What Did Jackson Actually Want To Cut Off Of Obama?
Not since Vice President Dick Cheney told Senator Pat Leahy (D, Vermont) to "f*ck off," the brouhaha over Reverend Jesse Jackson’s off-screen, hot-mike remarks referring to Barack Obama’s comments to African-American families, has sent the political media into assumptive chaos. With the audio bleep and the printed letter replaced with some sort of typographical symbol, one can only assume that whatever he said, it must have had some apocalyptic component.
"There’s a lot of conclusion-jumping going on right now," said one Jackson spokesperson. "Jesse doesn’t even remember what he said."
"We’ve put our best research team together to dig into the possibilities," said Wharton School of Spelling Dean, Daniel Webster IV. "We know there’s an n a t and an s in the word, but after that we’re running into a myriad of supposition that has experts scratching their heds...I mean, heads."
Possibilities...
-Nats: Most often referring to the Washington National’s major league baseball team, a Jackson favorite, but also a common misspelling of gnats, a small bug. Since this was an audio catch, Jackson could have been referring to gnats, though, if so, Jackson would have done better to brush off the bug, rather than cut it off,. That is, of course, unless Jackson mistook a leech for a gnat, which with the leech’s tendency to latch on to its prey, cutting them off would be more appropriate.
- Nits: Once again we’re in the insect area here. Nits are the empty eggshells from which the lice have hatched out. Health officials have always recommend the cutting of the hair when lice and their nits are found. This then would have been a rather goodwill effort by Jackson, but not one give him credit for.
- Nets: Cutting off the basketball nets has long been a spirited tradition sports teams have participated in for years. When the old Dr. J led New Jersey Nets won the ABA championship, we had the serendipity of the Nets cutting down the nets. Though Obama is the presumptive winner of the Democratic presidential nomination, it would be presumptuous for him to cut down the nets until he accepts the nomination, which he will be doing at a football stadium where the only nets available would be, at best, soccer nets, where yelling "SCO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-RE" is more likely than cutting down the net.
-(K)Nots: This is a bit dicey considering that if Jackson is speaking to the condition of Obama’s hair, which, like Jackson’s, has a tight, course or knotted appearance, which brings us to whether Jackson was speaking about the knots or the have-nots, which do not have the physical nor grammatical likelihood of being able to be cut off.
- Nuts: This one is the most unlikely of the n*ts possibilities. There are so many varieties of nuts - peanut, cashew, almond, pistachio, hazelnuts (in coffee, nothing like it), chestnuts and I’m sure a few more. With Obama having no seeming connection to the nut industry, unless Jackson was attempting to link Obama to former President Jimmy Carter (an actual peanut farmer), so then referring to Obama’s lack of legislative experience, this reference seems dubious. Is it were nuts, a slang term for the mentally-challenged, would be just as mean-spirited as calling Obama retarded. Jackson’s life-long work for those with mental or emotional challenges of any color, makes that usage remote at best..
With all potential vowels exhausted - other than y, which may sometimes be considered a vowel, but most likely a consonant - and no media outlet courageous enough to release the uncensored audio, we may never know what Jackson said.
The controversy goes on, but one thing is certain, whatever Jackson said, right or wrong, for him to apologize, without even remembering what he said, took b*lls.
Award-winning TV writer and author, Steve Young, blogs at the appropriately named, steveyoungonpolitics.com