The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

He’s Good at Apologies

Jesse Jackson says he wanted to "cut off" Barack Obama's "nuts" because the presidential contender has been saying black men have to take more responsibility for their behavior, stop acting "like boys," and not father and abandon children. Jackson said that Obama was "talking down to black people" with these remarks. In a turgid apology, he explained, "My appeal was for the moral content of his message to not only deal with the personal and moral responsibility of black males, but to deal with the collective moral responsibility of government and the public policy which would be a corrective action for the lack of good choices that often led to their irresponsibility.'' So we are to understand that it was "government and the public policy" and a "lack of good choices" that led in 2001 to Jackson, who was then a famous, wealthy, 59-year-old, issuing another apology and withdrawing temporarily from public life when he had to reveal—because the tabloids got hold of the story—that he had fathered a toddler out of wedlock. This is in addition to his apology in 1984 for calling New York "Hymietown." At least this time Jackson didn't have to be forced to apologize.