upward, Richard J. DeKaser, chief economist at the National City Corporation in Cleveland, told the New York Times: 'You'd be hard-pressed to find a dark lining in this cloud,'" the Media Research Center said in its daily CyberAlert.

"But ABC News managed to, as anchor Peter Jennings asserted: 'When you look at the kind of work people are getting, however, the news is a little less encouraging.' ABC's downbeat story focused on service-sector jobs and those who are 'underemployed,' Brent Baker writes at www.mediaresearch.com.