The Washington Spectator/Jesse's Old Pals
Ferguson, Andrew
THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR JESSE'S OLD PALS by Andrew Ferguson T he mainstreaming of Jesse Jack- ' son has been one of the recurrent stories of the presidential campaign, popping up every couple of...
...Now that they're all agreed on Jesse's new moderation, the preoccupying question has become, "What does Jesse want as a reward...
...The consensus seems to be: include a few of his favorite planks in the platform, toss a Cabinet post or two to hiscronies, maybe give Bert back his old table at Duke Zeibert's...
...but dispatches composed in such caldrons of high emotion are usually incomplete...
...The subject of education led to the subject of character, which led, on an upward spiral of intensity, to the subject of Farrakhan and his critics, specifically his white critics...
...Farrakhan and Dr...
...Big cheers!] And if you doubt me, try me...
...Against my better judgment I wheeled around to catch the eye of a white couple several rows behind me...
...When you yourself are the standard—the standard—of everything you accuse me of...
...As he prowls the stage he is silken...
...You have that audacity...
...From my front-row seat I made a quick survey of the hall and noticed—contrary to my better instincts—that there were no more than a half-dozen white facessprinkled throughout, not counting a camera crew at the very rear of the gym...
...I must make clear that I don't take this personally," she said, even though "it might seem as if Jesse has gone out of his way not to call upon us, or even to look in our direction...
...With a half hour to show time, the gym was still half-empty...
...Farrakhan hadn't yet arrived, but Dr...
...Jesse Jackson" and his "profoundly moral vision for our people," she said...
...I remember noticing she had an "All Things Considered" bookbag at her feet, but that's about all—my eye for the reportorial detail was sliding shut...
...They're assuming that as Jesse strides closer to the inner sanctum of Democratic power, the more he distances himself from his past—from Farrakhan and Dr...
...Farrakhan had been- invited by the UDC student government, which agreed to pay him...
...Lenora Fulani, another early Jackson supporter who is now running for President herself, as an independent--i`the first African-American woman ever to qualify for federal primary matching funds...
...Louis Farrakhan stormed into Washington tonight, spewing his hatred and anti-Jewish propaganda throughout this predominantly Negro city . . " He shook his head and chuckled...
...The Minister later mentioned Jackson briefly—which is what I'd come to hear, after all—saying that Jesse was finally drawing support from white folk, those who had "been made humble by suffering...
...Jesse's own Horatio Alger story has been realized by means that require less discipline and less energy: squeezing tithes from middle-class blacks, mau-mauing corporate liberals, conspiring with federal bureaucrats, shaking down television Andrew Ferguson is assistant managing editor of The American Spectator...
...The crowd was mostly students, attired in the student manner: blue jeans and backpacks, with Jackson buttons and Doug Williams T-shirts much in evidence...
...The wife —even more radical than Jesse—has been staying home...
...I'll tell you—you and all White America—I've got the key to let you out of the prisons of the sickness of your mind...
...I agree...
...Not that there are any hard feelings...
...Fulani, the New Alliance candidate for President and recipient of $300,000 in federal matching funds, killed time with a thirty-minute address that outlined her "Two Roads are Better than One" strategy for blowing a little sunshine into the white male power structure...
...We have done no evil to you...
...But something had happened with Jesse...
...But it would have sounded hopelessly white, and no one would have heard me anyway...
...As I climbed the hill I noticed that on each terrace burly young black men were standing at attention...
...I know the origin of your mind, I know where your thoughts arise from...
...Well-be lucky if they start this thing in an hour," one of them told me...
...Over the past few months Jesse has proved that in Democratic primaries he can sweep the black vote and pull down somewhat less than ten percent of the white liberal vote, which makes him, as the media like to put it, "viable": meaning that in a national election—if he retained his iron grip on these constituencies—he would only lose by a margin of about 65 percent...
...arrakhan is disconcertingly boyish: plump even, with eyes that twinkle behind his wire-rimmed glasses and a snaggle-toothed grin...
...Each had the trademark close-cropped haircut, and each wore the Nation of Islam uniform: black double-breasted suit with padded shoulders, freshly pressed white shirt, and extra-small bright-red bow tie...
...At this slight provocation the assembly rose as one and let out hollers of "Tell it...
...To begin we rose and sang the black national anthem, which, on first hearing at least, is even less tuneful than the Star Spangled Banner...
...I could have yelled, "Right...
...When you're arrogant," said Farrakhan, "you think you already know, and when you think you already know, you stop thinking, and when you stop thinking, you stop seeking, and when you stop seeking you stop growing, and when you stop growing you stop living and when you stop living you start dying and death grows all around you with this arrogant attitude...
...Slowly the crowd quieted, and he continued, in his HAL voice: "We cleaned your floors...
...These hipboneconnected-to-the-thighbone flourishes recur in the Minister's discourse, and when piled one on top of another they're impossible to follow...
...I saw him in Madison Square Garden, and they searched every one of the 35,000 people...
