I thought about this today and realized that while I covered the creation of the memo and its general implications yesterday, I didn’t do it justice by examining the salient points and what they imply about the Clinton camp.  On the flip side, it is also important to see as well what Obama’s staff’s focus means too.

So here we go:

Subject: MUST READ: Key S.C. figure takes issue with Clintons

SHUCK AND JIVE

Clinton Supporter Andrew Cuomo, Referring To Obama, Said “You Can’t Shuck And Jive At A Press Conference. All Those Moves You Can Make With The Press Don’t Work When You’re In Someone’s Living Room.” Clinton-supporting New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said the thing that’s great about New Hampshire is that you have to go out and meet people rather than “shuck and jive” through press conferences there. Cuomo said of New Hampshire on an Albany radio station: “It’s not a TV-crazed race. Frankly, you can’t buy your way into it. You can’t shuck and jive at a press conference. All those moves you can make with the press don’t work when you’re in someone’s living room.” [Newsday, 1/11/08]

OK, so what does Shuck and Jive mean?

shuck and jive:   Shuck: To get rid of, ditch, throw away. To try to shed your true image in favor of a false one.  Jive: Trying to adopt a new social status, pretending to be “all that” + a bag of pentium chips.

OK, its urban slang so initially I said “so what?”  Then I noticed that the same site also had some very unflattering definitions, using the N word.   Point taken.

Another definition creeped up with a similar twist:  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.”

Then I discovered it is also the name of an Oyster house. 

So I have to say I consider it somewhat insensitive but not overtly racist, but very borderline.