Name: Jesse Jackson on Hope, Responsibility, and Making America Whole | David Letterman
Uploaded: 2026-02-17T13:34:05.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jesse Jackson on Hope, Responsibility, and Making America Whole | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-02-17. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jesse Jackson on Hope, Responsibility, and Making America Whole | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-02-17. Transcript available.

Hi, Stanley with us on the show.
You've got a dick, you've got Sonich here tonight.
Yeah.
You've got Willie Nelson.
Yeah.
This is Stacked Cars.
All you need tonight is dole and the money changes from the temple.
Now, you've never been here before.
Let me ask you honestly, do you think I suck?
That's private.
All right, thank you.
There's so much going on right now,
especially in the last three weeks.
It's been unbelievably interesting, unbelievably exciting.
And let's get into that in a second.
I want to talk to you about you for a minute, if you don't mind.
You don't mind?
Tell me what kind of a kid you were.
What did you do when you were a kid?
Did you ever get in trouble?
Were you ever arrested?
Were you trouble for the girls?
What kind of a guy, what kind of a kid, what was your upbringing like?
Was it you had fun?
I escaped.
You escaped?
I really didn't have much of a child.
I was born full grown.
You've always known me just as I am now.
Wow!
Is that right?
Man, your poor, poor mother.
Good heavens.
Did you ever get in trouble in school?
I knew you were an athlete.
You played football.
Well, I did.
And I think I really was under the discipline of a mother and father who had to
take life very seriously.
Much of what we take for granted as I watched the marches come to Washington
last week, one qualitative difference was those who came in 63, from Texas
across to Florida up to Virginia, couldn't use a single public toilet.
Had to go outdoors behind the cars and trees to relieve our bodies.
I mean, all that we saw in South Africa, all that this generation saw in South
Africa was real for us in South Carolina.
We couldn't use a hotel, a hotel, a public park, a library.
And so, under those conditions, we grew up.
But in that situation, you either become bitter or you become better because it's
living under stress every day.
And so, I grew up under that stress.
And I think I developed certain disciplines out of it, certain survival skills
that I employ now.
Yeah.
Were you ever in trouble as a kid in school?
Did you get good grades?
Well, got pretty good grades.
I had big fun as a child.
It was real fun, an athlete.
And I think maybe the most regrettable thing happened was that my mother was
determined to make me take French.
And, um...
Well, does your mother speak French?
Mother did not speak French, but she foresaw the day when I would be president
of France.
And so, she...
Speak French.
And so...
Yeah.
You got to have it.
You got to have it.
You got to be the president of France.
You got to be English-speaking French in France.
You look silly if you can't speak French.
You got to speak French in France.
And so, I was trying to do it with a kind of reluctance.
And the guys on the football team said, well, you know, you got to grow up, man.
You can't just be a mother's boy because, after all, if you learn to speak
French,
we can't speak it back to you.
Yeah.
And you will not have this French-speaking next to our neighbors.
And so, it's just one of those mother things.
Yeah.
They're teasing you a little bit about that.
Yeah.
And it kind of got out of my skin, you know.
So, I didn't learn French.
Except, you know, things like cafe, auto, things like that.
I got in French.
But, really, the painful part was there's always a payday for this stuff, you
know.
Right after that, the king was killed.
And a lot of us who were in his shadows had to do a lot more work.
Me and me and Reverend Lowry, a bunch of us, had to do a lot of different
things after he died.
And one day, I got a call from the UN.
The six African ambassadors wanted to come visit me because people were
starving in the Sahel region of Africa.
And they wanted some help.
Would I help?
I feel honored to be able to help.
And so, on this particular day, they drove up and six of them in two limousines
and a wife and children in the yard waiting for them to walk up, you know.
And walked out with a big, broad English smile.
Come on, tell the woman, sure.
I said, throw it in your hand, brother.
While the woman was trying to say, no.
You know, it kind of, I really had the chance to learn it, even under the most
adverse conditions.
And I did less than my best and I had to pay for it.
So now, as I go to French-speaking West Africa or go to France, it haunts me.
