"I'm not trying to impress you. I'm just trying to impress upon you: I'm like you."

The rare double self-own

— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) February 23, 2026

Let's look at the 2 obvious problems:

1. He's calling attention to his struggle with a serious disability, dyslexia. We talked about that here, a few weeks ago. He seems to be confessing something that is true, making himself vulnerable and relatable. Of course, he's also exposing his limitations. But his antagonists may screw up trying to take advantage of this. 

2. In saying "I'm like you" to what seems to be an audience of black people, he's taking a risk. You can hear warm laughter, as, perhaps, many people relate to him, because they've struggled with exams, for whatever reason. But he seems to be unwittingly expressing the old stereotype about black people — the one right-wing people love to bring up. So, again, his antagonists will screw up trying to exploit what is, from him, only a slight innuendo. I'll bet some of you do it right here in the comments.

ADDED: Nicki Minaj responds to that Newsom clip:

His way of bonding with black ppl is to tell them how stupid he is & that he can’t read. 

This means my first read on him was correct. He’s been handed so many things & put in high positions he never earned or deserved. 

Do you wanna know the craziest part of this footage that will haunt him forever? He’s literally slowing his speech down & talking in a sporadic cadence. 

He’s not just TELLING them that they’re all probably stupid & probably can’t read, he’s LITERALLY SLOW-ING-DOWN-HIS-SPEECH to make them understand the words that are coming out of his mouth!!!! As if they’re children!!!! That means he REALLY BELIEVES they’re slow. He’s not just saying it—he didn’t misspeak!!!! He BELIEVES it!!!!

Do ya love it?!?!! 

Do ya just love it, black ppl?!????

It reminds me of Jesse Jackson's criticism of Obama: "He is talking down to black people." Obama survived. Obama thrived. 

"The Reverend Jesse Jackson is Dead at 84. I knew him well, long before becoming President."

"He was a good man, with lots of personality, grit, and 'street smarts.' He was very gregarious - Someone who truly loved people!"

Writes Trump at Truth Social.

Trump seizes the opportunity to take credit for himself: 

Goodbye to Jesse Jackson.

"Jesse Jackson, a leading African American voice on global stage, dies at 84/As a civil rights activist, he joined the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama, and Memphis. He later launched two historic presidential campaigns" (WaPo)(gift link).

Here's Meade's video of him, from 2011, at the Wisconsin protests:

And here's my photo of a button that I still have right here on my desk and that I wore in 1988:

Discussed in an old diavlog, here, back in 2007, when Obama was first running for President.

From the Washington Post obituary: 

"The [Rainbow] gathering is organized around large camps and communal kitchens that serve coffee, tea and food. No money is exchanged."

"At a trading post, kids and adults bartered for jewelry, stones, glass pipes and Snickers. A painted rainbow was being erected over the 'Granola Funk' stage in the meadow, where a musical, a gong show and other performances would take place. At the Christian-themed Jesus Kitchen, one attendee said the nondenominational gatherings had made him a believer. 'I’d never seen Christians do it the way these guys do it,' said Gavin Boyd, 25, a carpenter from Fort Collins, Colo. It was, he said, less orthodoxy and more spirituality."

 
"The Rainbow Family comes to Colorado, bringing peace, love and anxiety" (WaPo).

This weekend is the 50th Anniversary of the first Rainbow Gathering.

Most of the WaPo article is about the locals worrying about the environmental impact of the gathering and the group's basically good reputation for sanitation and cleanup. There was a little something about politics:

"[S]hortly after he cinched the Democratic nomination, [Bill] Clinton gave a speech to [Jesse] Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition group — in which he attacked the group..."

