I had a brief bit about this in yesterday’s Capitol Fax and more in the subscriber-only blog, but today Lynn Sweet based her column on the subject so we’ll talk about it here now.

Washington - Seeking to solidify African-American backing for Barack Obama’s presidential bid, Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr. told black Democrats meeting here last week they don’t “owe” anyone, alluding to, but not mentioning by name, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Obama, said Jones, “is our son.”

And here’s the Politico.com article that started it all

Jones concluded his speech with a reference to the jobs and appointments Bill Clinton had given blacks, including many people in the room, and asked when they would stop owing the Clintons for that patronage, attendees said.

“You could hear a pin drop,” said one person in the room who doesn’t currently support either Obama or Clinton. “It was one of those moments when you say, ‘I can’t believe he just said that.’”

Jones’ call was received frostily by Clinton allies, including Minyon Moore, the former White House aide who now heads Hillary Clinton’s black outreach, and former Clinton and Gore campaign aide Donna Brazile, according to some attendees.

Moore walked out of the room when Jones stopped speaking, according to two people who were there. Moore said Sunday she’d left because she had somewhere else to be, and that she would “agree to disagree” with Jones.

Neither Moore nor Brazile could be reached for comment. But another Clinton supporter who was who at the meeting said Clinton’s camp took Jones’ remarks as an affront.

“The feeling was, ‘Who is [Jones] to tell us how to be black?’ ” said the Clinton supporter, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue.

Back to Sweet:

The controversy triggered by Jones was picked up by CNN Monday, and the Rev. Al Sharpton told CNN that Jones “could offend people by saying you got to unite just because someone is your race.”

Sharpton noted that Obama endorsed Mayor Daley for re-election over two black candidates, so it would not follow to ask blacks “to do something for Obama that he himself is not doing at home.”

Good points on all sides. First, many of those very same Hillary supporters have been whispering to their favored DC pundits hacks that Obama is somehow “not black enough,” which is pretty ironic since they’re working for a white person whose husband gave most of them jobs and contracts. And, frankly, it’s about time that the DC consultant establishment - white, black, purple - was called out for what it really is: an intensely cynical, purely self-serving money-making machine. Then again, as Sharpton pointed out, there is the matter of that Daley endorsement. Nobody is perfectly clean here.

To be fair, many of Clinton’s top African-American supporters have a long and strong relationship with the Senator and her husband, regardless of patronage.

And even if her high-level support is purely patronage-based, Senate President Jones is really in no position to argue. For instance, Jones absolutely hates it whenever people link his campaign finance and other relationships with ComEd to his support for the utility company’s often anti-consumer legislative agenda. Glass houses. Stones. Etc.

In the end, this internal struggle with racial identity might turn out to be healthy, but it’s undoubtedly gonna get a whole lot uglier before it’s all over.

The funniest take on Jones’ comments was from Matt Stoller over at MyDD, who wrote that the controversy “revealed a generational split among black political leaders between the old patronage model and a newer movement model.”

Apparently, he doesn’t know Emil Jones very well.

Also, as I told you yesterday, John Edwards was in the Bloomington area this week. Apparently, he was just there for a private fundraiser and didn’t notify the media, so most of them missed the story. A local radio station did manage to get a sound bite, however.

Oops. I forgot to mention the party in honor of Obama’s announcement at the Firefighters Lake Club Friday evening. Here are the particulars:

Firefighters Lake Club
940 West Lake Drive, Springfield

Friday, February 9th
5:00p - 7:00p

Free Food and Drinks

Donations for Senator Obama’s Exploratory Committee will be accepted!

Contributions to Obama Exploratory Committee are not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes. Federal law prohibits the acceptance of corporate checks.

Contact Neil for more information at: email4neil@yahoo.com