Last week Jesse Jackson learned — the hard way — that if a Fox News camera is pointed at you and you’re wearing a microphone, whispering that you want to cut Barack Obama’s nuts out is no way to guarantee he won’t hear you.
At the time, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly claimed that there was more to the tape than just the quote that was aired during the network’s first ratings extravaganza. Today the other shoe dropped.
What Fox News omitted was a few seconds of the Rev. Jackson using — wait for it — The “N” word.
This is funny. Very funny. You don’t believe me? You don’t think this word can be funny if you really try to laugh at it? Here’s a reminder from South Park that you’re horribly, horribly wrong:
Now, of course, the Rev. Jackson wasn’t calling Barack Obama a “n——r” in this case. He was using it as general street slang. According to the TVNewser blog, which first broke the story (confirmed this afternoon by O’Reilly), here’s what Jackson said:
“Barack…he’s talking down to black people…telling n——s how to behave.”
But this is the same Jackson who said in 2006 that the word should be banned as a form of hate speech. He asked Hollywood, including black entertainers (which he basically is), to completely do away with it. And he called for a boycott of “Seinfeld” DVDs after Michael Richards was caught calling people “n——s”:
Asked about free-speech issues, Jackson said the word is “unprotected.”
Somebody arrest that man! Or at least ask him to apologize to Don Imus.
[Hat tip: Allahpundit]
If anyone’s ever actually talked to a n*gg*r, you’ll realize you can’t tell them how to behave. That’s why they’re ni**ers. But what can I say, when black popular entertainment is “reclaiming” the word. But yea as far as it regards Imus, that’s textbook hypocrisy.
Okaaaaay…. I thought we had agreed to keep the riff-raff out. Did we forget to pay the bouncer again?
Jesse Jackson is a joke and an insult to all black people as far as I am concerned. As well as being generally racist, he has a lot of nerve talking all the smack he talks, and then acting no better than the rappers and urban youth he criticizes for using the N word.
The whole idea of reclaiming the N word is ridiculous. You don’t see women walking around calling each other the C word. You don’t see Hispanics calling each other spics. Black people that think they are doing everyone a favor by using the N word to remove old connotations are plain retarded. Have a little class, folks, and use the brain you have. If you want to change things with language, which is a garbage PC concept, you’re doing it wrong and only looking foolish in the process.
Chronic, you are my cracka, girl! (I hope you are white, only white people can say cracker or cracka) I am so sick of double standards about race from people who ARE racists. There is nothing wrong with what Obama said, and you would think Jesse Jackson would be all for the idea of responsibility, etc. So now you have to wonder, if he doesn’t respect “his people”, what is his agenda really? And remember people, words only hurt feelings, don’t give them power they don’t have.
“You don’t see women walking around calling each other the C word.” Maybe not women, per say, but pissed off teenage girls, maybe.
I personally don’t like the whole n-word thing. Either everybody can say it or nobody can. It’s that simple.
Growing up (in Canada) my mother (and her parents before her) told me the definition of the term in question referred only to lazy people; check the dictionary .. you will not find primates in the illustration. That is my interpretation of the word; it is not a color designation to me, only to the media and reverse-racists like JJ and friends who sound off and only hurt themselves and their cause. There will never be any progress until the angry ignorant people (on all sides) move beyond their fears. But JJ and friends don’t want to make progress either, they’ll make themselves irrelevant right! The whole concept of racism never even occurred to me in Canada (the blacks there are “whiter” than me) and I never considered differences until they were defined so clearly for me in the American South.
llamasrule, I’m cracka lookin’, but I’m what I like to call a Caribbean trail mix.
You still my cracka! Jesse Jackson is out for himself.
Kim, this is true… of course, using the C word when pissed off is not quite the same as using the N word to say hi to your buddy.
Dear Jesse Jackson,
Your hypocrisy makes my day a little brighter.
Sincerely,
Craptastic
P.S. What did Obama’s nuts ever do to you?
jesse jackson is such an idiot. as far as im concerned, he likes keeping racism alive since its all he likes to talk about! his son also works for barack obama too!
Yes katie, JJ’s son wasted no time issuing a statement saying he was disgusted and outraged by his father’s words. You know, some of this may be more generational than racial, but that’s still no excuse for not practicing what you preach, Reverend.
Without racism, Jesse Jackson loses all relevance. He’s built a career on it.
I once had a long discussion with my friend about black people and racism. According to him and others I have spoken with over the years, they believe that black people can’t be racist since they were once part of a repressed minority. I of course pointed out to him that almost every race on the planet has been an oppressed or enslaved race at one point in History. This of course when on for hours as we tried to illustrate to each other why we had the view we do now.
Oh and my friend was black so it wasn’t just a couple of non black individuals trying to get into the minds of others.
Jesse Jackson and Spike Lee are in the same boat and preach the same tired rhetoric. In fact, I cannot understand why people give them any attention. If one definition of insanity is to “keep doing the same thing hoping for a different outcome” then those that listen to Jackson (or Spike for that matter) could be insane. These guys aren’t going to change. Ever.
Why do we say “the c-word and the n-word” when we are simply talking about the word itself? Not calling other people by the names, just in a sentence such as “Jesse Jackson used the n-word”. Doesn’t it make us sound like children who aren’t allowed to curse, are those words so offensive we can’t even use them?
jlynn, in real life, were we all sitting in a room talking about this, I would use the word itself when talking about the word. However, and I can only speak for myself, I try not to cuss too much online because there’s always someone that’s going to choose to take it in the wrong way, or it might be too much for even Deceiver to allow in a post, though I have never been censored here before. I do it to keep what I am trying to get across as the focus of the post rather than the “ooooh, she said that word,” being the focus. That’s really the only reason for me.
Well, it does seem rather hypocritical of Jesse Jackson, but ultimately, it’s so much easier to target a celebrity as such than oneself. Everyone screws up; we’re all human. It’s just so much easier to juice up on someone else’s faults, whether Jackson’s, Hilton’s, or Lohan’s etc..
Still, I do find that he goes overboard. I mean protesting against “Seinfeld” dvd’s after the Richards incident. Yes, that is going to stop racism. Furthermore, I honestly think Michael Richards was simply angry, and when one is angry it’s so much easier to find the words that are going to hurt. The hecklers started it, and although Richards could have just asked them politely to leave, he was angry, and it happened.
The fact that Jackson was “brought in” to mediate so-called tension and allowed to ask the boycott of dvd’s as a result, and now THIS, it’s just funny in a sad way. It does, however, underline the fact that no one is perfect and no one should think they are. Not to mention one should really be careful they don’t have a camera on them/mic on when they’re perturbed.