Saturday, July 19, 2008
Orlando Sentinel: Barack Obama knew before speaking to the NAACP on Monday which commitments the audience wanted to hear: to housing assistance, jobs programs, health care and education.
The presumptive Democratic nominee for president didn’t disappoint.
He didn’t know, however, what they’d make of another commitment he’d sounded earlier in Chicago: his commitment to blacks seizing more responsibility in their lives. That one drew the crudest condemnation from civil-rights leader and former presidential contender Jesse Jackson, but Obama thought it worth repeating.
Raising children
Nothing will come of the money invested in communities, Obama said, if blacks “stand by and let our children drop out of school and turn to gangs for the support they are not getting elsewhere.” We can provide the right support, he said, if more black men start raising their children instead of just having them.
That made Jackson say earlier that he wanted to butcher Obama’s genitalia. His rationale? He thought Obama’s talk demeaning. Obama, however, was raised by a single parent. He wasn’t talking down to anyone.
At the NAACP gathering, they applauded, applauded some more, then gave Obama a standing ovation.
Jackson’s insult, uttered when he thought a microphone wouldn’t pick it up, seemed cowardly; Obama’s moral call-to-arms, a profile in courage. It’s easy to see why one man, not the other, could become president.