The end of an era, happily

Leaving aside the media ethics of the thing, I think the professional suicide of Jesse Jackson is something to be cheered, and a real changing of the guard moment in American politics.

Jackson is yesterday's model, a man who arguably did some good in standing up for his people, but who metastasized into a race hustler and shakedown artist, a man who personally profited from keeping alive a sense of grievance and victimization among African-Americans -- and stoking a sense of guilt among white power-holders and power-brokers (e.g., the news media), which indulging Jackson and his schemes were meant to assuage.

Barack Obama is the next generation, and he threatens the Jackson model. I've long said that if you look at two speeches at the 2004 Democratic convention -- Al Sharpton's and Barack Obama's -- you were looking at the dead hand of the past, and the living hope for the future. In terms of policy, Obama still believes in racial quotas and the like, but his style, as many have observed, is far different. He's not a leader who trafficks in fear, resentment and guilt. I am not going to vote for him because I disagree with him politically, but I think the rise of a man like Barack Obama, and the concomitant decline of a man like Jesse Jackson, is something to be cheered.

And it is only too fitting that it should come by Jackson trashing Obama for speaking to black audiences about taking personal responsibility for their lives -- the one thing Jesse Jackson has not done, because it would have put him out of a job. (Or rather, made him get a real job).