Move Over Jesse, This Is Obama's House

If threats of castration are any indication, Barack Obama has gotten under Jesse Jackson's skin, writes Shelby Steele in the Wall Street Journal. The Illinois senator has eclipsed the reverend by effectively becoming the anti-Jackson—rather than playing off moral leverage created out of white guilt, Obama "became the first viable black presidential candidate precisely by giving up his moral leverage over whites."

Obama further flew in Jackson's "extortionist era of civil rights" by demanding black responsibility—a sacred cow among civil rights leaders, Steele argues, and surely "a stiletto in the heart" for the reverend. Jackson, Steele concludes, "must now see his own oblivion in the very features of Mr. Obama's face." (More Jesse Jackson stories.)