"... for also hosting a relatively obscure rapper named Sister Souljah, who in the wake of that year’s Los Angeles riots said in an interview, 'If Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?' Clinton told the Rainbow Coalition that 'if you took the words "white" and "Black" and reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech.' Jackson was furious and called on Clinton to apologize — exactly the response Clinton was hoping for. The Black syndicated columnist Clarence Page later wrote that by picking the fight, Clinton 'impressed swing voters, particularly white suburbanites, with a confident independence from Jackson that other Democratic presidential candidates had not shown.' A loudly performed repudiation of a putative far-left extremist would come to be known as a 'Sister Souljah moment.' Clinton ran for president as a factional candidate, against the Republicans but also against his party’s liberal wing, so that when he won, he remade the Democratic Party in his own — and the D.L.C.’s — image. In 1995, midway through Clinton’s first term, 23 moderate House Democrats formed the Blue Dog Caucus to, in their words, 'represent the middle of the partisan spectrum.'"

From "The Vanishing Moderate Democrat/Their positions are popular. So why are they going extinct?" by Jason Zengerle (NYT). This is a very long article. I've just pulled a little snippet from it.

"Biden... was put on the ticket to balance the ticket, not to enhance it. Barack was against the Iraq War, he was for the Iraq War. Barack was against the crime bill, he was for the crime bill."

Said Jesse Jackson, endorsing Bernie Sanders (Real Clear Politics).

Some of the critics of Trump's Warsaw speech reject the idea of the greatness of Western Civilization.

"[A]mazingly enough, they find the West itself an offensive and exclusionary concept. Th[is] critique speaks to how the mantra 'Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civ has got to go' is no longer just the creed of fringe activists, but is seeping into the mainstream. Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post worries that Trump’s speech invites civilizational conflict. Really? Trump just had a successful trip to Saudi Arabia, where presumably it isn’t news that the West is vested in Western values. Peter Beinart of the Atlantic objects that 'the West' is allegedly 'a racial and religious term.' This is bizarre, given that countries everywhere can 'Westernize,' or adopt the norms and practices that were first adopted in the West and are uniquely suited to human flourishing. Trump warned in his speech of fighting for centuries to maintain our freedom, only to lose it to 'a lack of pride and confidence in our values.' The unhinged reaction to his address... shows how this, alas, is not an idle worry."

Writes Rich Lowry at The National Review.

Do you remember the original "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civ has got to go"? It happened at Stanford:

By the mid-1980s, increasing dissatisfaction with the introductory humanities program known as “Western Culture” that had begun in 1980 came to the fore. The program was criticized for its lack of diversity and its predominantly Eurocentric readings. Students advocated for a curriculum that included ethnic minority and women authors. On January 15, 1987, as many as 500 students, along with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, rallied down Palm Drive chanting, "Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go." The curriculum debate drew national attention, and in 1989 Western Culture was formally replaced with the Cultures, Ideas, & Values (CIV) program that included more inclusive works on race, class, and gender.

And here's an article from last year in The Daily Beast, "Stanford Students Want Western Civilization Studies Back as the PC Backlash Begins":

At Stanford, a backlash against this censorious student culture is taking shape in the form of a petition to reinstate the university’s Western Civilization curriculum. In the next two days, students will vote on a referendum proposed by the Stanford Review, an undergraduate political magazine, urging the Stanford’s Faculty Senate to require a two-quarter course for freshman “covering the politics, history, philosophy, and culture of the Western world.”...

The referendum failed, though, by a vote of 1992 to 342.

Jesse Jackson dines with Jean-Marie Le Pen... and then acts as though he didn't know who he was.

Come on! Is this believable?

"Republican strategists have long theorized about the possibility of the brokered convention, which hasn't happened in decades..."

"... but the dinner meeting [of top Republican Party officials] appears to be the first active planning taken by the GOP to prepare for it," CNN reports.

A brokered convention occurs when no candidate gets enough of the delegates to secure the nomination on the first vote tally. After that, delegates can be given up to other candidates, shifting the balance.... 

[A] new Republican National Committee rule that requires any GOP nominee win a majority of delegates from eight different states....

It had "nothing, zero, nada to do with Trump except he may be one of the candidates standing at the end," said the source. "It was not aimed at anyone."

Sean Spicer, RNC chief strategist and communications director, downplayed the significance of the dinner on Friday. "It was a dinner where the subject was how the delegate selection process works.... At the end of that dinner, there were a lot of questions asked.... It's great cocktail conversation... This is really, to be honest, with you quite silly."

