Say Goodnight, Jesse

In light of the print and air time already given to Jesse Jackson's intemperate outburst against Barack Obama, what more could I possibly add? Not much, probably, except to say good riddance to the Rev. Jackson, who not only lost any remaining credibility as a spokesperson for the African-American community (credibility which in retrospect he probably never should have had in the first place), but also, with any luck, may finally cease being a millstone around the neck of black America.

It's been pointed out repeatedly that Jackson's fit of pique no doubt stemmed from the realization that he is finished as a serious political force, completely and utterly eclipsed by Obama's cool rationality and unforced eloquence. By contrast, Jackson is and has long been an embarrassment, a fast-talking hustler who frequently reinforced some of the most negative stereotypes about black men playing fast and loose with the truth. Those of you old enough to remember the outcry that saw Amos'n'Andy banished not only from the airwaves but from the collective American memory for its allegedly racist caricatures might also notice an uncanny resemblance between the Rev. Jackson and that show's gobbeledygook-spouting ambulance chaser, Algonquin J. Calhoun.

Even Al Sharpton, who normally makes JJ look downright statesmanlike, has been speaking up for Obama and putting the diss on Brother Jesse, but as much as I'd like to believe this marks a tentative first step into reputability for New York's own clown prince of race baiting, it's more likely that Rev. Al has seen the graffiti on the wall: for all his promises of greater economic opportunity and justice, Barack Obama may have signed the death warrant for one well-established profession, that of the perennially and professionally aggrieved black man.

Because frankly, when you've got an articulate, eloquent, educated and apparently upright and decent presidential candidate who happens to be black, what need is there, really, for one-note shuck and jive artists of the Jackson-Sharpton ilk? "The white man is holding me down" just won't play when you've got tens of millions of white men happily voting to be governed by a black man; it just just makes it all the more obvious that the cult of victimology so profitably mined by Jackson, Sharpton has done more harm to black America in recent years than the white man ever could.

As for Obama, he continues to grow in my estimation: his soft-pedaling or jettisoning some of his more loony-left positions makes me far more enthusiastic about the possibility of voting for him, and his willingness to speak straightforwardly and honestly about some of the social dysfunctions rife within the black community - the sort of stuff Jesse Jackson needs you to believe is entirely the fault of the government, structural racism, and whitey - marks him as the kind of leader Americans of all colors have been crying out for.

Yes, I know it could be mere political posturing, but as of now I'm inclined to give Obama the benefit of the doubt. He seems to have reawakened a sense of possibility and idealism that 20 years of Bushes and Clintons had all but killed off. When Spike Lee - who I've previously never had much time for - and I start singing from the same Obama hymn sheet, it's hard not to believe something's afoot.

"Here's the thing," Lee says, "I don't know why people are questioning whether Barack Obama is black enough. For me, that's an ignorant statement. There are middle-class, educated black people who speak the way he does. ... We have to try to move away from this so-called image of what black is, which is largely influenced by rap and that type of stuff."

And I join in saying hallelujah: I've been arguing for years against the notion, largely promulgated by an unholy coalition of guilt-ridden, clueless whites and then Jackson-Sharpton poverty pimp/race hustler crowd, that the only way for someone to be authentically "black" is to come across like an angry, loud-mouthed ignoramus. Obama, on the other hand, gives people of every race something they can both identify with and aspire to.

"I'm for Mr. Obama," says Spike Lee. "I think he's gonna win. And it's going to be a better day not only for the United States but for the world." As of July 10, 2008, that's pretty much exactly how I see it.

Somehow I Don't Think This Is What Dr. King Had In Mind

I haven't been keeping too close a watch on the news in recent weeks, but the past couple days I've been cooped up in this room in Berkeley, California sorting through papers and packing things for my upcoming moving van trip back to Brooklyn, with my only company being the none too tender ministrations of AM talk radio.

Normally that would mean being subjected to an unrelenting barrage of rabid right-wing ranting, but this being the Bay Area, we're also offered a similarly demented and hate-ridden outpouring of left-wing lunacy. Tonight I've endured three hours of the grotesquely obese race baiter Bernie Ward (a defrocked Catholic priest, who woulda thunk!) and half an hour of Ray Taliaferro, who's been spewing venom, often but not always race-tinged, at all things American for at least four decades now. It was in June of 1968 when, newly arrived in San Francisco, I first heard Taliaferro raving about how Richard Nixon was a madman, a criminal, and, if I'm not mistaken, a "son of a bitch."

