Thursday, July 10, 2008

The Nutty Confessor   [Kathleen Parker]

A coupla observations about the Rev. Jesse Jackson:

1. He doesn't wish Obama well any more than the Rev. Wright does. Both of these reverends have built careers around  victimization and Obama's call to self-examination and personal responsibility is tantamount to calling for these fellows' retirement. Both Wright and Jackson also are accustomed to center stage. They are no one's audience.

2. We can generally judge as more honest what people say "off mic" than when they're "on." Undoubtedly, Jackson expressed his true feelings toward Obama. But one wonders whether he unconsciously was targeting his son as well? The younger Jackson, who works for the Obama campaign, could only be hurt by  his father's remarks. Oedipal, perhaps? The elder Jackson, a narcissist of the highest order (see bloody shirt* or Jackson in Paris comparing himself to Jesus Christ and Mahatma Gandhi),** can't completely enjoy his son's rise as his own star descends into irrelevance.

Whatever his conscious or unconscious intent, the Rev. Jackson accomplished two things with his (unintended?) remark: He got back in the game, if only briefly; he re-established his dominance in the pack by diminishing his competitors. Even his own son.

Pathetic.

*When the Rev. Martin Luther King was murdered, Jackson dipped his hands in King's blood and wiped them down the front of his shirt. Later, Jackson appeared on television and spoke to the Chicago City Council wearing the shirt. There are different interpretations of this gesture - including that Jackson was doing the Baptist thing and trying to absorb power from the slain leader's blood - but Mrs. Coretta Scott King didn't speak to Jackson for years. Her interpretation was the Jackson was trying to use her husband's assasination for his own aggrandizement. The widow King was a wise woman.

** "Great things happen in small places. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville."

—Jesse Jackson, 1988 interview

07/10 04:13 PMShare