What's Wrong With Obamamania?

On Louisville Live, my mentor, Dr. Ricky L. Jones appeared as a guest to talk about his new book, "What's Wrong With Obama-mania?: Black America, Black Leadership and the Death of Political Imagination". As always his analysis cuts through the fog of even the BarackSTAR movement.

Although I disagree with certain assessments -- such as the suggestion that the black electorate is voting for Barack mainly on the basis of race -- I will not reject or denounce him!

However, Dr. Jones is right about one thing. Most American voters know little about their candidates voting record (i.e. Hillary voted for the War in Iraq!) or campaign contributors. A bit of political maturity is necessary in democracy. So don't dumb it down, smarten it up.

The book drops June 15th, 2008. Pre-order your copy here. Maybe he'll let us preview an excerpt on the ol' SOULution.

Watch Dr. Jones on Louisville Live at the bottom.

But first, from The 'Ville Voice:

"[Dr.] Jones, who writes a column on race for LEO, believes African-Americans jumping on the bandwagon for Obama may be harboring unrealistic expectations — that many aren’t even looking at his policies and are voting for him just because he’s black. They’re buying into the charisma, he says, rather than public policy.

And he says that Obama’s campaign is viewed by some as evidence that racial problems are being wiped out in America, which is far from the truth.

“They’re getting better, but some people are saying that race problems are over with,” he told me. “That’s a dangerous idea.”

Don’t get the idea, from the book’s title, than Jones in any way opposes Obama’s candidacy. He says he’ll support the Democratic candidate, no matter who it is. But he warns that Obama is “not what a lot of people think he is. Change isn’t going to happen just because of him.”

Jones said he started working on the book last summer, expecting that Obama might be out of the race by February. Now that it looks like the race will go down to the wire, he’s hopeful the book will be a big seller. It will be distributed nationally and is published by SUNY Press..."