Being a rather hateful little hippie myself at the time, I thought this Taliaferro character was just one more part of what made San Francisco great, but over the years I became considerably less fond of him, even on occasions when I agreed with him, because of his tendency to browbeat listeners and dishonestly distort what callers said in response to his inflammatory rhetoric. Example: Caller says, "Ray, I basically agree with you that racism is a problem in our community, but I'm not sure rounding up all white people and interning them in re-education camps is the way to go about solving it." Taliaferro responds: "Well, of course you'd say that, you rotten, good-for-nothing, Ku Klux Klan-supporting, inbred little cracker. Why, I bet you're just sitting there in your log cabin or your trailer park macraméing a rope to take to your next lynching, you low-life, worthless piece of scum. And what have you got to say for yourself? Nothing? I thought so (because Ray has turned off the guy's phone line)! See, folks, you confront these racists with the truth and they just turn tail and run like the cowards they are!"

Actually, Bernie Ward uses almost exactly the same technique, and tonight he, even more than Taliaferro, was obsessed with this Jena, Louisiana case. I'd just heard of it earlier today, and as far as I could see, the main thing it illustrated was the depths of depravity to which the so-called "civil rights" movement has sunk. We've got Mack Daddy Al Sharpton flying in to scoop up some publicity and no doubt some cash, we've got Jive-Ass Jesse Jackson accusing Barack Obama of being "white" for not having a sufficiently knee-jerk reaction to the case, and Bernie Ward doing a solid three hours of fulminating over how this proves America is a completely racist nation.

So what's the great injustice these crusaders are rushing to denounce? Well, apparently six young African-Americans are being denied their God-given right to rat-pack and savagely beat one white teenager as a means of addressing their hurt feelings over some racial tension and turf warfare that's been going on at a small-town high school in the Deep South.

Ward, Sharpton, Jackson et al. are comparing this to the freedom rides and heroic marches of civil rights activists in the 1960s, but as I recall, those protests were demanding the right to attend schools and ride at the front of the bus. I don't remember Martin Luther King declaiming about a dream in which one day gangs of young men would be allowed to attack and beat other young men based on the color of their skin.

Okay, am I being one-sided here by ignoring the initial provocation by white students, who apparently told black students they couldn't hang out under a certain tree and later decorated that tree with nooses to reinforce that point? Well, I'm not ignoring it, and of course I think it's vile to evoke, whether intentionally or not, painful memories of a time when black people were routinely lynched in the Deep South.

But what seems to be overlooked here is that however vile and hateful the white students were being, they were still engaging only in speech and symbolic actions. You know, sticks and stones and all that...? Calling people names, especially racially charged ones, or making it clear that you don't think very much of their skin color or their culture, is the mark of small-minded and ignorant people. But a gang beating someone black and blue and bloody is a whole other order of injustice.

Martin Luther King knew that, and struggled mightily and mostly successfully to persuade his followers to restrain their understandable anger and instead employ nonviolent tactics. The charlatans who claim to be carrying on his legacy are doing just the opposite: charging that the arrest and prosecution of the black teenagers for their gang assault is a violation of their civil rights.

If there was even a shred of logic to this position, you'd have to also accept that women were merely exercising their own civil rights if they attacked and beat every moronic misogynistic rapper who's making a living slagging off bitches and hos. White kids who get robbed for their lunch money or suffer gratuitous beatdowns by black kids in liberal bastions like Berkeley or Oakland should be immune from prosecution if they brought in their own posses to administer some street justice. I say if there was any logic to this position, which of course there isn't, but nonetheless the media are falling all over themselves to present the hatemongering of Sharpton, Jackson et al. as if it were a perfectly reasonable response to an obvious injustice.

Combine this with the usual suspects hopping on the "OJ's only being persecuted because he's black" bandwagon and I very nearly want to despair about the possibility of Dr. King's true dream ever being realized. He dared to speak of a day when people would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin; 44 years later we seem to have arrived at a point where the color of a man's skin is all we're allowed to see.