From Daily Kos:
[During Obama's campaign], Reverends Wright, Sharpton and Jackson were in a dilemma. They were three men caught in a web of their own historical press clippings. Even Dirty Harry knew that a man’s gotta know his own limitations. They had no choice, really. It was either distance themselves from Barack Obama, or cost him the Presidency.
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Reverend Wright was a firebrand noted for his take-no-prisoners rhetoric from the pulpit. He was the kind of inner-self black spirit that African Americans only surrender to in audience with other like-minded African Americans. He was the Black Power salute of contemporary black dialog – respectably vocal, but never allowed to escape beyond the inside breast pocket of a Brooks Brothers suit. Upper middle class black folks listened to him on Sunday mornings to make more palatable the glass ceilings they had to navigate Monday mornings at work.
Reverend Al Sharpton, on the other hand, had become the quintessential civil rights leader of the 21st Century, in the tradition of Frederick Douglass – "agitate, agitate, agitate." In the white community he had become a caricature of himself, but his gift was the ability to cut through the bullshit and tell it like it is or, shall I say, how he thought it was. He brought the cameras and the microphones which, in some cases, were all that was needed to affect surface level Change.
Jesse Jackson, over the recent years, had lost more credibility than he had gained, but in the eyes of his detractors, he still represented the civil rights camp - heir apparent to the Martin Luther King, Jr. legacy in the absence of any King Family member who wanted the torch more than a movie role. Reverend Jackson’s civil rights cavalcade always seemed to set up shop just outside of operational government and therefore seemed doomed to forever knock on the door of viability... from the wrong side.
In early Spring of 2008, as Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency began to approach the rarified air of serious money, there must have been an unspoken meeting of the minds among these men. It was a moment when all four had to realize that The Black Agenda had to be set aside in favor of The American Agenda. This had to happen in order for Obama to reach unprecedented heights in the presidential campaign. In was like members of the old Negro Leagues bidding farewell to Jackie Robinson as he cleared his locker. It was never "Why him?" They knew he had to move forward so that others could move forward after him, and it was time for them to step aside.
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Barack Obama would have never disavowed Reverend Wright had it not become evident that Wright’s rhetoric had the potential of slicing and dicing his campaign. So Wright intentionally pushed the issue. And he pushed it so far to the radical left that Obama had no choice but to respond emphatically.
Reverend Sharpton did his part by holding off on his endorsement of Barack Obama for as long as possible, before his motives were beginning to be questioned by his own constituency. Thus he helped to move Obama a tad further to the center.
Jesse Jackson’s particular stroke of genius was to enlist the aid of the enemy - FOX News Network. He knew it would only work once, and in order for it to work, it had to be Fox News, one of the most racist new organizations in the world. They would never not broadcast an apparent rift between two newsworthy black men. Jackson made the comments to a guest before an interview on "Fox & Friends," whispering that Obama was "talking down to black people" and that he (Jackson) wanted to "cut his nuts off." FOX jumped on this with all four feet. Not only did Jackson not ask FOX to hold back the tape, he went on CNN to apologize for his comments, thus ensuring that the tape would be broadcast. It played perfectly on the evening news. Jesse set himself up to take the hit, and even his own son, Jesse Jackson, Jr, an Obama staffer, had to denounce his father’s comments. How much more real does it get? Jesse played FOX like a cheap pawnshop trumpet. Here is a man who has been in public life for almost 50 years. He had been scrutinized by Hoover, wire-tapped by the FBI in the King era. And we’re supposed to believe that he forgot he was on a hot microphone... at the FOX News Network, no less?
Puh-leeeze!
Jeremiah Wright, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson fell on their swords so that Barack Obama would have a greater audience at center court. Someday a filmmaker will study the screenplay, and even she won’t believe it. Rod Serling wouldn’t believe it, either, and he knew something about irony.
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