And so, I tell you at every place that there is something called choices and
consequences.
And when you do not make right choices, you often end up with very painful
consequences.
Did you get much mileage out of that cafe with the ambassadors?
Oh, cafe.
Dave, don't go there.
What do you think of the haircut?
Looks pretty good, don't it?
Well, I was going to take you to a barber.
Oh, I've been to a barber.
And serve you some green eggs and ham when I got that.
It does look kind of funny.
The word they were using a while ago, it...
Oh.
Willie Nelson, it what?
Yeah, it, yes, it sucks.
It?
Yeah, that's right.
I'm going to tell you something.
This is my promise to you, Reverend.
You come back here in two years, it'll look great.
At least.
Yeah.
We, uh...
You know, considering the March Monday, the Million Man March, or however,
whatever the number
was we hear from anywhere from 400,000 to over a million, maybe closer to two
million.
It was a million in the place, certainly in our minds, and to just be one in
that million
was a transforming experience.
Let me ask you a question.
What should a guy like me, well, not a guy like me, me, and the rest of America,
you know,
my mom, everybody across the country, what is the most important lasting
impression, and the most
important thing to learn from that experience?
You saw a long segment of American people who are African American, who are in
great pain,
and who brought to Washington with dignity and discipline their grievance.
From urban America, the number one growth industry in urban America now is jails.
Half of all public housing built the last 10 years have been jails.
And because plants are closing and jobs are leaving, the tax base is eroding,
what you have is
mothers being chased, and fathers chastised, and children locked up.
And the real solution must be a new focus on jobs for the parents and education
for the children.
And that's what that march was saying, that, you know, black babies die earlier,
infant mortality.
That's why we march.
We're less able to get a primary or secondary education, less able to borrow
money.
Last year in San Diego, 30,000 mortgage loans on the 29 with the blacks.
Life expectancy is shorter.
And so if that many Americans are in pain, America can never be well,
then all of us have that sense of justice and common ground.
So it seems to me that the solutions for these problems are relatively obvious,
and you're saying maybe have been overlooked or neglected for the last 10, 15,
20 years or whatever.
And if, in fact, that's the case, and I guess now, to consider more importantly,
is can they be actuated?
They really can be, but we cannot look at structural problems and solve it with
anecdotes.
In other words, if you were driving your car and the right back tire, you know,
kept blowing every month,
the other tires were normal, you wouldn't say something is wrong with the tire.
You would say it must be not aligned properly.
So if there's a significant segment that keeps blowing a tire, what's going on
here?
And what's going on here is something called race discrimination and gender
equality,
and it's beneath the dignity of the American promise.
Oh, we want to work and want to get paid for working.
We want our children to have an education.
We want to fight the drug syndrome.
And that march, the good news was the very tone of it, the moral tone, was
spiritual atonement,
soul searching from within, but also we need public policy.
Some years ago, there was a Colonel Commission report that described two
Americas.
I mean, why was there such a disparate and difference in the OJ, the reaction
to it?
Those, they were standing up looking down on the apple, they see a shiny apple.
Those on the bottom looking up, they see rot, and they see worms.
That's why if you were caught with five grams of crack cocaine, just five grams,
five years mandatory.
Five hundred grams of powder cocaine, you get probation.
Powder is wholesale, crackers retail.
So who has the powder?
75% white males.
Who's caught with a $5 high?
Young, black, and brown males.
That's unfair.
It's inconsistent.
In some way, there must be a policy, it seems to me, to see advantage in
lifting our children up,
not just locking them up.
I have an answer now to the, yes.
I have an answer now to the car situation.
You keep blowing the right rear, happens over and over and over again.
You call AAA?
They come out and, it's sort of a metaphor for what we're talking about.
You can call AAA or Farrakhan or somebody, you call somebody if you want to get
the time put back together.
I think the real point is, is that we have an excellent opportunity in our
country to move toward bonding.
And to see these men bonding with their babies and fathers with their sons and,
and on the real spirit of family reunification,
and men going to stand up and, and need to embrace matrimony and pay their alimony.
I mean, the right ethical tone was there.
