Improbably missing from Sunday’s anti-Republican protests in Manhattan was the city’s dean of demonstrators, the Reverend Al Sharpton. He was carrying out his own protest at the MTV Video Music Awards in Florida.

It’s not too often that Rev. Sharpton skips out on an opportunity to lash out at the president and Republicans before a mass of people.

Rather than join the throngs of protesters, as did filmmaker Michael Moore and the 49-year-old preacher’s marching rival, Jesse Jackson, Rev. Sharpton briefly appeared on television during the MTV awards ceremony with a complaint about the racial makeup of the “viewer’s choice” award candidates.

The defeated presidential candidate then announced to the audience, “I already voted for my girl Christina!” referring to pop singer Christina Aguilera.

Asked why he didn’t attend Sunday’s protests in Manhattan, a spokeswoman for Rev. Sharpton, Rachel Noerdlinger, said he was “registering voters in Florida, the original scene where the disenfranchisement began.”

Earlier in the day, Rev. Sharpton visited a Miami church and told worshippers he had come to Florida to return “to the scene of the crime,” a jab at the disputed 2000 Florida ballot count, according to a report in the Sun-Sentinel.

A spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, a leading protest organizer, said he didn’t know if his group invited Rev. Sharpton and would not comment on his absence.

Rev. Sharpton, who gave a 20-minute speech at the Democratic convention in Boston in July, has attended previous anti-Bush protests in the city.

He marched along on March 22, 2003, when tens of thousands of protesters swarmed Manhattan to protest the American-led invasion of Iraq.