Jesse Jackson explains those Tuesday-night tears

Jesse Jackson, who had some of his own unsuccessful presidential campaigns some 20 years ago, was caught on TV last night in the huge crowd in Chicago's Grant Park, listening to President-elect Barack Obama.

And weeping.

We wrote about the tearful image of Jackson here in The Ticket right then, as we wrote previously about some crude comments Jackson made on an open microphone in July about what he'd like to do to a part of Obama's private anatomy. (See photo by clicking on the Read more line below.)

In his monolgue Wednesday night Jay Leno suggested that perhaps Jackson was crying because he makes more than $250,000 a year.

But Jackson had already gone on National Public Radio to explain those Grant Park tears.

He said: "Well, on the one hand, I saw President Barack Obama standing there looking so majestic.

"And I knew that people in the villages of Kenya and Haiti, and mansions and palaces in Europe and China, were all watching this young African-American male assume the leadership to take our nation out of a pit to a higher place.

"And then, I thought of who was not there,'' Jackson said. "Medgar Evers, the husband of Sister Myrlie. ...So the martyrs and murdered whose blood made last night possible. I could not help think that this was their night.

"And if I had one wish: If Medgar, or if Dr. King could have just been there for a second in time, would have made my heart rejoice. And so it was kind of duo-fold -- his ascension into leadership and the price that was paid to get him there."

Jackson also had some comments to make on his own role in the civil rights movement, and our Swamp colleague Mark Silva has those over here.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credit: Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Screen grab from Fox News

Comments

[Jeff]

This was another point I was trying to make, which is all of amazingly hard ground work former generaltions paid to make it possible for Obama to become president. Just amazing.

[steve rodriguez]

Don't cry Jesse, I'm sure that you'll get a top job in the Obama administration!

[David Hallen]

I voted happily for Obama, but when I saw Jesse Jackson in that very posed photo-op moment, I laughed out loud.
Then an hour later, and another camera panned in on him and he was standing there, still as stone in that same posed fashion. He had to do something so he could again TALK ABOUT HIMSELF.

Jesse Jackson proved himself to be a shake-down artist, and lost credibility in the eyes of both blacks and whites.
He is an opportunist, an egomaniac, and he is out of touch with how he is viewed. He over-estimates his importance to the civil rights movement, always name-dropping to infer his leadership among the many civil rights giants of the sixties.

Further, how can anyone forget the crude comments he made about Obama. Obama does not need Jesse Jackson, nor does the black community, nor do Americans at large.

Obama represents a line of respectable black leaders, like Vernon Jordan. Not the "anything for a photo-op" strategy of the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Louis Farrakhan.

[Gerald Kaiser]

I can be as cynical about Jesse Jackson as anyone, but those were tears of release. Jackson has been one of the angriest black men, and the volcanic event before him simply reached deep into his gut and untied the knot he has carried since MLK was assassinated before his eyes 40 years ago!

[history is here]

I thought it was very misleading to find out that Jesse Jackson's entire Rainbow Coalition was never about the support of same sex marriages. I was told that his Rainbow flags were flown at the rally to spotlight the irony if his using the Rainbow name even though he doesn't publicly support same sex marriages. What's up with that?

[Karen]

Jesse, Jesse, Jesse. If memory serves me correctly, there was some fall out about Jesse Jackson when Martin Luther King was killed; something about him wiping the blood of the civil rights leader, on his shirt, then posing for the cameras. I seem to remember reading that someplace.

It would appear that Jesse Jackson will do anything, and everything to get photographed, to thrust his name in the lime light, at any cost.

It appeared to me too that he was posing for the camera. He is so full of it! He is jealous of fame he never was able to acheive and I think it is time to for once, and for all, sit down, shut up, and age with dignity, and let those who are qualified, lead us, intelligently. I am really sick of Jesse Jackson.

[nancy]

Those were not crockodile tears. They were tears from a man who saw Dr. King's vision come true, that a man would be judged on the strength of his character - not the color of his skin. Jesse was there for that speech, he was there for MLK's untimely death, And now he bears witness to part of the MLK "I have a Dream speech", and that dream was coming true right in front of him. Whatever you think of the man personally, he has devoted his entire life for the fruition of that dream and he was seeing it right before his eyes.