Jesse Jackson Is Dead...

Jesse Jackson, perhaps the most prominent civil rights activist of the post-King years, and the first Black person to spend time as a frontrunner for a major-party presidential nomination, has died at the age of 84.

As we always note when a major national or international figure dies, we are not in a position to write the kind of obituary you can get from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Sun-Times, CBS News, NBC News, or The Guardian. First of all, they can get Jackson's family, or Barack Obama, or Al Sharpton on the phone to comment. We can't. Further, they have the resources to write the obits years or decades in advance, so that they just have to dust them off, update them a bit, and go. We don't.

Instead, we are going to do what we do sometimes when someone important dies, such as we did with Sandra Day O'Connor and Dianne Feinstein, and share 10 anecdotes about Jackson that might be enlightening:

1. Beginnings: Jackson noted, many times, that it was not racism that initially sparked his interest in activism, it was being mocked for having been born out of wedlock. This experience taught him that it's not fair to be treated differently due to the circumstances of one's birth. It also means that it is technically correct to say that Jackson got into civil rights activism because he was a bastard.
   
   
2. The Sporting Life: What do Jackson, former Associate Justice Byron White, Gerald Ford and, supposedly, Fidel Castro have in common? They had a shot to pursue careers as professional athletes. White actually played a bit for the Steelers, before serving in World War II and then deciding his law career offered a better future. Ford turned down an offer from the Detroit Lions, which was sensible, and one from the Green Bay Packers, which was madness, because he also decided the law offered better prospects. Fidel Castro claimed, or had people claim on his behalf, that he had major-league tryouts, but that's probably false. As to Jackson, he got a football scholarship from the University of Illinois (he only played a year), but his best sport was actually baseball. He turned down a minor league contract offer from the Chicago White Sox, because he was more concerned with getting an education.
   
   
3. MLK: Jackson got his first serious work as an activist as part of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Eventually, Jackson worked his way into King's inner circle, a position he enjoyed until the end of King's life. On the night King was assassinated, Jackson and Ralph Abernathy were waiting to have dinner with the civil rights leader, and both were close enough when the act took place that they were splashed with King's blood.
   
   
4. First Mourner: There are some unpleasant parts to Jackson's story, with his behavior in the aftermath of the King assassination looming large in the unflattering complaints about him. Jackson took to wearing his blood-stained turtleneck for TV interviews, for days after the shooting. He also made claims, which were hotly disputed by Abernathy, that he (Jackson) cradled the dying King's head in his arms, and that he alone heard King's last words. Most of the rest of King's inside circle felt that Jackson was trying to profit off the tragedy by christening himself "First Mourner." Coretta Scott King, the fallen man's widow, did not speak to Jackson for years thereafter because she was so furious.
   
   This was hardly the last time Jackson demonstrated less-than-admirable tendencies. He was a male of his era, and that meant he felt free to treat a room full of women as a meat market. Actually, and we know firsthand witnesses to this, Jackson was pretty extreme, even for males of his era, such that he would have been a candidate for #MeToo if he'd been born 25 years later. He was also known to say some very indecorous things when he thought he was speaking privately, such as the time he used the antisemitic slur "Hymietown" to refer to New York City.
   
   
5. Urban Legends: Among modern-day musicians, there's a saying that you know you've arrived once Weird Al Yankovic has done a cover of one of your songs. Among politicians, the corollary might be that you know you've arrived once you've been the subject of a widely circulated urban legend. Jackson was the target of several of them, most of them backdoor attempts to either discredit him as a Black man, or to discredit Black people in general. Probably the most famous of these is a story, obviously false, that Jackson was visiting an appliance store one day and began complaining that the washing machines were racist because they were all white. The white clerk/proprietor allegedly fired back "Don't worry, Mr. Jackson, the agitators are all black."
   
