You should be able to agree with Jackson’s point that Obama is condescending to black audiences without being, er, pro-castration*.  Since he often does condescend to the group he’s addressing even when he’s not engaged in anthropological analysis of their religious and hunting customs, it’s not surprising that he condescends to black audiences as well and that long-time activists and self-appointed “community” leaders are annoyed by it.  Of course Jackson is annoyed because he sees his waning influence–that’s obvious–and what he probably means is that he wants to be the one who talks down to black audiences.  This is very much like the “cling” business, where other elites hammered Obama for being elitist as a way of gaining an advantage over him in intra-elite competition.  It isn’t that Jackson wouldn’t also be condescending in a different way, but that he resents that he has lost status.  Likewise, Obama’s elite opponents know that the best way to undermine a rival is to feign sympathy for the people and attack the rival for his disdain.  Naturally, they have the same disdain and are quite happy to maintain the same social and cultural distance from the people whose cause they pretend to defend, but in the world of mass politics what is crucial for any member of the elite is not to be seen as revelling in that status. 

What seems like unvarnished truth-telling to outside observers often feels like an insulting pat on the head, or maybe more like a smack to the back of the head, to the people being lectured, and typically it involves endorsing someone else’s stereotypes of your group combined with head-nodding sympathy for your “plight.”  Even when there are elements of truth in what the lecturing pol is saying, it runs entirely against the grain of how mass democratic politics works.  The lecturing pol sets himself apart from and over the audience, and demands that the audience live up to a higher standard.  The ingratiating pol, the one who usually wins, is the one who does not tell you all the things that are wrong with you that you need to improve, but reminds you how alike you and he are.  It’s worth noting that he tends to address audiences in this lecturing style mainly when he already knows that they are solidly behind him, because he is still someone who avoids real political risk.  Overwhelming black support for Obama exposes them to more professorial lectures than almost any other group, because he knows that these are the voters least likely to break with him, no matter how many times he berates them, and he gets the added bonus of being the kind of black politician many whites have wanted to see.  Call it the ricochet lecture.

* John Kass provides the Chicago context.