(Strange comma placement in that last sentence.)

Do you know "Who were the last two presidential nominees lacking a majority at the end of the first roll call at their party conventions?" The reason that question asks for two is that it happened in the same year. It was longer ago than 1976, but in 1976, Ronald Reagan got pretty close to getting a brokered convention. (Give up? It was 1952.)

[N]omination by way of a contested convention was a respectable strategy from the 1830s, when conventions became the standard way of nominating candidates, until at least the 1960s. Democratic front runners Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and John Kennedy in 1960 knew that their support might dissipate unless they won quickly. Their chief rivals, Al Smith and Lyndon Johnson respectively, hoped that it would. In both cases effective floor managers kept wavering delegates in line. Kennedy won on the first ballot but not until the alphabetical roll call reached Wyoming; Roosevelt won on the fourth when the Democrats still required a two-thirds majority....

[C]onventions were, are, and probably should be about more than nominations. Senator Richard Russell, the genteel face of racial segregation, accumulated large numbers of delegates at the 1948 and 1952 Democratic conventions in order to demonstrate the power of the white South. Jesse Jackson used the same tactic on behalf of racial equality and a "rainbow coalition" in 1984 and 1988. Whether or not Senator Edward Kennedy actually thought he could shake loose Jimmy Carter's delegates at an "open convention" in 1980, he wanted to make a vivid case for liberalism....

No one can predict whether or not the Republicans will have a contested convention this year, either because Mitt Romney's more conservative rivals might have a chance in combination to deny him the nomination or because they want to make a vivid ideological statement... 

That was, obviously, written in 2012. The odd thing this year is that GOP insiders seem to be looking at a convention where the dominant candidate would be challenged by insurgents making a "vivid case" for... moderation.

"Supporters of a Chicago Little League team that had its national title revoked over allegations of cheating accused the Little League organization Wednesday of racism."

"Little League International announced Wednesday morning that the Jackie Robinson West All-Stars had players in its lineup who lived outside the team's boundaries."

At an afternoon press conference, the Rev. Jesse Jackson asked, "Is this about boundaries or race?"

"This decision's untimely and inappropriate at this time," Jackson told reporters. "It should not take six months after a team has played a championship game to determine eligibility to play the game in the first place."

The league's decision came after teams from Illinois and Nevada complained that Jackie Robinson West's roster was rigged.

The Rev. Michael Pfleger called the complaints from the Illinois team "mean-spirited" and "personal."

"Here's America today... frivolous entertainment, texting and Twitter replacing serious news reporting, reading, writing and arithmetic...."

If only we weren't so frivolous, if we could get serious, maybe we could figure it all out.

"These guys are looking for a diversion from the horrendous laws that are separating people, I will not respond in kind."

Said Jesse Jackson. What he was refusing to respond to "in kind" was Florida Governor Rick Scott's demand that Jesse Jackson apologize. Apologize for what? For saying that Florida is the "Selma of our time" and calling for an economic boycott to "isolate Florida as a kind of apartheid state given this whole stand your ground laws."

Now, clearly, Jackson was engaging in over-the-top hyperbole,  seeking active and damaging discord, and stirring up anxieties about racism. This was his deliberate choice to go extreme, and yet he says, when asked for an apology, that he will not respond "in kind." But it was Rick Scott who refrained from responding "in kind" to Jackson.

What would Scott have said if he had decided to use rhetoric at the level of "Selma of our time" and "a kind of apartheid state"? Jackson's "respond in kind" is, I think, a giveaway that he'd hoped people would respond in kind. He is seeking discord and hot discourse. He's disappointed that his fighting words aren't provoking a fight.

If you watch the video at the link, at 0:57, you'll see Jackson, instantly upon making the Selma/apartheid remark, display a classic tell: He puts a finger to his lower eyelid and pulls it down. I'd say he knows he's way over the top, but there it is, it's said, and he's not backing down. As they say in Florida: Stand Your Ground.

At the Trayvon "rallies" — "Hundreds gathered in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other California cities Saturday morning."