   
6. Second... Or Third... Or...: The NYT obit (click the link above) describes Jackson as "the second Black candidate from a major party to run for president, after Shirley Chisholm." Nearly all other obits include this same factoid. This claim is either outright wrong, or is at least very misleading. First, starting with Frederick Douglass way back in 1848, there were at least a dozen Black people who ran for president on third-party tickets and who received at least some popular votes. Even if we limit ourselves to major parties, Douglass (R, 1888), Channing E. Phillips (D, 1968), Chisholm (D, 1972), Walter Fauntroy (D, 1972) and Barbara Jordan (D, 1976) all got votes at their party's convention. In most cases, this was one or two protest votes, but Phillips and Chisholm both got considerably more than that.
   
   Rather than try hard to make Jackson a "first" or a "second," it's really just better to say that his presidential runs were a key chapter in a saga that would ultimately lead to Barack Obama's election in 2008. This is how Jackson himself viewed it; when Obama's victory was confirmed, Jackson said that Obama had run the last leg of a race that had been going on for 60 years.
   
   
7. Mr. Senator?: Similarly, quite a few obits declare that Jackson ran for office several times, but was never elected to any of them. This is not entirely correct. Since 1991, Washington, DC, has elected two shadow senators and one shadow representative. These positions are distinct from the non-voting delegate to the House that D.C. also elects. The shadow senators are entitled to be called "Mr. Senator," but do not have any other privileges—they are not sworn in, they do not get office space, they cannot vote, and they receive no salary. They are, in effect, lobbyists who try to persuade the other members to grant statehood and to do other things on behalf of the district (the only other "shadow" delegation is from Puerto Rico, since 2017).
   
   Jackson was elected one of the first two shadow senators from D.C., and served one 6-year term. He was succeeded by Paul Strauss, who is still serving.
   
   
8. Gay is OK: A fair number of Black activists of Jackson's era were not too friendly to LGBTQ activists. Part of that is that Black activists tended to come from an evangelical Christian background, and so had it ingrained in them that gay is not OK. Another part is that devoted activists tend to think their cause is the important one, and that any other cause is an unwelcome distraction.
   
   Jackson was pretty far ahead of the curve when it came to accepting LGBTQ Americans. At the 1984 Democratic National Convention, he gave a primetime speech in which he declared:

   America is not like a blanket—one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt—many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt.

   That was the first time that a speaker at a major party convention had uttered the words "gay" or "lesbian." And though Jackson's Rainbow Coalition was not specifically named in reference to the LGBTQ pride flag, he nonetheless made clear that LGBTQ people were welcome as members of the organization, as he believed all struggles for equality are really just the one struggle for equality.
   
   
9. Diplomat: Although Jackson was never president, he followed a similar path to Jimmy Carter, the man he tried to succeed as the Democrats' nominee in 1984, and became a high-profile, jet-setting negotiator assigned to various special projects. He secured the release of Navy Pilot Robert Goodman (1984), 48 Americans held in Cuba (also 1984), hundreds of people held in Kuwait by Saddam Hussein (1991) and three U.S. prisoners of war held by Yugoslav President Slobadan Milosevic (1999). For this, Jackson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bill Clinton. Jackson was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and while he didn't win it, he was a far better candidate than... certain people.
   
   
10. Look at Meeeeeeeeee!: Speaking of Donald Trump, assuming that is who we were referring to at the end of the previous entry, he has been chummy with Jackson for many years. After Jackson died, Trump issued a statement in which he... made it all about him. We'll wait a moment while you pick your jaw up off the floor and recover from the shock. The President decreed: "Despite the fact that I am falsely and consistently called a Racist by the Scoundrels and Lunatics on the Radical Left, Democrats ALL, it was always my pleasure to help Jesse along the way." In other words, those of you who think Trump is a racist are clearly wrong because—say it with us—he has a Black friend.

Jackson was a complicated fellow, like most historical figures. Of course, some are more complicated than others. (Z)

...But Censorship Is Alive

We hope Amazon is not able to somehow track the e-mails in the Electoral-Vote.com inboxes. If it is, then we are soon going to get a lot of recommendations for Nuts, Yentl, Funny Girl and The Way We Were, because of a dramatic uptick in the number of times the name "Streisand" has suddenly appeared.

