Jesse Jackson is an idiot. I’m not going to argue that. But come on! So what if he said he “wants to cut [Obama's] nuts off”? He is a Civil Rights era black leader who has listened to the first viable black presidential candidate make a series of speeches to black audiences that could very easily be seen as telling off black folks for the benefit of white folks watching at home on their televisions.
After all, the only group of people Obama isn’t winning handily is white males. Is it such a stretch to imagine that an old conspiracy-minded black man like Jackson might see some of what he’s doing now as pandering to white men by selling out black people? Again, I’m not saying that’s what Obama’s doing, but I’m not saying it’s not either.
So yeah, saying what Jesse Jackson said while fully mic’ed up in the Fox News studios is not an intelligent decision. But can you imagine that what he said in the wrong place has been said many times in other settings. Around city barber shops, in the stands at sports events, on black college campuses? Jackson is a long way away from speaking for the collective “black people”, but I think this particular candid remark is a lot more representative than most of the polished commentary he provides for the national media.
Just to wrap this all up. I’m not saying Jesse Jackson is right for what he said. But it’s his opinion. I think he clearly feels like Barack Obama is pandering to white voters at the expense of black people. I think that’s an honest opinion that leads him not to think highly of Obama on a personal level. I can’t say I’ve never said something roughly equivalent to what Jackson said about a person I disliked. Fortunately I wasn’t mic’ed up in a television studio when I said it.
Barack Obama has every right to talk to black audiences about problems he perceives in black America. He’s right about most everything he says when he talks to these audiences. But he has to know that his message that black people should do better is likely to be received at least as well by old white men (the primary demographic of the national news media) as it will be by the black people sitting in the crowds.
So I’ll leave you with a quote from Chris Rock that I think sums up this Jesse Jackson flap perfectly. “I’m not saying what he did was right, but I understand.”
** since posting this originally, I read a really good piece at The Root that may have changed my opinion on this thing slightly. Either way I think it’s worth your time to read.
