Belatedly, Jackson Comes Clean

But his moral crusade loses luster because of ethnic slurs

It was more a test of morality than politics.

For more than a week, the Rev. Jesse Jackson flunked. When asked whether he had referred to Jews as "Hymie" and to New York City as "Hymie town," Jackson said over and over, "I have no recollection." But at a Manchester synagogue two days before the New Hampshire primary, Jackson finally admitted making the offensive comments. "In private talks we sometimes let our guard down and become thoughtless," he explained. "It was not in a spirit of meanness, but an off-color remark having no bearing on religion or politics. However innocent and unintended, it was insensitive and wrong."

By that time, Jackson's moral crusade on behalf of the nation's have-nots had lost a good deal of its luster. Appearing dejected and distracted, the normally upbeat Jackson stumped listlessly through New Hampshire in the closing days of the campaign and finished in a tie for fourth, with only 5% of the vote.

Jackson did not help his cause in an interview with Ted Koppel on ABC's Nightline. "I've listened to many Jews say, looking at the Holocaust, that they went to the gas chambers much too silently," Jackson said.* He was trying to draw a parallel with the persecution and deaths of blacks since slavery days; like Jews, he said, blacks were vowing "never again."

His remarks were taken by some listeners, however, as criticism of supposed Jewish meekness in the face of Nazi terror.

Jackson's problems with the Jewish community grew when Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, issued an ultimatum to Jewish leaders last week. Referring to Jackson, who was appearing with him at a Chicago rally, Farrakhan declared: "If you harm this brother, I warn you in the name of Allah this will be the last one you harm. Leave this servant of God alone." Founded in 1930, the radical organization boasted a following of 500,000 in the 1960s but has dwindled to fewer than 100,000. Lately it has moderated its earlier antiwhite views.

Jackson's defenders noted that he has been a target of harassment throughout the campaign. A group called Jews Against Jackson, an offshoot of the radical Jewish Defense League that has been disavowed by leaders of most Jewish organizations, pledged publicly to disrupt his candidacy. Two of its members were arrested for interrupting his announcement speech on Nov. 3 in Washington, D.C. A window in Jackson's New Hampshire campaign headquarters in Manchester was smashed, and his campaign offices in Garden Grove, Calif., were fire bombed.

Jackson's life has been threatened.

As he took his campaign into the South for the crucial primaries in Alabama, Georgia and Florida on March 13, Jackson occasionally struck a martyr's pose. The fact is, however, that as America's first major black presidential candidate, he has sometimes benefited from a troubling lack of press and public scrutiny.

Wrote Washington Post Columnist Mark Shields in an apt commentary: "For uttering ethnic or racial references far less offensive than those allegedly made by candidate Jackson, other politicians have been hounded by camera crews and microphones and harangued by their political opponents. Why the apparent double standard for a presidential candidate who happens to be black?" -

* Though the Jewish writer Jean-Franc,ois Steiner, author of the 1967 book Treblinka, shares this view, many Jews sharply dispute it.