Babs' newfound omnipresence has nothing to do with her career, either past or current. It has everything to do with the thing that might actually be her enduring legacy: The Streisand Effect. As a reminder, just to make sure everyone is on the same page, that is the phenomenon wherein the attempt to bury something, so as to deflect attention from that thing, actually causes it to get far more attention than if you'd just left it alone.

In the case of Streisand, she sued a photographer for the removal of an aerial photo of her mansion, a photo that was part of a large collection of shots of the California coast, and a photo that had been downloaded a grand total of six times before the suit. The lawsuit ultimately cost Streisand over $200,000 (she had to cover the other side's legal fees, in addition to her own), and it also led hundreds of thousands of people to seek out the photo. Hundreds of thousands is, as we understand it, more than six. Quite a bit more, in fact.

This week's Streisand Effect case study, meanwhile, involves late night comedian Stephen Colbert. As readers will know, he sometimes tells jokes that hurt Donald Trump's fee-fees. Since Colbert is a short-timer on an expiring contract, and since his late-night show reaches only a limited audience, the smart move would be to just ignore him until he goes off the air. But that's not how this administration rolls. Instead, in a transparent effort to be a good lapdog, FCC chair Brendan Carr has been doing everything possible to abuse his position and to put the screws to Colbert (and other meany talk show hosts).

At the heart of the current kerfuffle is the FCC's equal time rule—which, of course, requires television networks who are using the publicly owned broadcast spectrum to provide equal time to political candidates. In other words, if Joe Democrat is running for Associate Dogcatcher of East Cupcake, and he appears on WCUP's children's show Wake Up, East Cupcake! for 5 minutes, then WCUP also has to give 5 minutes to Dick Republican.

News programs are largely exempt from this requirement, because they can't control which candidates make the most news on any given day. And, for a couple of decades, the talk shows have been considered "news," for this particular purpose, and so were also exempt. Consequently, Late Night with Stephen Colbert had no concerns about booking Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico for the show.

But this is where Carr comes in. He has decreed that maybe the talk shows aren't exempt from the equal time rule after all. He doesn't have the power to make this change by fiat, but Trump appointees currently have a 2-to-1 majority on the FCC board, and if Carr and the ironically named Olivia Trusty were to concur on a new rule (or, really, a new interpretation of the existing rule), that might stick.

CBS' lawyers huddled together and, under these circumstances, decided to forbid Colbert from airing the interview. Perhaps they did not want to deal with the potential legal costs of fighting this out in court, just for one 14-minute segment. Perhaps, more broadly, they did not want to anger the Trump administration. Perhaps the legal beagles were doing the bidding of their corporate masters, Bari Weiss and the Ellison family. Maybe it's all of these things. Anyhow, they put the kibosh on it.

That presumably left the show with two options, if they wanted to keep the Talarico booking. The first would have been to invite all the major-party Senate candidates to appear on the program. However, there are 11 of them in total, and that's way too much broadcast time. Colbert would probably be happy to invite Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) on, but he doesn't want to platform a corrupt fascist like AG Ken Paxton (R-TX), and he doesn't want to give a bunch of fringe candidates their 15 minutes of fame.

That leaves us with option number two, which is to make the interview online-only, and to post it to the show's YouTube channel. That is what they chose, of course, and here is the segment:

The average Colbert episode attracts about 2.7 million viewers; as of 6:30 p.m. PT on Tuesday, the YouTube video is at 3.7 million and counting. And if you read the comments on the video, they are full of things like "Dear FCC: Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I wouldn't have ever seen it otherwise." and "Never heard of Talarico. Didn't know who he was or what he stood for. Thank you FCC for bringing attention to this matter."

So, the Trump administration appears to have given the interview a lot more exposure than it would otherwise have gotten. On top of that—and this is addressed in the first minute of the interview—the administration has put out the message that it's authoritarian and uninterested in the First Amendment, and also that it's scared that the Republican Party might actually lose that Senate seat in Texas. Hard to imagine a better example of the Streisand Effect in action.

