February 1, 2007

"I don’t know whether it was an attempt to diminish what I had done in '88, or to say Barack is all style and no substance."

Jesse Jackson comments on Joe Biden's botched compliment. (Hmmm... I wonder if Jackson was sliding in his own opinion on Obama there.)

Al Sharpton provides the wisecrack that threatens to become every black person's greeting upon meeting Mr. Biden: "I told him I take a bath every day."

ADDED: More from Sharpton:
No stranger to electoral intrigue, Mr. Sharpton was quick to offer a political motive: That Mr. Biden was drawing distinctions between Mr. Obama and African-American leaders like Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Jackson, to “discredit Mr. Obama with his base.”
And Sharpton, of course, has his own political motives. I think we've been seeing him try to get Obama to pay more attention to black voters (and black leaders).

7 comments:

MadisonMan said...

I wish my son bathed every day. But what can you expect from 10-year-olds?

What a shame that another Senator's Presidential bid has been torpedoed by the Senator's own inane inarticulateness. See me shedding all these tears over it.

The Drill SGT said...

Al and Jesse comment on Biden, because Biden was effectively directly comparing Obama to these 2 losers.

hdhouse said...

unfortunately, any black person who rises to the successes Obama has should be acknowledged as having overcome the inbred racial hostility that still lingers in this country.

why can't you dumpsters just say "good for him"? you walk a block in his shoes and let me know how it feels.

TMink said...

HD, HD, HD. Does your knee jerk and type the posts? Nobody was posting anything bad about Obama. Biden is the butt of the jokes, the white man. Not Obama.

So you read the posts? I just do not understand how you can defen Obama against so called racial insensitivity from dumpsters when it was Biden being chumped. I need to stop shaking my head over you, I am getting dizzy.

Trey

Revenant said...

why can't you dumpsters just say "good for him"? you walk a block in his shoes and let me know how it feels.

Well, I could have walked a block in his shoes, but my parents didn't make enough money to send me to the elite private schools he attended.

Seriously, the guy isn't some poor kid from the projects. His parents were well-to-do and highly educated. The spoon in his mouth might not have been silver, but it was at least some nice Williams-Sonoma flatware.

Steven said...

Seriously, HD, do you know anything about Obama's rise to prominence?

His state legislature seat was in a majority-black district. How much racial hostility do you have to overcome when your constituents are all your race?

And the Senate election? Who did he beat? Alan Keyes. What race is Mr. Keyes? Black. How much racial hostility do you have to overcome when anyone hostile to you because of your race will be hostile to your opponent for the same reason?

Finn Alexander Kristiansen said...

I was reading in the Wall Street Journal on Friday a small opinion piece about how this particular super bowl, all things considered, would be quite blah (as compared with a Saints/Patriot matchup).

I disagreed with the writer. He went about comparing quarterbacks and other aspects of the game. What was really interesting was his ability to dismiss both coaches as being equally uninteresting- essentially doubles of each other, with no distinctive (and contrasting) beliefs, coaching styles, or back stories.

This is the kind of dismissal, though unintentional, that can be irksome to blacks.

And some whites, like Biden, try to compensate for that by going the other way, with fawning praise that may mask other deeply held feelings (just and unjust alike).