An unseemly outpouring of boy envy

Haha... Maureen Dowd has a unique way of putting things. No one's called jealousy about Obama's pop-stardom as "boy envy" before... I like! ;) She takes special joy in skewering the Bushes but I think I'm going to continue her writing even after the Bushes leave DC.

Not since Iago and Othello obsessed on the comely Cassio, not since Richard of Gloucester killed his two nephews, not since Nixon and Johnson glowered at the glittering J.F.K., has there been such an unseemly outpouring of boy envy.

She then writes first about Bill Clinton not being able to accept the 'new wunderkid in town'.....then Jesse Jackson not being able to handle that his post-60s black identity and the manipulation of white guilt may soon be passing into oblivion... and then of course there is Mccain, "pea-green with envy"... becoming more churlish, petulant and juvenile with each passing day!

The comment about Jesse Jackson is the most interesting one and it is something other people have said before. Dowd herself refers to an article by Shelby Steele in the WSJ last month where he wrote about why Jesse hates Obama.

Earlier today, I found a well-written article about transcending the racial divide in the US. Do read..it has some interesting thoughts about affirmative action under Obama (we are assuming he will win of course! :)), the racial mantle he has been placed on and cannot ignore, and about the problems that Obama, the "post-racial" president, may encounter because "while Obama may be post-racial, American society is not; and so his actions will be read through a prism that may be inappropriate."

With reference to Jesse Jackson vs. Obama, the author writes:

Hence older black politicians such as Jackson have to live with an enormous ambivalence, tempering their joy that an African-American candidate can be en route to the Oval Office with the disappointment that he sounds so very different to the leaders of the civil rights generation. The idea of the post-racial politician is that he is the fruit of the struggle of this earlier generation - that his candidacy is only possible because of the sacrifice they made - but that he does not, and cannot, share their outlook. There is a mindset for war, and a mindset for peace; Obama, who believes in the system's ability to reform from the inside, chooses the latter. Jackson's denunciation of this choice will not be the last.

Also, a related article that will appear in this Sunday's NYTMagazine: Is Obama the End of Black Politics?