Monday, January 22, 2001 ; Page A19

I was tempted to go back to see what I had written about Jimmy Swaggart and Bill Clinton
when their sexual escapades landed them in the news. One does want to be fair.

That's your first lie.
You have no intention of being fair.
Your goals are to show Aryan Supremacists how "objective" you can be by propping up
Resident Bush while tearing down a black man like Jesse Jackson

But although he is a minister like one of these and a politician like the other, it may be better to take the Rev. Jesse Jackson
on his own terms. What does one make of the mess the self-styled "country preacher" has gotten himself into?

As the world now knows, this minister/politician/civil-rights leader has acknowledged fathering a child outside his marriage. As it also knows, he has withdrawn temporarily from the public scene, passing up his long-planned Inauguration Day protest of what he considers a purloined presidency. He is, he said in a one-page statement put out by the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, "taking some time off to revive my spirit and reconnect with my family before I return to my public ministry."

I wish him luck. But the part of the statement that I find most intriguing is this:

"This is no time for evasions, denials or alibis. I fully accept responsibility, and I am truly sorry for my actions."

Denials and alibis were, by then, out of the question. And the public evasion ended not because of any spiritual crisis of Jackson's but because the National Enquirer broke the story. He has accepted the responsibility by providing his daughter with "emotional and financial support since she was born" some 20 months ago.

What remains of that intriguing paragraph is his expression of sorrow. I am truly sorry for my actions.

But what action is he sorry for? For his sins before God? For breaking his marital vows? For having an affair with a woman who used to work for him? For having unprotected sex with her? For continuing the relationship? For disappointing those who look to him for political and spiritual leadership?

Or is he primarily sorry for his personal embarrassment, the diminishing of his own political clout and the loss of the moral high ground? Is he sorry (as all of us would be) for getting caught?

There is a bigger point here - one that Raspberry would like us to ignore.
NOBODY confesses before they get caught.
Raspberry knows this, he's just trying to score points with the Aryan Supremacists.
(That's where the money is - and that's where a whore goes to sell him/herself.)

If you want to be fair about this (am I the only one?) let's look at others.
Smirk didn't confess to his drunk driving arrest until he was exposed.
He had hundreds of opportunities to confess his drunk-driving arrest.
Yet when Raspberry quotes Jackson,

"This is no time for evasions, denials or alibis. I fully accept responsibility, and I am truly sorry for my actions."

Denials and alibis were, by then, out of the question. And the public evasion ended not because of any spiritual crisis of Jackson's but because the National Enquirer broke the story.

Mr. Raspberry, what was Bush's "spiritual crisis?"
It was a press report of the details of his arrest.
Mr. Raspberry, why aren't you jumping on the white guy with equal fervor?

Bush has NOT confessed to his cocaine use,
Bush has NOT confessed to the abortion he paid for,
Bush had NOT confessed to felony statutory rape of that 15-year old girl named "Robin."
Bush has NOT confessed to going AWOL during wartime, etc.,
because the American whore press has chosen not to ask him those questions.

So what does this mean?
You confess  after  you get caught - not before.
Raspberry knows this - it's too abvious to ignore.
But he's got a chance to show Rush and Hannity how fair and impartial he can be,
so Raspberry doesn't mind piling onto Jesse Jackson when he's down.

If Raspberry had made the point that Jackson, like Bush, didn't confess until after he was caught,
it would've made a better, more revealing, more insightful column, but it wouldn't have gotten any
praise from Rush, Hannity, Laura, Harvey, Fox News et al, so he made Jackson the only guilty party.

William Raspberry, thy name is whore.

Worse than a whore, you're an Uncle Tom, grabbing extra money to attack a black man
while giving the rich, white kid a free ride on the Raspberry Express.

Bush hasn't confessed his cocaine use because he hasn't been caught - yet.
He hasn't been made to face the music about that 15-year old felony abortion
because the press chooses not to ask him that question.
He hasn't had to stand before a roomful of US military personel to apologize for
going AWOL during wartime because the whore press won't ask him about it.

