Cuomo's 'shuck and jive' comment spurs controversy

[jefferson_dem]

Cuomo's 'shuck and jive' comment spurs controversy
BY ERIK GERMAN | [e-mail]; Staff writer Meli
January 11, 2008

ALBANY - If you asked the bloggers yesterday, State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo stepped on a rhetorical land mine when he used the racially charged phrase "shuck and jive" while discussing the Democratic presidential primary in a recent radio interview.

Speaking Tuesday to the New York Post's Fred Dicker, whose show airs on Albany's Talk 1300 radio station, Cuomo said of the early primaries: "It's not a TV-crazed race. Frankly, you can't buy your way through."

He added later, "You have to sit down with 10 people in a living room. You can't shuck and jive at a news conference; you can't just put off reporters, because you have real people looking at you, saying 'answer the question.'"

The 1994 book "Juba to Jive, a Dictionary of African-American Slang," says "shuck and jive" dates back to the 1870s and was an "originally southern 'Negro' expression for clowning, lying, pretense."

A truncated version of Cuomo's quote appeared first on the Albany Times Union's Capital Confidential blog Wednesday with the claim - later clarified - that he was talking about "Hillary's win in New Hampshire."

Like a virus, the notion that Cuomo had made a racially insensitive remark about Barack Obama's loss leapt from Web site to Web site yesterday.

Politico.com entered the quote into its so-called "department of word choice." Wonkette.com. called the term "racist."

But several sites, including Newsday's SpinCycle blog, posted updates after hearing from Cuomo.

"The attorney general was clearly saying that Iowa and New Hampshire were important primaries because the candidates could not duck the tough questions," said Cuomo spokesman Jeffrey Lerner. "He clearly meant no offense to either candidate because he was praising both in the interview. 'Bob and weave' would have been a better phrase; that's certainly all the attorney general meant."

Joseph Mercurio, a New York City-based Democratic media consultant, said he doesn't think Cuomo hurt himself seriously. "Everybody's being a little politically correct," Mercurio said. "I think he had enough support from black voters in his campaign that this isn't going to be a big issue."

Perhaps Mercurio knows. He currently works for Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), whose January 2007 remark that Obama was the first black presidential candidate "who is articulate and bright and clean," drew wide criticism but didn't end his Senate career.

But Temple University's Nathaniel Norment Jr., a professor of African-American studies, said the history of the Cuomo's phrase made it inappropriate because it springs from an ugly period of our past.

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http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/ny-uscuom115533466jan11,0,3011306.story

[BlueManDude]

1. a lot of these pols just aren't that bright.

[SoxFan]

4. A low-voltage pol coasting on daddy's name

Why does this ring a bell?

[Virginia Dare]

6. He's not stupid at all..

that's what makes me wonder why he would say something as stupid as this...:shrug:

[asjr]

2. We can't escape the ugly period

of our past. I feel this is piling on in order to be politically correct. I've heard that expression forever not really knowing what it meant. I thought it meant trying to pull the wool over one's eyes. Must we disect everything anyone says to put a spin on it? One thing sorely lacking in this political climate is civility. Certainly some things can be uncivil, but must we beat it to death in order to prove a point?

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. It doesn't mean "bob and weave" - It's not even close

The explanation is preposterous. It has always meant "style over substance," or some false front put on to avoid work. That it meshes so cleanly with the whole "style v. substance" talking point is no accident at all (Indeed, for all its other uses, the whole "style v. substance" argument is itself deeply racially coded, and has a long history of being applied to African American speech - since Phyllis Wheatley was called a "parrot" who could say the fancy words, but knew not what they meant).

[burythehatchet]

5. The kid couldn't carry his dad's jock.