Yet when you turned on the television, you saw another Jesse Jackson. This Jesse Jackson was a dangerous man, a radical, a demagogue, someone who thrived off fomenting racial division. To the people around me, Jackson—the reverend and civil-rights leader—was a hero. But to the people I saw discussing the news on television, he was both an incendiary agitator and a ridiculous, almost comic, figure. The subtext of all this commentary was that Black Americans would make more progress if their leaders were not so flawed. Barack Obama put the lie to this argument; squeaky-clean by personal-conduct standards, all he did was drive the same people who hated Jackson more insane.