He hasn't confessed because he hasn't been called on it.
And he hasn't been called on it because those with big, national hammers let it slide.

Why aren't YOU, Mr. Raspberry, asking Bush these simple questions?
Why are you, Mr. Raspberry, using your time and your ink to attack Jackson's credibility?
Why are you, Mr. Raspberry, using your time and your ink to attack Jackson's honesty?
Why are you, Mr. Raspberry, using your time and your ink to attack Jackson's sincerity?

Is it because the Aryan Supremacists won't pay for the truth?
The Aryan Supremacists want stories critical of blacks and liberals,
so Bill Raspberry jumps up and says, "I is yo man, Massa!"

The answers matter. If he is sorry for the affair, then it makes sense just to end it. Unfortunately that also means,
as far as I can see, ending the emotional support of his newest child. Joint custody of a 20-month-old child whose
mother is in California and whose globe-trotting father lives in Chicago makes little sense. I cannot imagine that
the mother, writer and former college professor Karin Stanford, would welcome such an arrangement -- and I'd
be astounded if Jackie Jackson, the minister's wife of 38 years and mother of his other five children, accepted it.

There you go, trying to shame Jesse's wife into leaving him, and his kids disowning him.
What's the point of that, Mr Raspberry?

Tell me, Mr. Raspberry, when Henry Hyde was caught cheating on his wife,
did you counsel his wife to leave him and his kids to disown him?

Tell me, Mr. Raspberry, when Newt was caught cheating on his wife,
did you counsel his wife to leave him and his kids to disown him?

Tell me, Mr. Raspberry, when Dan Burton was caught cheating on his wife,
did you counsel his wife to leave him and his kids to disown him?

Tell me, Mr. Raspberry, when Rudy Giuliani was caught cheating on his wife,
did you counsel his wife to leave him and his kids to disown him?

Tell me, Mr. Raspberry, when Bob Packwood was caught cheating on his wife,
did you counsel his wife to leave him and his kids to disown him?

Tell me, Mr. Raspberry, when Bob Livingston was caught cheating on his wife,
did you counsel his wife to leave him and his kids to disown him?

Tell me, Mr. Raspberry, when Jim Bakker was caught cheating on his wife,
did you counsel his wife to leave him and his kids to disown him?

Tell me, Mr. Raspberry, when Matt Glavin was caught cheating on his wife,
did you counsel his wife to leave him and his kids to disown him?

No, you didn't.

Was it because those men are white Republicans?

I think you owe Jesse Jackson some answers and an apology, Mr. Raspberry.
I also think you owe it to yourself to purchase a spine, and maybe a mirror.

Apparently he had been able to supply that emotional support by spending time with the child at her mother's home.
Now maybe it's possible to continue doing that without continuing the affair, but I doubt it. If it is the affair he is
sorry about, he'll end it -- and, no matter how much he wishes it could be otherwise, he'll pretty much end the
close-up relationship with his young daughter.

Sometimes there aren't any neat exits from the messes we create.

If he is sorry for letting down the people who have admired and followed and depended on him -- and he ought to be
-- he'll find that most of them will go on following and depending on him, even if admiring him a bit less.

If what he is sorry for is his diminished moral authority, that isn't hard to understand. Like his own hero before him,
Martin Luther King Jr., he has made a practice of posing political options in moral terms. But King, widely suspected
of philandering, never got caught, never had to own up to "outside" children, never (given the differences in journalism
then and now) had reporters poking around to find out what he was up to sexually.

Can it be, as some suspect, that what Jackson is truly "truly sorry for" is the damage he has done to himself?
That's probably unfair, and I hope it's untrue. Maybe he really is troubled (and not merely self-referentially)
for the anguish his wife and children are suffering through; maybe his primary concern now is to heal their hurt
and beg their forgiveness.

And maybe they'll forgive him.
Almost certainly his committed followers will.
Perhaps his God already has.