Jessie Done Gone Nutty

First of all let me say that if anybody has earned to right to act a fool and ask for our forgiveness, it’s Jessie Jackson. Every person of color that owns a franchise in this country owes Jessie a great deal of gratitude. His historic run for President created the political infrastructure that allowed Obama to be successful. All of the high-tech wizardry that we are so enamored with from the Obama campaign is good, but it was the black vote turning out in overwhelming numbers in state after state that gave him the nomination. To win in politics you have to have a energized base, and the black vote was Obama’s base.

Obama has come under a lot of criticism lately. Obama should be rightly criticized for his shift on the FISA bill. His support of what many in the country rightly believe to be an unconstitutional law is troubling. But do you really want to live with some of theses white folks and not have a right to a gun? Now I am a committed non-violent person and have never owned a gun in my life, but our history in the land of the free has been too tenuous not have the right to own one.

Obama’s criticism of the Supreme Court striking the death penalty for rape of a juvenile is understandable. I started my legal career opposed to the death penalty. But I have come to believe that there are crimes so heinous that you abdicate your right to live among us. There is evil that walks among us. I have sat and stared into its eyes and have been charmed by its charisma. I have fought with all of my legal skills to set it free, knowing that if I was successful, it would molest or rape again. In America even evil has a right to a fair trial. It is what makes us great.

Morally, if you rape a five-year old in every orfice of her body – then society has a moral justification to put you to sleep. Where I depart from Obama is the mechanism by which we decide the ultimate sentence, is so flawed by racism and class that the death penalty simply cannot be justified. That gives anti-death penalty advocates a strong case to criticize the next President of the United States.

Furthermore, Black leaders have as much right to criticize Obama as anyone. However, Jackson comments that Obama was speaking down to blacks is just wrong. As I have written on this blog, young male children being born and raised without fathers is the greatest threat facing black people in America today. Black America has got to start dealing with that fact. The first step is honest and open dialogue. Obama the product of a single mother and absent father is as good a person as any to lead it.

If Jackson critique was that Obama’s moral rhetoric was insufficient in that he did not challenge the greater society, particularly white folks, to own up for its behavior and to acknowledge that racism and classism plays an equal role to personal responsibility then he would have been justified to do so. However, to threatened the brother's nuts on the bases of his logic was just plain nutty.

Even more, it was sad. Jackson’s behavior throughout the campaign has been disappointing. Whenever he appeared on a news program as an Obama supporter, his defense of Obama has been half-hearted. For instance, after Bill Clinton’s racial interjections in South Carolina, I watched Jackson on McNeil Lehr introduced as a Obama supporter and then actually accuse Obama of raising race too. I thought damn Jessie, don’t do the brother any more favors by defending him. I always got the feeling that he really was with the Clintons but political necessity placed him unhappily in the Obama camp.

Some civil rights leaders seem particularly threatened by the new politics. Rather than basking in the results of their labor, they act like old lions whose time over the pride is waning. Julian Bond comments that young black leaders should have to rip the power away from the old guard makes you wonder why some of our leaders risked their lives and went to jail. If they were not doing it to make way for a new generation that was unencumbered by the social and mental limitations of Jim Crow, then why the hell bother.

At this moment in time in our history, Jackson should be the most proudest. It was his vision and ‘nuts” that paved the way for this brother. To see him act out before the world as a bitter old-man, hurt because the spotlight has moved away and chastised by his own son, is truly tragic. We love you brother but go home before you do yourself and us anymore harm.