There is some squabbling going on right now between Colbert and CBS management. Colbert says that the FCC forced the interview to be migrated to the Internet, and that it otherwise would have been broadcast. CBS management says that the interview was always planned as Internet-only, so as to promote the show's YouTube channel. We know which side we believe here, especially since it's not clear to us why CBS would so very much want to promote the YouTube channel of a show that's going off the air in less than 3 months.

Meanwhile, we wonder how long it will be until these broadcast companies decide that they just can't be beholden to the politicized public broadcast spectrum, and decide to go all-streaming, or all-something-other-than-broadcast. We are aware that something like 25% of viewers still use antennas for TV. But in 2006, the broadcasters got together and decided that they just weren't going to accommodate analog TVs anymore, and that folks needed to get on board if they wanted to maintain access to TV programming. Seems like the time might be here for a similar kind of move. (Z)

Ossoff Knocks Their Socks Off

As long as we are on the subject of Democratic U.S. Senate candidates, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) was in Atlanta this weekend to deliver a speech at Big Bethel AME Church as part of their "Social Justice Sunday." And, by all accounts, he wowed the crowd:

Between this and the Talarico interview above, we gave you 23 minutes of video today, which is a lot. But consider taking a look at both, because they're both impressive.

One thing that runs through both videos is... religion. Talarico is himself a pastor, and so he speaks fluent "Christian," a skill that is on display in his Colbert appearance. Ossoff is Jewish, and so not an adherent of the denomination whose church he was visiting, but he speaks pretty good "Christian," too. Here's the passage that's getting all kinds of attention on social media:

A government transformed into a tool of one man's vengeance and enrichment. A spiritually broken president who digs the moral pit deeper and deeper. But, Pastor, Proverbs says, whoever digs a pit—whoever digs a pit will fall into it. And scripture's full of kings brought low by their own arrogance. Ahab surrounded himself with 400 yes-men, false prophets paid to affirm the king's delusions. And those delusions led him to his defeat.

And among today's false prophets are the election deniers who indulge this president's obsession with overturning the 2020 election. Now hear me when I say this: they tell a lie so absurd and therefore so debasing to tell that the act of telling it proves the teller's total and humiliating submission.

Ossoff also had a few things to say about racism, and the bigotries of the current administration. For example, he found a bit of time to mention the Obama video from last weekend. We bet that one is not going away anytime soon. Although we may be wrong, we suppose. After all, Ossoff was speaking this weekend, before Jesse Jackson died, and so before the Senator knew that Donald Trump has a Black friend. Or had one, at least.

It seems to us that both Senate candidates are, for lack of a better term, meeting people where they are. If either or both of them hope to win, they need votes from Latino and/or Black voters. Latino and/or Black voters tend to be religious, and are going to prefer to vote for candidates who seem to know where they are coming from. Talarico and Ossoff both seem to be doing well on that front, and countering the argument/stereotype that the Democratic Party is hostile to people of faith.

After the speech, a few prominent political operatives in Georgia predicted that Ossoff was on pace to win his Senate race by 5 points, and that as soon as he did that, he'd become the frontrunner in the 2028 race for the Democratic presidential nomination. That may be a little premature. The polling says that the Republican who is sure to advance from the three-person field is Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), who has led every recent poll of that primary, usually by double digits. Then, once Georgia turns to the general election after the May 19 primary, Ossoff will start off as something like a 2-3 point favorite. A very good place to start, but obviously not close to "the race is over." Still, if Ossoff does triumph by a generous margin, as a centrist, in a purple state, with lots of Black support, he almost certainly will become at least one of the frontrunners.

