Clarence Page: Jesse Jackson's Obama Trauma

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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/07/jesse_jacksons_obama_trauma.html

Jesse Jackson's Obama Trauma
By Clarence Page

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But the enthusiastic response that Obama has received from black audiences belies the notion that he is condescending to them. They don't appear to feel talked down to. They sound like they agree with him.

And Jackson had to twist himself into rhetorical knots to explain how that nuance of difference between his rhetoric and Obama's called for such an angry and vulgar response from him. After all, he insisted afterwards, his support for Obama's candidacy is "unequivocal," partly because Obama has campaigned for so many of the same issues that Jackson supports.

No, I suspect Jackson's objection has less to do with what Obama said than with who was saying it. Jackson misses the national spotlight that he has not held in recent years. Deep down, his anger suggests that Jackson wanted the world -- and Obama -- to know how angry he was. His objection sends a message that sounds more personal than political: He will not be ignored.

If so, he got his wish, although not with the sort of publicity he would like to have had. Even his son Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D., Illinois), an Obama campaign co-chair, issued a statement that scolded his father with the strongest rebuke that a loving son could give.

Politically, the elder Jackson's scorn comes as an odd gift to Obama. Working-class white voters and others who were put off by video clips of his former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, may well be oddly reassured that he has upset Jackson.

For us African Americans, Jackson has exposed to the world a barbershop and beauty salon conversation that has been going on for decades among black folks. Jackson's presidential runs prepared the way for Obama, but so did Bill Cosby. Black folks used to hesitate to be too self-critical in public, for fear of "airing dirty laundry" and the like. But, despite criticisms from some black elite intellectuals who charge that he's "blaming the victim," Cosby's popularity has hardly suffered. Neither, it appears, has Obama's.

That's because they don't talk down to their audiences. They enlist their audience as partners.