"Civil rights leader and MSNBC host Al Sharpton organized the 'Justice for Trayvon' rallies and vigils outside federal buildings in at least 101 cities: from New York and Los Angeles to Wichita, Kan., and Atlanta...."

In addition to pushing the Justice Department to investigate civil rights charges against Zimmerman, Sharpton told supporters he wants to see a rollback of stand-your-ground self-defense laws now in place in more than 20 states.

"We are trying to change laws so that this never, ever happens again," the Rev. Sharpton said.

Zimmerman shot when he was pinned down and getting his head bashed into concrete. Stand-your-ground has to do with retreating when you can. Even aside from the fact laws can't ensure that bad things never, ever happen again — or else why is there murder? — stand-your-ground made no difference in Zimmerman's situation.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, the reported number is 8,000, with Jesse Jackson as the big speaker, saying: "We must boycott Florida and stop 'stand your ground.'" Boycott Florida?

Rosaline Wilson, 62, said she came to the rally remembering her 14-year old brother who she said was killed by a police officer several decades ago while he was riding home from school. Because of the experience, she said, Wilson was not surprised by the Zimmerman verdict, but thinks there is hope for the future.

"We need solutions; we need something concrete; we need change," she said. 

We need something concrete... Speaking of concrete, does anyone at these rallies mention that Martin bashed Zimmerman's head on the concrete?

ADDED: At the Miami rally, Trayvon Martin's father spoke, and the NYT describes the crowd as "dozens of people."

"If Zimmerman is convicted, there should not be inappropriate celebrations because a young man lost his life."

"If Zimmerman is not convicted, avoid violence because it only leads to more tragedies. Self-destruction is not the road to reconstruction."

Said Jesse Jackson, shedding some new light on the problem of exulting at a conviction. There's been much speculation — some of it stupid and ugly — about how Zimmerman's antagonists will react if he's acquitted. But think about how they'll react if he's found guilty. That could produce video that will be used to embarrass and attack those who pushed for the prosecution. It will be hard for people like Jackson to deal with the outcome they sought. I suspect that an acquittal will provide them with the better material for future political enterprises.

"Obama needs to stop lecturing predominantly black audiences, some supporters say."

Writes Vanessa Williams in The Washington Post.

Obama has been making this point — and stirring controversy — since he was a candidate in 2008. Jesse Jackson Sr. was incensed by what he saw as Obama’s “talking down to black people,” yet it was Jackson who was criticized. Many in the black community believed that Obama’s chastisements were necessary to make himself politically palatable to white voters.

The president’s most recent such remarks — there were only a few Sunday, but they were widely reported — triggered a debate on blogs and social media that, in part, asked why Obama continued his lecturing.

To be fair, Jackson was criticized because he added — with a brusque cutting gesture — "I want to cut his nuts out." The metaphor of brutal violence made it easy to discount Jackson's message at the time.

Why did Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife risk everything to buy such stupid stuff?

Spending $750,000 in campaign money on... what?! In with the Rolex watch and the furs, there's all this memorabilia: Michael Jackson memorabilia, Bruce Lee memorabilia, Martin Luther King Jr. memorabilia, Malcolm X memorabilia, Jimi Hendrix memorabilia, a football signed by American presidents. So embarrassing.

WaPo columnist  Michelle Singletary says:

Ironically, Jackson and his father in 1999 co-authored a book on personal finance, “It’s About the Money!: How You Can Get Out of Debt, Build Wealth, and Achieve Your Financial Dreams.” The Jacksons wrote: “Many of our churches breed material needs, as do many of our public schools, with peer pressure to buy expensive clothing.”

I was critical of the portions of the book in which the Jacksons found it necessary to chide blacks for what they characterize as shameless spending....

At least the Jacksons are showing remorse....

Before you pass judgment on the Jacksons, think about the mess you might have made of your finances or the financial follies of people you know. It might not be a crime to get what you want (not what you need), but acting as if you are rich without being able to afford it can ruin your life.