But now we must move just from the issue of personal responsibility to, to a
public policy.
I hope that President Clinton will respond beyond...
What do you think of Clinton, generally?
Well, I thought it was, it was a good speech he gave, I must say, Monday in
terms of the right kind of anecdote.
He was out of town, though.
How did you feel about that?
He was out of town, but he was in the country and the problem is everywhere.
But what I think he should do, rather immediately, is have a White House
conference on urban policy
and economic development and equal opportunity.
The alternative to welfare is a job.
The alternative to so much jailing is better education.
And that's why I appeal to him and, and to members of the Congress in a
bipartisan way,
let's make America, America for all of its people.
Let me, we just have a second here.
I want to get your, are you, are you running in 96?
Are you, does that interest you for 96?
I, I have not yet made that decision.
And if I were to, if I were to see it here now, I would upset Larry King.
Oh, who cares?
Yeah.
He's out now looking to get married again.
It doesn't make any difference.
All right.
So we'll come back to you.
Don't crack jokes.
It's facts.
And Colin Powell, what about this guy?
He has all the right stuff.
I mean, he has.
Would you vote for this guy?
He has the ability, he has the background.
The ball is in his court.
Would you vote for the guy?
Well, he certainly appeals to me very much.
Would you vote for the guy?
Well, I can't say that.
Somebody call AAA!
No, the point is that the answer to the question is yes, but.
You would, so then you would vote for Colin Powell.
But, but, but, but a vote is much too serious to give when it has not been
asked for.
You get the point.
I understand.
I understand what you're saying.
Uh, Ross Perot?
Guy's wacky.
A little wacky?
A little wacky.
Right.
You let Ross alone.
And, and, uh, Bob Dole, what do you think of this guy?
He's a money changer in the temple.
Uh-huh.
He's switching.
Yeah.
And now, coming back to you, are you going to run or not?
I've not made the decision, but I'll tell you what.
Would you run, if Colin Powell runs, would you run as well or not?
I do not know.
I really can't answer that question.
Because there is too many, no, there's too many unanswered questions to know
what scenario
it would be.
I'll tell you what, he right now is really on the roll as a, as a author, a
very popular
general.
That's right.
And I think he is.
But people really don't know much about him substantively, do they, when it
comes to political
issues?
Or do they?
Do we know, have those questions been answered?
The more they will know, perhaps the more they will like, because he is highly
principled.
And when you look at the array of American presidents, his credentials, his
background,
his journey, ranked for the very best our nation has ever had to offer.
Needless to say, if he were to run and to win, it would break barriers, but
also barriers
that would make America whole.
If we can get past the barrier of race and sex, and see people as people, and
judge them
by values and not reject them on race or sex, we'll become a much better and a
much stronger
nation.
You know, you have a good way with words.
I love listening to you talk.
I'm not sure I understand everything, but man, I like listening to you talk.
You have a nice, nice sense of the vocabulary.
And I went to public schools, which makes it even better.
As did I.
Right.
Reverend, it's good to see you.
And come back as we get closer to the election and update us on stuff, all
right?
I promise you I will.
Nice to see you.
Reverend Jesse Jackson, we'll be right back.

Jesse Jackson on Hope, Responsibility, and Making America Whole | David Letterman

Hi, Stanley with us on the show.
You've got a dick, you've got Sonich here tonight.
Yeah.
You've got Willie Nelson.
Yeah.
This is Stacked Cars.
All you need tonight is dole and the money changes from the temple.
Now, you've never been here before.
Let me ask you honestly, do you think I suck?
That's private.
All right, thank you.
There's so much going on right now,
especially in the last three weeks.
It's been unbelievably interesting, unbelievably exciting.
And let's get into that in a second.
I want to talk to you about you for a minute, if you don't mind.
You don't mind?
Tell me what kind of a kid you were.
What did you do when you were a kid?
Did you ever get in trouble?
Were you ever arrested?
Were you trouble for the girls?
What kind of a guy, what kind of a kid, what was your upbringing like?
Was it you had fun?
I escaped.
You escaped?