It is true that we, and pretty much all the other politics commentators, tend to think that 2028 Democratic primary voters are going to favor a VERY safe candidate. After what happened with a Black, Asian and female candidate in 2024, we think any Black or Asian wannabe Democratic presidents are going to have to cool their jets for another cycle or two, and probably any women wannabe Democratic presidents, as well. But a Jewish candidate probably isn't as susceptible to this, if for no other reason than the blue team did not lose with a Jew in 2024. Certainly, people are talking about Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) as a serious candidate, and he's Jewish. So, we don't think it's inconsistent to be skeptical that 2028 is going to be, say, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's (D-MI) year, while at the same time writing that it just might end up being Ossoff's year. (Z)

We the People: Protest Songs

It has been a while, but last year we proposed to add a regular, weekly feature focusing on resistance to authoritarianism. The response to that was very positive, so we put together a list of suggested names for the feature from readers, and had folks vote. Over 2,000 of them did so, and these were the 10 most popular choices:

1. Rage Against the Machine
2. Democracy Dies in Darkness
3. Daily Constitutional
4. The Rebel Alliance
5. The Good Fight
6. Good Trouble
7. Profiles in Courage
8. A Republic, if You Can Keep It
9. Nevertheless, They Resisted
10. We the People

We are actually glad it turned out this way. "We the People" allows us to cover a broader variety of stuff—not only resistance to authoritarianism, but efforts to promote and protect democracy, both in the U.S. and abroad. That not only comports well with the core mission of this site since its founding, it also means the feature can continue on into the post-Trump era.

For months, we had planned to launch this feature with an item on protest songs. And then, a couple of weeks ago, we had this in the Saturday Q&A:

B.B. in Dothan, AL, asks: An observation/question I've asked a couple of times now, regarding our society's response to the ongoing rise of fascism in the country, is: Where are the protest songs? In the Vietnam era, they were all over the radio and most of the top 100. Today? Nada. I would think that, if people were really upset about what's going on (e.g., U.S. citizens being kidnapped in broad daylight by masked, non-uniformed people and deported to foreign prisons) they would be seeking music to express those sentiments.

(Z) answers: I will give you three things to consider, and you can do with them what you will. First, we tend to look at the protest songs of the 1960s through a distorted lens. Do you know the only song directly inspired by the Vietnam War to go to #1 on the U.S. singles charts? That would be "Ballad of the Green Berets," a PRO-war song by Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler. The point is that while songs like "Fortunate Son" and "For What It's Worth" loom large in historical memory, in the moment they were predominantly the music of a small (but vocal) minority.

Second, the music business is much more balkanized today than it was in the 1960s. There are many fewer musical acts who can hope to break through beyond their narrow fanbase. And the ones who might be able to do so, like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, would be taking pretty serious financial and personal risks if they recorded, say, an anti-Trump song.

Third, there ARE protest songs today. However, it is probable they are in genres that you aren't following. Folk music has been the music of protest for many centuries, and there are many folk musicians today who are carrying on the tradition. In particular, we have highlighted the work of Jesse Welles on this site several times. The other genre where you'll find plenty of protest songs today is hip-hop, with artists like Bad Bunny and Childish Gambino particularly standing out.

In the original conception, the debut "We the People," on protest songs, was actually going to be a fisking of Rolling Stone's "The 100 Best Protest Songs of All Time." But, in response to the question and answer above, we got a fair number of reader e-mails. So, we shall present some of those, instead.

To start with, here's reader R.G.N. in Seattle, WA:

The days of discreetly worded protest songs appear to be gone and a new standard has been released. Blaming the universal soldier or lamenting "where have all the flowers gone" doesn't cut it with Americans desensitized by the constant lack of decency, honesty, honor, and respect for civil rights of the Trump Administration. Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Minneapolis" takes names and kicks butt to shock a jaded population into realizing what it stands to lose and take action. Americans have a new "Battle Hymn of the Republic" to lead the battle for democracy:

The following summary of Bruce's lyrics tells the story without mincing words:

• King Trump's private army from the DHS, guns belted to their coats, came to Minneapolis to enforce the law. Or so their story goes.
  
  
• There were bloody footprints, where mercy should have stood, and two dead, left to die on snow-filled streets.
  
  
• Trump's federal thugs beat up on his face and his chest, then we heard the gunshots, and Alex Pretti lay in the snow dead. Their claim was self-defense. Sir, just don't believe your eyes. It's our blood and bones and these whistles and phones against Miller and Noem's dirty lies.