...He straightened from his crouch and started prowling again, raising the roof...
...I agree...
...when he speaks of the white man it descends to a feral crouch and the head shakes and the arms flail the air...
...When he speaks of Allah, his body curves back taut like a bow...
...There was a smattering of old people, and a generous helping of young professionals, dressed for an evening out...
...They're trying to make you uncomfortable so you won't pay attention to the cool words you're about to hear...
...White people are locked in the prison of a mind that represents death, and if the key is not applied, you will destroy yourselves and be destroyed by God in the New World that is coming even now...
...It is striking, therefore, that the two black leaders whom you have invited to speak to you today have not been sought outby Jesse Jackson and asked to stand by him...
...They're angry that you've come, that you waited in line to see and hear and meet your brother...
...Now get off my case...
...All the scholars who are here," said Farrakhan, "and the scientists and the historians: pay good attention and critically appraise what Farrakhan has to say...
...Can you imagine these white writers who have the [here he fell into an Etonian accent] un-mit-i-gat-ed gall to call me—a victim of white racism, a victim of your bigotry—and you call me a bigot...
...Remember...
...I struck up a conversation with a couple photographers who were milling around—a play for the kind of amused, another-day-another-dollar chit-chat common to reporters at such events, an act of Fourth Estate solidarity...
...I am a staunch supporter of Rev...
...There's a second reason for Jesse's baptism in the mainstream, one for which he himself is more directly responsible...
...The crowd was his from the beginning...
...You're the screenwriter, the Hollywood promoter, who made us Little Black Sambo, Steppin Fetchit, made us buck-andwing dancers and clowns while you pulled the strings of our women...
...But if you're in a burning house, dying of smoke inhalation, you don'tcare if the fireman who's coming to rescue you is black or white...
...There have been no more trips, to Syria and ("Viva Fidel...
...They ushered me into the gym and set me in the first row, directly in front of the stage where Farrakhan would speak...
...I'm unsure what he thought the danger was—maybe I was planning to charge the stage and hurl the Minister to the ground and trim his fingernails—but whatever friendliness the guards were inclined to show evaporated about then...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1988 29...
...Maybe that's what Jesse means when he says, "I'm a tree-shaker not a jelly-maker...
...It's a mistake I won't make twice...
...Throughout it all a phalanx of five bodyguards follows him in tight formation, shifting this way when he moves to his right, reassembling that way when he moves to his left—sort of like the Pips, by way of the Marine Corps...
...Fulani were to speak in the gymnasium, atop a hill overlooking Connecticut Avenue...
...THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR JESSE'S OLD PALS by Andrew Ferguson T he mainstreaming of Jesse Jack- ' son has been one of the recurrent stories of the presidential campaign, popping up every couple of primaries or so, and his new "moderation" is held to be the reason for his recent successes...
...I saw somebody from the Jewish press outside," he said...
...But from what I can see his old buddies are sidling up right behind him...
...I thought it might loosen up the tight ball of uneasiness beginning to form, in my stomach...
...Here comes their white knight," he said, "only he's black...
...He was still in front of me...
...He spoke on education...
...When someone runs for the Presidency, he or she typically asks other leaders for their endorsement...
...The woman next to me was bouncing up and down and yelling "That's right...
...We have an absolute knowledge of white people...
...Shit...
...Such discontinuity between action and reaction happens everywhere in American politics...
...it wasn't the sort of lecture where they give you a quiz later...
...her federal matching funds would scarcely cover Bert Lance's bar tab at the Atlanta convention...
...and "Say the word...
...U DC is only ten years old, and its buildings, designed during that unfortunate lagtime of the post-Bauhaus, pre-post-modernist mid-seventies, are angled together from slabs ofpoured concrete...
...7,500, plus, $1,000 in expenses...
...Bert Lance, always considered a moderate Democrat...
...Then again, maybe not...
...We left our children unkept to keep your children...
...Fulani and their extremely enthusiastic followers...
...The closer I got the more of them I saw, until, entering the gym through the press entrance, I had counted upwards of fifteen...
...Presently the place filled...
...And most conspicuously, there have been, no more bear hugs for Minister Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who proved so inconvenient in 1984...
...Liar...
...The First Road, she said, is Jesse's...
...I looked up from scribbling furiously on my notepad and was startled to see Farrakhan crouched on the stage right in front of me...
...Fulani was respectfully received—she eventually got a standing ovation, in fact, but this was a pushover crowd...
...This figure struck some people as rather a high price to pay an anti-Semitic lunatic for a two-hour rave-up, and there was controversy...
...I hadn't noticed...
...I was glad, however, when the protests failed to cause the students to rescind the invitation, because I was eager to reconnoiter the boosters who launched Jesse in 1984 but whom he has now jettisoned, like spent fuel, as he soars into respectability...
...Everything you've tried to do to thwart the rise of Farrakhan," said Farrakhan, "is meeting a resistance that you didn't think was there, because you aren't equipped to go beyond what you've been taught and trained...