I really didn't have much of a child.
I was born full grown.
You've always known me just as I am now.
Wow!
Is that right?
Man, your poor, poor mother.
Good heavens.
Did you ever get in trouble in school?
I knew you were an athlete.
You played football.
Well, I did.
And I think I really was under the discipline of a mother and father who had to
take life very seriously.
Much of what we take for granted as I watched the marches come to Washington
last week, one qualitative difference was those who came in 63, from Texas
across to Florida up to Virginia, couldn't use a single public toilet.
Had to go outdoors behind the cars and trees to relieve our bodies.
I mean, all that we saw in South Africa, all that this generation saw in South
Africa was real for us in South Carolina.
We couldn't use a hotel, a hotel, a public park, a library.
And so, under those conditions, we grew up.
But in that situation, you either become bitter or you become better because it's
living under stress every day.
And so, I grew up under that stress.
And I think I developed certain disciplines out of it, certain survival skills
that I employ now.
Yeah.
Were you ever in trouble as a kid in school?
Did you get good grades?
Well, got pretty good grades.
I had big fun as a child.
It was real fun, an athlete.
And I think maybe the most regrettable thing happened was that my mother was
determined to make me take French.
And, um...
Well, does your mother speak French?
Mother did not speak French, but she foresaw the day when I would be president
of France.
And so, she...
Speak French.
And so...
Yeah.
You got to have it.
You got to have it.
You got to be the president of France.
You got to be English-speaking French in France.
You look silly if you can't speak French.
You got to speak French in France.
And so, I was trying to do it with a kind of reluctance.
And the guys on the football team said, well, you know, you got to grow up, man.
You can't just be a mother's boy because, after all, if you learn to speak
French,
we can't speak it back to you.
Yeah.
And you will not have this French-speaking next to our neighbors.
And so, it's just one of those mother things.
Yeah.
They're teasing you a little bit about that.
Yeah.
And it kind of got out of my skin, you know.
So, I didn't learn French.
Except, you know, things like cafe, auto, things like that.
I got in French.
But, really, the painful part was there's always a payday for this stuff, you
know.
Right after that, the king was killed.
And a lot of us who were in his shadows had to do a lot more work.
Me and me and Reverend Lowry, a bunch of us, had to do a lot of different
things after he died.
And one day, I got a call from the UN.
The six African ambassadors wanted to come visit me because people were
starving in the Sahel region of Africa.
And they wanted some help.
Would I help?
I feel honored to be able to help.
And so, on this particular day, they drove up and six of them in two limousines
and a wife and children in the yard waiting for them to walk up, you know.
And walked out with a big, broad English smile.
Come on, tell the woman, sure.
I said, throw it in your hand, brother.
While the woman was trying to say, no.
You know, it kind of, I really had the chance to learn it, even under the most
adverse conditions.
And I did less than my best and I had to pay for it.
So now, as I go to French-speaking West Africa or go to France, it haunts me.
And so, I tell you at every place that there is something called choices and
consequences.
And when you do not make right choices, you often end up with very painful
consequences.
Did you get much mileage out of that cafe with the ambassadors?
Oh, cafe.
Dave, don't go there.
What do you think of the haircut?
Looks pretty good, don't it?
Well, I was going to take you to a barber.
Oh, I've been to a barber.
And serve you some green eggs and ham when I got that.
It does look kind of funny.
The word they were using a while ago, it...
Oh.
Willie Nelson, it what?
Yeah, it, yes, it sucks.
It?
Yeah, that's right.
I'm going to tell you something.
This is my promise to you, Reverend.
You come back here in two years, it'll look great.
At least.
Yeah.
We, uh...
You know, considering the March Monday, the Million Man March, or however,
whatever the number
was we hear from anywhere from 400,000 to over a million, maybe closer to two
million.
It was a million in the place, certainly in our minds, and to just be one in
that million
was a transforming experience.
Let me ask you a question.
What should a guy like me, well, not a guy like me, me, and the rest of America,
you know,
my mom, everybody across the country, what is the most important lasting
impression, and the most
important thing to learn from that experience?