I hope that for the rest of their lives, this and other songs yet to come will haunt Trump, his minions, and the "Good Germans (American voters)" whose votes enabled this tragedy.

We had multiple dozens of other readers also write in to recommend that song. Thanks to everyone for the heads up!

Here are some other reader comments and suggestions on modern songs of protest:

Anonymous in FL: Some months ago, readers submitted protest songs, and I listened to every one of them. After the second murder by ICE in Minnesota, one music group's song (from those submissions) kept entering my mind: "Soul Sister," by the contemporary folk group MaMuse. Many of its lyrics are perfect for a protest song, so, I did a pastiche entitled "Minneapolis," following the same tune of "Soul Sister," to speak to what is happening there. While I am not a musician or a singer, I pass this protest song on to anyone who could play the tune and/or sing it, or even revise it.

We are with you. Stand tall, Minnesota!

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J.K. in St. Paul, MN: I immediately thought of Jesse Welles, who cranked out "Good vs ICE" in just a couple weeks. I first heard it on our MPR station, 89.3 The Current (fantastic public radio station, highly recommend), a week ago.

For more mainstream, don't forget Neil Young, who opened his Farm Aid 40 set in Minneapolis in September with "Big Crime."

A friend of mine wrote a protest song last week. There are so many ways to get music now, I think one would have to actively search on different platforms or channels.

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J.M. in Seattle, WA: May I recommend this banger from Boston's finest, the Dropkick Murphys: "Who'll Stand With Us?"

The music video is particularly spot on, IMO, in terms of what B.B. in Dothan was asking for.

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N.P. in Clinton Township, MI: I wanted to share a Flobots song that released last week: "ICE Out."

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D.J. in Denver, CO: People always seem to forget punk, probably because it's always raging against the machine.

Out of Chicago, and showing up at lots of anti-ICE rallies when ICE was hitting Chicago hard: Malört & Savior, "On The Day It Finally Happens."

Out of Denver, Flobots had been defunct since COVID, and recently reformed because of where we are: "ICE OUT" and "The Revival."

Dropkick Murphys out of Boston has always been Antifa. Their upcoming album is going to be heavy on the topic, including "Citizen I.C.E."

Rage Against the Machine (L.A.) have literally been the poster children for this stuff since the 90s. Here's ex-member Tom Morello: "Pretend You Remember Me."

Macklemore (Seattle) is getting in on it: "Fu**ed Up."

Kneecap is an Irish hip-hop trio; Morello specifically called them "the Rage Against the Machine of now." This is their YouTube channel.

For quick access, Tom Morello's Spotify "Fu** ICE" playlist is probably your best single resource: 67 tracks, well-curated across genres. I don't support Spotify because they are unabashedly taking ICE money, but the playlist has been copied over to Tidal and other services.

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J.S. Austin, TX: I heard an interview with Lucinda Williams yesterday on NPR. She was talking about protest songs and wanting to create some like Bob Dylan did. She has a new album out, World's Gone Wrong. Note that she is 72 and suffered a stroke a few years back, but is planning on touring this album, even if she needs help getting out on stage. Hopefully it gets a lot of attention and airplays.

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J.C. in Denver, CO: The question about protest songs made me think about the alt-country/Americana genre which is, for the most part, liberal and a refreshing contrast to the jingoistic dreck coming out of Nashville. For example, Jason Isbell is a vocally liberal musician, though his songwriting shows more subtlety than his social media presence. See "Save the World," which he wrote in the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting.

Similarly, Lucinda Williams wrote "Man Without a Soul" during the first Trump administration. And her newest album, World's Gone Wrong, appears to be a full-length statement (I have just started listening to it and am only 3 songs in.)

And there's also Sturgill Simpson, whose statement at a Fenway Park concert last year went viral.

Thanks to everyone who made suggestions!

Meanwhile, what's the other (potential) new feature we teased yesterday? There wasn't time to pull it together, so we'll have to unveil that one on Friday. Oh, and if you have suggestions for THIS feature, please send them to comments@electoral-vote.com. (Z)

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