Jesse Jackson: relic

Jesse Jackson: relic
Thursday, July 10th 2008, 7:00 PM
Daniels/AP
The Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks during a news conference in Chicago Wednesday.
Yes, the outburst - and the fact that it never occurred to media-savvy Jesse Jackson that his microphone might be on - was utterly, pardon us, nutty. But it's not to be dismissed lightly.
Crack open the substance of Jackson's complaints about Barack Obama and you discover a stunning contrast between two black leaders, one with a good shot at occupying the White House, the other stuck somewhere in the past.
What Jackson said was that Obama has been "talking down to black people." His discontent apparently stemmed from a speech Obama gave on Father's Day, in which the future Democratic nominee told a black church congregation that "we need fathers to recognize that responsibility doesn't just end at conception."
That message was a well-received, wise recognition of the fact that roughly 50% of black children live in fatherless homes. And, as Obama said, "Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison."
So, what about that prompted Jackson to broach castration? Apologizing, he explained:
"My appeal was for the moral content of [Obama's] message to not only deal with the personal and moral responsibility of black males, but to deal with the collective moral responsibility of government and the public policy which would be a corrective action for the lack of good choices that often lead to their irresponsibility."
Response: unbelievable.
Jackson's statement hangs on the premise that Obama is offering little to society's less fortunate. He appears to have missed the part of Obama's campaign that has focused on people on the bottom, with positions on protecting American jobs from foreign competition, improving failing schools, expanding health care coverage, etc. By which we are referring to essentially Obama's entire domestic agenda. Oh, that.
More importantly, by highlighting the importance of personal responsibility, Obama is shifting the discourse away from the notion that ills such as out-of-wedlock births have their exclusive root causes in governmental failures and social victimization.
(Side note: When Jackson admitted fathering a child out of wedlock in 2001, saying, "I fully accept responsibility," did he mean it, or deep down did he blame government neglect?)
Obama has achieved extraordinary success by running, to use his word, as a candidate of "hope" for Americans of all stripes rather than as a candidate of grievance for one racial group. His mind-set is very different from Jackson's, his appeal is worlds apart, and he has won over much of the country.