Hmm. Using debt to buy stuff is hugely different from diverting money that isn't yours to spend that way. But I guess we can look at Jackson's list of items and use it as an occasion to reflect on the idiotic crap we've felt tempted to buy. Get some distance. What if the newspapers published a list of the 100 stupidest things you've thrown your money away on over the course of a lifetime?

Look around. If you could snap your fingers and cause any item in your house to transform into the cash you spent on it (or even only half of what you spent), what percentage of your possessions would be left? The items suddenly turn into piles of dollar bills. Better gather them up quickly. How much have you got there? Now, bills disappear to eradicate your debts. What do you have left now in your hands and in your house? How do you feel?

And by the way, Singletary said she chided the Jesse Jacksons, Sr. and Jr., for chiding black people for spending too much money on stuff, but then she turned around and chided her readers for spending too much money on stuff. Isn't that a contradiction? Or is it a problem to speak specifically to black people? The Jacksons shouldn't write a book talking specifically to black people? What are the rules here?

"'Genocide,' one eulogist called it, lamenting that guns had 'become part of our wardrobe.'"

"Another exhorted the politicians in the pews, 'Don’t give us lip service.'"

In the pews were Michelle Obama, Valerie Jarrett, Arne Duncan, Rahm Emanuel, Pat Quinn, and  Jesse Jackson. In the casket was Hadiya Pendleton, who lived to the age of 15.

Edward Koch has died.

He was 88.

With his trademark — 'How’m I doin?' — Mr. Koch stood at subway entrances on countless mornings wringing the hands and votes of constituents, who elected him 21 times in 26 years, with only three defeats....

I lived in Koch's legislative district in the early 1970s — before he became mayor — and I remember going to work, needing to get down into the subway, and he'd be there at the top of the stairs wanting to shake hands. Want to ride the subway? You'll have to get past Ed Koch. It seemed so small-time, such a corny, unlikely way to get somewhere in politics.

The 3 defeats were: "a forgettable 1962 State Assembly race; a memorable 1982 primary in a race for governor won by Mario M. Cuomo; and a last Koch hurrah, a Democratic primary in 1989 won by David N. Dinkins, who would be his one-term successor."

Black leaders were... unhappy with Mr. Koch’s decision to purge antipoverty programs and comments he made that they considered insensitive. He said, for example, that busing and racial quotas had done more to divide the races than to achieve integration, and that Jews would be “crazy” to vote for the Rev. Jesse Jackson in his 1988 presidential campaign after Mr. Jackson’s 1984 reference to New York as “Hymietown” and his call for a Palestinian homeland in Israel....

[I]n August 1989, a black youth, Yusuf K. Hawkins, 16, who went to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to see a used car, was attacked by a group of white youths and shot dead.

Mr. Dinkins, pledging to bring the city together again in a “gorgeous mosaic,” narrowly defeated Mr. Koch in the primary and went on to beat Mr. Giuliani, who ran on the Republican and Liberal lines, by a slender margin in the general election.

“I was defeated because of longevity, not because Yusuf Hawkins was murdered six weeks before the election, although that was a factor,” Mr. Koch wrote.... “People get tired of you. So they decided to throw me out. And so help me God, as the numbers were coming in, I said to myself, ‘I’m free at last.’ ”

Biden "will surely take it to Ryan on... his statement yesterday that inner-city kids need to be taught 'good discipline' and 'character.'"

Writes John Cassidy, in The New Yorker, observing that tonight's VP debate is high stakes.

Cassidy doesn't link to the Ryan statement, which — I found on my own — is part of the video that made the rounds the other day, the one that supposedly showed Ryan being "testy." (We talked about it here.) Anyway, let me put the "good discipline" and "character" remark in context. Ryan was asked the question "Does the country have a gun problem?" Ryan took the position that the problem is crime, not guns, and that we already have enough "good, strong gun laws," which we ought to enforce better.

But the best thing to help prevent violent crime in the inner cities is to bring opportunity to the inner cities, is to help people get out of poverty in the inner cities, is to help teach people good discipline, good character. That is civil society, that's what charities and civic groups and churches do to help one another, make sure they realize the value in one another.

