Malcom X!

"Robert Gibbs, Obama’s communications director, said he did not know whether Obama was aware that he was echoing Malcolm X."

To me "echoing" Malcolm X is a good thing.

They cannot be serious.

I think Bamsy wants to channel Malcom X about as much as Hillary wants to channel Lee Harvey Oswald.

Bamsy?

Anyway, what a weirdly absurd claim.

While not channelling Malcolm X, the meaning was the same:  (As reported in Slate)

"Which all points to one thing: “They’re trying to bamboozle you,” he said. “It’s the same old okey-doke.” That phrasing surprised me. You don’t see "bamboozle" and "okey-doke" much outside the context of whites trying to deceive blacks. No doubt Obama was aware of the association. He was probably trying to connect with the crowd on a personal level. But he might have thought twice about the wording, given that the Clintons and their surrogates have accused him of injecting race into the campaign.

But at this event, Obama made no attempt to skirt the subject. “I’ve been hearing people say, He can’t do it. ... An African-American can’t do it, or he’s got a funny name.”'

Uh, guys, "bamboozle" has been in the American lexicon at least since the time of Samuel Clemens.  He could as easily be channeling Sam and Old Jim and Huckleberry Finn, for all you know.

This kind of word sifting reminds me of parsing for foreshadowing in 10th grade English.

So I guess a black man winning in the south -- or winning against a Clinton -- must have won only because of some gimmick.

Folks need to just accept that the Clintons misbehaved badly in South Carolina and got a beat-down in return.

So let me get this straight. If Obama uses phraseology from a white man, he is accused of an inflated ego (from what I recall of Clinton responses to his referencing Kennedy's commitment to a moon mission). But if he uses words from a black guy, he's pandering to the black community.

I think it's meaningless effort to parse one particular sentence unless you want to put it in a list with all the other sentences he's ever spoken and then see what his rhetoric looks like on balance. From where I sit, his references are broad. Since his life experience is broad, that makes sense. What Clinton supporters don't like is that this is exactly why he is appealing and why he represents a change in ethos. Every time they look for ways to claim he is the "black" candidate, they only prove that point.

Hilarious link, JZ.