Right-Wingers Pounce on Jesse Jackson's Use of the 'N-Word'

Posted by Gavin M, Sadly, No! at 5:00 PM on July 17, 2008.

The ever-industrious and à la mode Gateway Pundit responds to the latest banal revelation from that dumb gotcha-tape that FOX News has been peddling as though it were the 21st Century version of the Richard Wright/James Baldwin feud:

Jesse Jackson: "Barack... He's Telling N*****s How to Behave" ...Jackson says Obama's telling n*****s how to behave. The rest of the Jesse Jackson tape was released today. Not surprisingly, Jesse used the n-word when describing Obama.

But that's just the excitement talking. He links to this TVNewser story, and then quotes the entire story in plain sight, including this line:

Jesse Jackson did use the "N" word. But it was not directed at Barack Obama.

We don't want to be like, "Oh that Gateway Pundit, gee whiz: always jumping up and down all like 'Oh boy! Oh boy! The n-word!' with his finely tuned N-dar pinging, gleefully poking at the asterisk key." But it seems like we just worked through this issue with him, and after a smooth and congenial season in which he huffed and whooped and made stuff up day after day in a race-neutral fashion, now he's back joyously 'n'-hyphening all over the place -- as if he were, you know, unable to freaking help himself.

Also, since we're nit-picking, the phrase, "The rest of the Jesse Jackson tape was released today," is contradicted by the fact, also quoted in plain sight in his very post, that no tape at all, but only a single sentence of an alleged transcript (which is, you know, quoted in full in the original story, in his post, and also above) was leaked to TVNewser.

How he gets away with this stuff, we'll never understand. His daily visits are something like 25,000. You'd think the number would keep slipping downwards due to fatal bagel-cutting accidents, forks in toasters, hair dryers in bathtubs, perambulatory scissorings, walkings through plate glass doors, and drownings due to his readership gaping upwards during rainstorms.

He's supposed to be a nice guy in real life, actually. But here's the trick that's getting really, really old:

Could you imagine if that would have been a white conservative mumbling that on tape? And, this dude is supposed to be a civil rights leader? The double standards in our society are outrageous.

So say the damn word then, thou warrior of freedom. Knock out those asterisks and say it loud and often. Freedom means that we can say what we like. But here's the part you seem unable to understand: It doesn't mean that we can say whatever we like, and nobody is allowed to divine our intentions or think worse of us. Freedom of speech also means that if you say dumb, offensive things that make you look like a buffoon, people are free to exercise their own free speech by calling you a dumb, offensive buffoon.

Can we imagine a white conservative mumbling such a thing on tape? Oh gee, how about one also named Jesse, during a national TV appearance?*

But of course, to conservatives, that's different.

* Note: I couldn't nail down the source for the TV remark, so changed the link to a brief and incomplete compendium of Sen. Helms's greatest hits. There ought to be something there for almost everyone.

Also, to end this foolishness once and for all, perhaps we ought to find a word meaning ‘white people’ that only white people are allowed to say. In fairness and for parallelism’s sake, it should be chosen by someone non-white. Any ideas?

Tagged as: obama, jesse jackson, racial slur, gateway pundit