Although it's too early to say with any certainty, the early conventional wisdom is that Jesse Jackson's widely disparaged comments about Barack Obama may actually help the presumptive Democratic nominee: It helps him appear more moderate and gives him a legitimate excuse to keep Jackson at a safe distance during the general election.

But over at EbonyJet.com, Eric Eastor says that while Jackson's comments were crudely delivered, they represent a valid concern amongst some African-Americans:

The fear among critics is that the real audience that day was not the Black people in the pews at all, but the white people in middle America looking for a strong signal that Obama was rejecting the politics of racial division and animosity. By choosing that moment to castigate Black fathers, some worry that Obama gave public voice to what white people whisper about Blacks in their living rooms and cemented his image as a post-racial savior at the expense of Black men.  Whether that was Obama' s intention or whether he just figured it was Father's Day so why not do the absent Father stump speech again is impossible to know, but the event smacked of calculated political expediency that troubled more than a few people.

For a slightly different take, go back and watch Saturday Night Live alum Robert Smigel's "Obama Files" cartoon from earlier this year on the Jackson/Obama relationship: