Conservative commentator Rod Dreher chastises FOX in Dallas Morning News

I don't know that I've ever typed these words, but here they are: I feel sorry for Jesse Jackson. Some words he uttered disparaging of Barack Obama, words that were clearly intended to be private, were picked up by a Fox News microphone on a Fox set...Fox is playing dirty here...why would anybody left of center appear on Fox, knowing that the network has no scruples about playing off-air conversations to embarrass them?

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Ted's take-

It really is unfortunate that the focus from the left will be that Fox is practicing shabby journalism and that the focus from the right will be that Jackson must be a hypocrite for using such vulgar language while that a Black political leader would encourage personal morality and responsibility in the Black community. It's sad because one of the important differences between Republicans and Democrats is the between individual morality (sexual orientation, drug use, abortion) and collective/societal morality (justice, poverty, war, corporate and government responsibility, environmental stewardship).

Both are legitimate and both are important, both sides seem to argue past each other, discount each other's concerns and even accuse each other of being somehow amoral or even immoral when in fact both camps are have deeply held "values."

Recently a prominent Black pastor commented on this balance (or imbalance):

"My appeal was for the moral content of his message to not only deal with the personal and moral responsibility of black males, but to deal with the collective moral responsibility of government and the public policy which would be a corrective action for the lack of good choices that often led to their irresponsibility,"

This pastor's concern is that lecturing people that they need to be better parents or get a job or stay away from drugs or stop listening to Gansta Rap isn't as needed as addressing institutional racism, housing and job discrimination and the failures of education and government to provide equal opportunity to all groups. You may not agree with him, but in essence, he's saying, "stop picking at the specks in other people's eyes and worry about the log in our collective national eye (Matt 7:1-6).

One side want to prevent abortions, the other wants to help parents be able to afford to keep and care for the babies they have. One side wants to incarcerate young men who commit crime or sell or use drugs, the other wants to provide a better education and a better chance for those young men to get a decent job and feel valued by an involved in something other than a gang in the first place.

It's a never ending debate, because in the 16 and 1700's John Locke believed that all men were created equal and capable of self government and Thomas Hobbes believed that they're all selfish and in conflict and need to be governed forcibly. Both sides are partly right and both sides are missing half the picture.

That pastor who made the statement about wanting Obama to deal with "collective moral responsibility?" ... Jessee Jackson. If only he had had the balls to say it that way BEFORE Fox caught him saying it in such a base, offensive manor, he could've castrated the bullies on the right instead of emasculating his own credibility.