That one must refrain from expressing a desire to castrate a presidential candidate, especially a candidate whom one claims to support, and especially when on the set of Fox and Friends, is a tried and true axiom of beltway punditry.
For some reason Jesse Jackson forgot this timeless rule of thumb this past Sunday, not realizing Fox's camera and microphone were live. (YouTube!--do that electoral thing that you do!)
Secularists, I have always argued, are people who easily acknowledge their own folly and tolerate the folly of others. Rev. Jackson’s remark, directed at Senator Obama for "talking down to black people", was pure folly, comedy gold. (Larry David -- who sets nightmares to comedy -- couldn't have scripted and staged it better.) Jackson has apologized to Senator Obama and I truly hope that the whole thing blows over (assuming that no more video is forthcoming).
If this affair has any relevance at all it serves as a warning to the presumptive Democratic nominee: he may be taking too many liberties with his base and too fast. Just last month, I came close to articulating Jesse Jackson's complaint:
"Obama is certainly willing -- I kind of wonder if some African-Americans think he is too willing (see his Philadelphia address on race) -- to use the community as a means of demonstrating that he has transcended race-based politics."
Obama’s strategists have clearly figured out that the coalition he assembled in the primaries would not be broad enough to carry him through the general. This accounts for his dramatic series of policy alterations, panders, right-ward shifts, and all-out flip-flops over the past few weeks.
If this has any broader significance, it may be that Obama’s widely discussed sprint to the Center has left many of his base constituencies unnerved. It indicates that he should have spent a little more time gaining their trust before making his thoroughly understandable and entirely necessary move to the Middle.
Jacques Berlinerblau is the Rabbi Harold White Chair in Jewish Civilization in Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior advisor to the Center for Jewish Civilization, where he was director from 2006 to June 2020. Berlinerblau has published on a wide variety of issues ranging from the sociology of heresy and modern Jewish intellectuals to African-American and Jewish-American relations.