...With a degree of difficulty we will never know, he has kept his most obvious impulses to radicalism in check, largely by freeing himself of guilt by association...
...stations for thousands of hours of free (and highly sympathetic) coverage, and so on...
...The Minister was the draw, and in time his, arrival was heralded by seven very large men—a cookie-cutter vision in the double-breasted suits, the padded shoulders, the white shirts, the little bow ties—who marched with military precision to the front of the stage and stood at attention until the Minister was safely at the podium...
...Dr...
...He turned to the other photographer...
...I suddenly realized he was talking 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1988 to me...
...Fulani's generosity probably wouldn't be any great help to a mainstream, viable campaign with all the trimmings...
...You run the institutions...
...The torrent of bad publicity that attended his invitation made a fortress of the gym: here on the inside were his people, and on the outside were the Washington Post and the "goodblacks" and the media and the white people—not all the white people, of course, for there was at least one on the inside, in the very front row as a matter of fact, who was becoming increasingly self-conscious...
...I wonder: Do Paul Kirk and his fellow Democratic honchos feel they're being rescued...
...Inside the gym there were many more...
...In conversational tones his voice sounds like HAL the computer, from the movie 2001...
...I was afraid I was going to be there all night...
...the woman to my left yelled at me...
...When you were our managers, our agent, you kept the money, we got the change...
...The sufficient cause has been an adoring press, speckled with passages like this one from Paul Taylor, a first-stringer on the Washingtion Post's campaign staff: "The more Jackson achieves, the more movingly he is able to chronicle the journey that got him there—as a parable, he says, `for what is best about America.' And when he has told audiences this week, `When I win, we can all win,' he has brought goosebumps, throat lumps, tears of joy and the gift of hope—and not just to blacks...
...Can't you just see what he's writing...
...I understood his point about the air conditioning...
...T hings eventually leveled off, al- ' though the air conditioner never came back on...
...They didn't seem to bother the audience, though, which responded, so far as I could tell, to subverbal cues: whoops would issue from the scholars and scientists and historians with each break in his creamy delivery, and at those moments when the words started rushing fast and loud the crowd would heave and rumble like a thundersquall...
...You still telling your lies...
...Nevertheless, the offer's on the table...
...He can cozy up to the "white supremacist Democratic Party leadership" all he wants to, and if he's the nominee, which she doubts, "I would immediately withdraw my candidacy and put all the resources of my independent campaign at his disposal...
...I did look down the row past the woman, searching for my photographer buddy, my Fourth Estate pal, but he was standing with his arms raised, hollering, "Tell the truth...
...You can't handle it because you're stuck where you are with that racist, white supremist mentality...
...But when it rises to exhortation or censure it evokes an angry sob...
...Those people ." The tight little ball got a little tighter, and I took my seat again...
...And if the Rev's not nominated, there's always the Second Road: she will continue her candidacy "as our insurance policy that the black vote will not be taken for granted...
...How to account for Jackson's development as a statesman—his rise to viablenesshood...
...Even now...
...Liar...
...You wrote the textbooks that made us hate ourselves and murdered our history with your lies, your lies, your lies...
...Goosebumps, throat lumps: the bodyguards snapped to attention again...
...Taylor was writing from the press section, where the "goosebumps and throat lumps" (the master's impressive poesy is rubbing off) are probably in abundance...
...Jackson gets the same response from the ADA...
...And when you asked us, 'You do windows, don't you?' we said yes...
...We left our homes unclean to clean yours...
...In a holding area inside the gym one of the bodyguards gave me an expert body-search, and confiscated my miniature Swiss Army knife with the four different functions...
...Like tonight...
...The crowd erupted like Krakatoa...
...No more valentines to Arafat...
...the crowd arrived in a trickle through the bottleneck created by the friskers at the front door...
...And what's more, they had turned off the air conditioning...
...But when he begins to speak—which wasn't for some time, since his ovation was prolonged—the boyishness vanishes...
...Then they fell to at-ease...
...Besides, this was a modern American university...
...In referring to "the journey that got him there," for example, Taylor doesn't mention that Jesse hasn't done an honest day's work in twenty years—a record even more impressive than that of professional "public servants" like Bob Dole and Richard Gephardt...
...They were sitting stiffly amid the frenzy and staring straight ahead and smiling to beat the band, in a goofy, Alfred E. Newman sort of way...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1988 27 He asked me who I was writing for and I told him but I don't think it registered, which is just as well...
...Cuba...
...Some friends you just can't shake...
...Jesse himself might be moved by this gesture, but Dr...
...It's an austere building, relieved only by small terraces jutting out at various levels along the outer walls...
...He could have been reciting the phone book...
...is now his closest campaign adviser...
...Farrakhan came to Washington recently, appearing at the University of the District of Columbia on a doublebill with Dr...
...Under such a circumstance, Farrakhan's fee seemed more than reasonable: $7,500 wouldn't buy these big guys lunch...
...You hate me...
Vol. 21 • May 1988 • No. 5
