The answer is no, the article, which focuses on Obama's transformation since his 2000 House campaign, doesn't get any less nasty, although it doesn't explicitly repeat the racially loaded term "uppity" (that choice, apparently, belongs to whoever does the front page of Salon).
Obama just couldn't -- or wouldn't -- loosen up. The dignified demeanor that had won him a state Senate seat in the university community of Hyde Park did not translate to the district's inner-city precincts. His internal rhythm was set to "Pomp and Circumstance." "Arrogant," scoffed a South Side radio host. Even his body language signaled he was slumming. During a debate with Trotter, in the dank basement of a park field house, he sat with his lanky legs crossed, chin cocked at a heroic angle. He wasn't even trying to conceal his impatience with a mere state Senate peer, or with this grungy necessity of campaigning.
And
I'd thought Obama had campaigned like an ass, but I expected him to run for the U.S. Senate. And I expected him to win. His white upbringing would appeal to suburbanites, while South Siders might figure that Obama was as black a senator as they were going to get, after the Carol Moseley Braun debacle. His braininess, his haughtiness, his sense of entitlement -- they could only be pluses in a Senate campaign. They don't call that place Ego Mountain for nothing.
Ouch. Just, ouch. It's an incredibly negative article, and one that directly engages Obama's race and concludes that he became an effective politician when he embraced his whiteness. But it's difficult to tell how the racial politics of the article would read without "uppity" right there up front.
Update: Well, that was fast. "Uppity" has become "smug." Thanks, by the way, to clonecone for the screenshot of the original.
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