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Jackson Wants Obama’s Nuts Either Way
By newsguy | July 12, 2008
Here’s the moral of the story before the story’s told:
If you’re doing a television interview, or indeed anything involving a microphone and a recorder or camera, don’t ever think that you’re “safe” saying something during commercial breaks, or whispering something under your breath. It doesn’t work. We’ve seen this time, after time, after time. It’s amazing for crowd entertainment, but damaging for your credibility and/or career.
Case in point: Jesse Jackson’s now infamous comments about Barack Obama, said during a break on Fox News (of all channels looking to catch a Democrat in a trap, Fox News reigns supreme) when he thought the camera wasn’t rolling. In case you missed them…
As if it wasn’t enough that those comments have become hugely public - thereby forcing Jackson to address them in an equally public manner - there’s now a debate raging about the significance of a preposition in his choice of wording. That’s right: we have so little to do with our lives that we’re engaging in widescale discussion of whether he said “I want to cut his nuts off” or “I want to cut his nuts out“.
It seems like the intent is clear either way, but everybody’s in on the “I heard something different” train…
The Chicago Tribute reported “I want to cut his nuts out,” Jackson added, gesturing as if grabbing part of the male anatomy and then pulling.
Whereas Bloomberg reported “I want to cut his nuts off,” Jackson then said, according to a report on the Fox News Web site.
Pointless argument? The New York Post doesn’t think so: Veterinarians and doctors talk about cutting nuts “off.” Only a thug or a gangster cuts a man’s nuts “out.” And Jackson knows better than most the vicious symbolism of castration and its blood-soaked link to lynchings in the Old South.
We suppose there’s another moral to the story after all: If you’re going to say something idiotic in front of a microphone, choose your words carefully. You never know when the press, who could be devoting ink to something like national debt, human rights abuse, or advances in cancer research or AIDS, will decide dissection of your grammar and composition is the most newsworthy thing in the world.
Topics: Laugh out Loud, What do you think?, What the...?, The Buzz |