"Mike Check, One Two One Two"

My buddy called me Tuesday night. "Hey man-"

I cut him off. "You calling me about that damn Jessie Jackson, ain't you?"

"Did you see this negro?"

Naw, but I've been reading about it on the internet. Just when you think this election can't
get any crazier-"

"So you didn't see it?" my buddy asked me, sounding as if he was unable to comprehend
why my eyes weren't glued to my TV.

"No."

"You've GOT to see his face."

"Didn't I tell you this was going to get wild?"

"I don't think we we've really seen crazy yet. Dude, these are BLACK FOLKS doing this!
Can you imagine what'll happen once the white folks chime in?"

"Yeah," I said, "it's going to be a long year."

The first thing most of us who are not public speakers do when we come across a live microphone is talk into it. It is exciting - for those of us who do not speak to crowds
from stages, who do not wear clip-on microphones while being interviewed, who are not used to press conferences, where dozens of microphones are stuck at us all at once - to hear the sound of our amplified voice, even if it is being projected into an empty auditorium.

Some of us blow on them.

Some of us say "testing, one two three testing" if we are older, or "mic check one two one two" if we are younger.

Sooner or later, almost all of us come to realize, even if there are only a few people around, that talking in front of a crowd is harder than it looks.

But for the verbally agile microphone fiends who earn their daily bread speaking into them, they are as familiar as your cell phone is to you.

Jessie Jackson has been speaking into microphones his whole life. Maybe he was tired. Maybe he THOUGHT the mic was off, as he says. Or maybe someone was out to play a trick on him, as those in the media are wont to do.

Despite the pinstriped suits, the silk ties, the carefully barbered hair, and the manicured hands, Jackson has always had a certain country boy coarseness about him, a rough and ready air that has contributed to his distinctive persona.

It was the set of the jaw muscles in Jessie Jackson's face as he made the now famous gesture of a farm boy gelding a hog that had me laughing out loud as I watched the Youtube clip. The words he said were almost inconsequential when it got to the sudden upward wrenching motion that he made with his right arm, right there on camera for all the world to see.

Whatever the reason, the raw, naked thought that probably ran through his head and sprung from his lips almost simultaneously - "I'm going to cut his nuts off" will live on forever in sound bite land, alongside "Hymietown" and the photo of him embracing Momar Qaddafi.

The thing that bothers me the most about this is the glee with which the mainstream political pundits have seized upon this off-camera moment, boiling this down to the same old binary analysis – “Obama good, Jackson bad,” as if the only people worthy of supporting Obama have to be seen wearing their halos of devotion at all times.

If that’s the case, Obama’s surrogates can “renounce and reject” me right now, because I have moments, as I am sure all of you do, when I am VERY unhappy with something he’s said or something he’s done. The FISA crowd, as aggravating as they have been, are SUPPOSED to criticize Obama when they feel they have been wronged by a stance he takes. I myself am starting to get riled by the weekly apologies Obama seems to offer to some maligned group or cause.

The look on Jackson’s face at the press conference he held to express regret about his actions was as telling as the violent thrust of his shoulder was on the FOX videotape. He looked as if he could see his own future in this fall's campaign, his powerful voice of advocacy muted by his own carelessness, by his own all-too-human envy.

Does Obama Need To Come Out Hard Against Rev Wright?

My buddy and I went at it this morning. He wants Obama to come out hard - not to denounce Wright, or dissassociate himself from Wright, but to tell Wright publicly that he needs to "shut his mouth" for the good of the campaign.

I couldn't believe I was hearing this come out of my pal's mouth - he is an accomplished lawyer who has been the campaign manager for a couple of local judiciary elections himself.

"Dude," I said, "there is NO way he can say that."

"What do you mean he can't say that? If he can't show the American people that he can handle one loud mouth negro, then why should they believe that he can rule the country?"

"Come on, man," I said. "You cannot manhandle a negro like this. He doesn't have anything to lose. And he will use whatever you do against you, to show how he has defied yet another attempt by 'The Man' or his surrogates to silence someone who is speaking truth to power. That's the new black political phrase, you know - 'speak truth to power'."

We went back and forth awhile, until the need to get back to work intruded on our argument.

There is a reason Jackie Robinson integrated baseball, Sidney Poitier was Hollywood's first leading man, and Obama is likely to be the first black Democratic nominee for president, the same reason that Michael Jordan still gets more love from NBA fans than Shaq, Kobe, and Iverson combined, the same reason that Tiger Woods has the fans twenty deep around the greens.

My buddy wants Obama to show some teeth to Wright. I think its a waste of time, that the news cycles are so short now that this will die back down next week of its own accord, especially after the primary results come in and everyone has to re-handicap Hillary's odds of winning the nomination.

Now, if Obama had gotten to where he is today by being direct, by being forthright, by confronting issues head on, I might have had some kind of reason to agree with my buddy.

To ask a man to do something against his nature is the worst kind of political pandering, especially if its sole reason is to "look presidential". We haven't had a coalition building president in a long time. I am finding it refreshing that we have someone who does not have to resort to he-man antics to get his point across. The warrior king is a relic. Our presidents these days are exactly what the title says they are - chief executive officers.

If Jackie Robinson had thrown things back at the people who threw things at him from the bleachers, had hunted down those who made death threats against him, had taken his bat to the players who taunted him on the field with racial epithets, he wouldn't have lived as long as he did - hell, he wouldn't have played as long as he did.

If Michael Jordan had supported Jessie Jackson for president - publicly - if he had divorced his wife years ago and dated the kind of chicks he really wanted - a lot of the air would have been let out of His Airness's image.

Obama and his strategists have done pretty well so far. I think they can get things back on track and continue to execute their gameplan without overhauling the Obama personality at this late date.