Let's try to understand why people like Cassidy think that's outrageous (as opposed to platitudinous).  Here's Tommy Christopher at Mediaite:

Obama's literary agent used the "born in Kenya" bio from 1991 to 2007.

If it was a mistake, why did it go uncorrected for so long? You could say: That's how sloppy this literary agency is and how inattentive people are to brochures like this. I still wonder how that particular mistake got made. Why would you drift into thinking an American woman gave birth in a foreign country? That is, why would you guess at a fact and guess what is unlikely?

What are the other options? One is that Obama wanted to be thought of as having been born in Kenya, and he deliberately put out false information. Why would he want that? It's not advantageous to his political career, and we know that, if anything, he sought to embed himself more deeply in American culture by going to Chicago and working with poor black people, by attending Jeremiah Wright's church, and even — it's indelicate to say so — by marrying Michelle.

Where's the advantage in being seen as African African? It certainly isn't a way to get affirmative action from law school admissions and appointments committees. They may crudely care mainly about the way their classrooms look and take advantage of African African applicants, but the theories of affirmative action (especially the legal ones) have to do with black people who come from the American culture with its history of discrimination, prejudice, and disadvantage.

Considering that, you might jump to (or closer to) the conclusion that Obama really was born in Kenya. I'm not going there. How would Stanley Ann have traveled to Kenya when she was 18 and pregnant? Where would she have gotten the money? She had a lot of nerve, but would she have thrown herself halfway across the world to put herself, in her most vulnerable time, in a third world hospital? I don't believe it.

I'm as convinced as I need to be that Obama was not born in Kenya. (And I think that, even if he was, he's eligible to be President, since he was an American citizen at birth, being born to an American woman who happened to be traveling.) I'm interested in the possibility that Obama wanted to be thought of as having been born in Kenya. But I'm not going to think that unless I can understand his motivation. As I said above, it would not help him get affirmative action or any mainstream political advantage — quite the opposite. Let's explore the possible motivations: a feeling of alienation from the United States, a desire to connect more deeply to his African roots, a preference for African-style left-wing politics over the American political tradition, perhaps some belief that it's noble to be from Africa.

I can see a way to build a psychic profile of the Obama who dreams of being more truly African. It was in 1989 — 2 years before the publication of the brochure — that Jesse Jackson led a movement to get us to stop saying "black" and start saying "African-American." Here's a contemporaneous NYT article:

The term, used for years in intellectual circles, is gaining currency among many other blacks, who say its use is a sign that they are accepting their difficult past and resolving a long ambivalence toward Africa....

For many, the issue is already settled, not only in their minds but in their hearts. ''Whenever I go to Africa,'' said Roger Wilkins, a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, ''I feel like a person with a legitimate place to stand on this earth. This is the name for all the feelings I've had all these years.''...

Leaders of the movement... say they want to shift the definition of the group from the racial description black to a cultural and ethnic identity that ties the group to its continent of origin and fosters dignity and self-esteem.

''This is deeper than just name recognition,'' said Mr. Jackson who, along with others, called for the change at a news conference in late December. ''Black tells you about skin color and what side of town you live on. African-American evokes discussion of the world.''...

Hilda Whittington, a Chicago lawyer, has been calling herself an African-American since Mr. Jackson's remarks last month and is now planning a trip to West Africa next year. ''After thinking about it, I kind of like it,'' Mrs. Whittington said. ''We should call ourselves African-Americans and get it over with. This is it for me.''...

Now a term that was once considered militant is going mainstream. '''African-American' reflects a post-modern black consciousness,'' said Dr. Roderick Watts, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University, who last year founded a community group with the name the Association of Agencies Serving African-Americans. ''It has a self-affirming quality that seems to fit right now.''

Nevertheless, I believe the most likely answer is that "born in Kenya" was a mistake, made by some literary agency underling, in a brochure that never inspired close reading, even as the years passed. I mean, there are things in Obama's book that you could pull out today and surprise people with. I was doing that last week. And that book is sitting there in plain sight. Really, it's quite amazing the things we don't notice that are right in front of us.