I really like this article. It was located on Time.com. He speaks out against Jackson!! Also, many black leaders are leaving Jackson and his followings because they feel its time for a new black leader. Its not in this article, but its on cnn.com.
Like Mother, Like Son?
Essayist Lance Morrow finds himself comforted by the no-nonsense presence of First Mother Barbara Bush on the inaugural platform
BY LANCE MORROW
The faces in the inaugural tableau might have been painted by Gilbert Stuart in collaboration with Norman Rockwell ? all those distinctive American faces: George W. Bush with right hand upraised and left on the Bible held by his beaming wife, Laura; Jenna Bush smiling between her parents; Dick Cheney; Chief Justice Rehnquist in his flashy chevroned robes; Bill Clinton and Al Gore in set-jaw profile, like medallions, their chins enigmatic and pugnacious; and just beyond Clinton, the parents of the new president, the ex-president looking mellow and vague.
In a curious way, the strongest and most important character in the tapestry at that frozen moment seems to be the president's mother, Barbara Bush, with her radiance of white hair. She is the most powerful presence. She watches her son intently, with a resonant comprehension that is beyond pride. She is the Force.
I don't know about you, but I find myself obscurely reassured by the knowledge that George W. Bush takes office under the watchful gaze of his parents (especially his mother), who are loving but unillusioned and will, I sense, keep him upon a basically honorable and decent path. They are honorable, decent people and exercise over their son a certain Confucian authority. He wants their approval, even at the age of 54. That is not a bad thing in an unparented, un-Confucian society, especially after eight years of a President who was, morally speaking, in narcissistic business for himself. The thing that Bill Clinton never had, all his life, was adults smart enough, or present enough, or sober enough, to supervise him.
In our public life, there is a strange motif of adolescence persisting full-blown into middle age and beyond. Clinton cleared up his sloppy teenager's sexual mess only the day before he left the White House. And there is Jesse Jackson. I watched the angry anti-inaugural protests in Tallahassee, at which a labor leader named Gerald McEntee called on the crowd to join in a moment of silent prayer for the Reverend Jackson in his hour of private tribulation.
Well-l-l-l-l-l-l. I have a lot of things to pray for before I get to the Reverend Jackson. We all make mistakes. But it seems to me that, like Clinton, Jackson is a little too old to deserve anything but contempt for indulging in the kind of behavior that guys should outgrow a year or two after their acne clears up. As with Clinton, the sexual misadventure that finally caught up with Jackson was but the latest in a long, obdurate sequence of gropings and wrong-side-of-the-fence lecheries that stretched back to the first awakening of their glands. I wag my finger here in a nonpartisan way ? I felt the same about the rabbity Nelson Rockefeller, who persisted in nailing the hired help even unto his undignified deathbed.
If you look, you may find another historical pattern. In the '60s, when Nelson Rockefeller ended his first marriage by taking up with a wife and mother named Happy Murphy, shattering her own marriage in the process, Connecticut Senator Prescott Bush, father of the 41st president and grandfather of the 43rd, stood on the floor of the United States Senate and delivered an indignant condemnation of Rockefeller's behavior; the patriarch Bush, six feet four, with thunderous black eyebrows, wondered what Nelson's immoral behavior could betoken for the future of American public life. Now we know. Rockefeller was the least of it.
I don't mean to suggest that Barbara Bush's censorious gaze is needed to keep W. from carnal stupidities. He's not the type anyway. (He proved on inauguration night he can't even foxtrot.) Besides, some people plausibly argue that a risk-taking sexual feistiness proclaims a strong leader. As Plutarch wrote of Marc Antony: "He did not fear the audit of his copulations...."
What I suggest is merely that the new president takes considerable strength and steadiness from his family, across generations. Whatever W.'s intellect, the temperament he gets from his parents' presence may be his great underestimated asset. That temperament may be the key to his presidency.
Like Mother, Like Son?
Essayist Lance Morrow finds himself comforted by the no-nonsense presence of First Mother Barbara Bush on the inaugural platform
BY LANCE MORROW
The faces in the inaugural tableau might have been painted by Gilbert Stuart in collaboration with Norman Rockwell ? all those distinctive American faces: George W. Bush with right hand upraised and left on the Bible held by his beaming wife, Laura; Jenna Bush smiling between her parents; Dick Cheney; Chief Justice Rehnquist in his flashy chevroned robes; Bill Clinton and Al Gore in set-jaw profile, like medallions, their chins enigmatic and pugnacious; and just beyond Clinton, the parents of the new president, the ex-president looking mellow and vague.
In a curious way, the strongest and most important character in the tapestry at that frozen moment seems to be the president's mother, Barbara Bush, with her radiance of white hair. She is the most powerful presence. She watches her son intently, with a resonant comprehension that is beyond pride. She is the Force.
I don't know about you, but I find myself obscurely reassured by the knowledge that George W. Bush takes office under the watchful gaze of his parents (especially his mother), who are loving but unillusioned and will, I sense, keep him upon a basically honorable and decent path. They are honorable, decent people and exercise over their son a certain Confucian authority. He wants their approval, even at the age of 54. That is not a bad thing in an unparented, un-Confucian society, especially after eight years of a President who was, morally speaking, in narcissistic business for himself. The thing that Bill Clinton never had, all his life, was adults smart enough, or present enough, or sober enough, to supervise him.
In our public life, there is a strange motif of adolescence persisting full-blown into middle age and beyond. Clinton cleared up his sloppy teenager's sexual mess only the day before he left the White House. And there is Jesse Jackson. I watched the angry anti-inaugural protests in Tallahassee, at which a labor leader named Gerald McEntee called on the crowd to join in a moment of silent prayer for the Reverend Jackson in his hour of private tribulation.
Well-l-l-l-l-l-l. I have a lot of things to pray for before I get to the Reverend Jackson. We all make mistakes. But it seems to me that, like Clinton, Jackson is a little too old to deserve anything but contempt for indulging in the kind of behavior that guys should outgrow a year or two after their acne clears up. As with Clinton, the sexual misadventure that finally caught up with Jackson was but the latest in a long, obdurate sequence of gropings and wrong-side-of-the-fence lecheries that stretched back to the first awakening of their glands. I wag my finger here in a nonpartisan way ? I felt the same about the rabbity Nelson Rockefeller, who persisted in nailing the hired help even unto his undignified deathbed.
If you look, you may find another historical pattern. In the '60s, when Nelson Rockefeller ended his first marriage by taking up with a wife and mother named Happy Murphy, shattering her own marriage in the process, Connecticut Senator Prescott Bush, father of the 41st president and grandfather of the 43rd, stood on the floor of the United States Senate and delivered an indignant condemnation of Rockefeller's behavior; the patriarch Bush, six feet four, with thunderous black eyebrows, wondered what Nelson's immoral behavior could betoken for the future of American public life. Now we know. Rockefeller was the least of it.
I don't mean to suggest that Barbara Bush's censorious gaze is needed to keep W. from carnal stupidities. He's not the type anyway. (He proved on inauguration night he can't even foxtrot.) Besides, some people plausibly argue that a risk-taking sexual feistiness proclaims a strong leader. As Plutarch wrote of Marc Antony: "He did not fear the audit of his copulations...."
What I suggest is merely that the new president takes considerable strength and steadiness from his family, across generations. Whatever W.'s intellect, the temperament he gets from his parents' presence may be his great underestimated asset. That temperament may be the key to his presidency.