You saw a long segment of American people who are African American, who are in
great pain,
and who brought to Washington with dignity and discipline their grievance.
From urban America, the number one growth industry in urban America now is jails.
Half of all public housing built the last 10 years have been jails.
And because plants are closing and jobs are leaving, the tax base is eroding,
what you have is
mothers being chased, and fathers chastised, and children locked up.
And the real solution must be a new focus on jobs for the parents and education
for the children.
And that's what that march was saying, that, you know, black babies die earlier,
infant mortality.
That's why we march.
We're less able to get a primary or secondary education, less able to borrow
money.
Last year in San Diego, 30,000 mortgage loans on the 29 with the blacks.
Life expectancy is shorter.
And so if that many Americans are in pain, America can never be well,
then all of us have that sense of justice and common ground.
So it seems to me that the solutions for these problems are relatively obvious,
and you're saying maybe have been overlooked or neglected for the last 10, 15,
20 years or whatever.
And if, in fact, that's the case, and I guess now, to consider more importantly,
is can they be actuated?
They really can be, but we cannot look at structural problems and solve it with
anecdotes.
In other words, if you were driving your car and the right back tire, you know,
kept blowing every month,
the other tires were normal, you wouldn't say something is wrong with the tire.
You would say it must be not aligned properly.
So if there's a significant segment that keeps blowing a tire, what's going on
here?
And what's going on here is something called race discrimination and gender
equality,
and it's beneath the dignity of the American promise.
Oh, we want to work and want to get paid for working.
We want our children to have an education.
We want to fight the drug syndrome.
And that march, the good news was the very tone of it, the moral tone, was
spiritual atonement,
soul searching from within, but also we need public policy.
Some years ago, there was a Colonel Commission report that described two
Americas.
I mean, why was there such a disparate and difference in the OJ, the reaction
to it?
Those, they were standing up looking down on the apple, they see a shiny apple.
Those on the bottom looking up, they see rot, and they see worms.
That's why if you were caught with five grams of crack cocaine, just five grams,
five years mandatory.
Five hundred grams of powder cocaine, you get probation.
Powder is wholesale, crackers retail.
So who has the powder?
75% white males.
Who's caught with a $5 high?
Young, black, and brown males.
That's unfair.
It's inconsistent.
In some way, there must be a policy, it seems to me, to see advantage in
lifting our children up,
not just locking them up.
I have an answer now to the, yes.
I have an answer now to the car situation.
You keep blowing the right rear, happens over and over and over again.
You call AAA?
They come out and, it's sort of a metaphor for what we're talking about.
You can call AAA or Farrakhan or somebody, you call somebody if you want to get
the time put back together.
I think the real point is, is that we have an excellent opportunity in our
country to move toward bonding.
And to see these men bonding with their babies and fathers with their sons and,
and on the real spirit of family reunification,
and men going to stand up and, and need to embrace matrimony and pay their alimony.
I mean, the right ethical tone was there.
But now we must move just from the issue of personal responsibility to, to a
public policy.
I hope that President Clinton will respond beyond...
What do you think of Clinton, generally?
Well, I thought it was, it was a good speech he gave, I must say, Monday in
terms of the right kind of anecdote.
He was out of town, though.
How did you feel about that?
He was out of town, but he was in the country and the problem is everywhere.
But what I think he should do, rather immediately, is have a White House
conference on urban policy
and economic development and equal opportunity.
The alternative to welfare is a job.
The alternative to so much jailing is better education.
And that's why I appeal to him and, and to members of the Congress in a
bipartisan way,
let's make America, America for all of its people.
Let me, we just have a second here.
I want to get your, are you, are you running in 96?
Are you, does that interest you for 96?
I, I have not yet made that decision.
And if I were to, if I were to see it here now, I would upset Larry King.
Oh, who cares?
Yeah.
He's out now looking to get married again.
It doesn't make any difference.
All right.
So we'll come back to you.
Don't crack jokes.
It's facts.
And Colin Powell, what about this guy?
He has all the right stuff.
I mean, he has.
Would you vote for this guy?
He has the ability, he has the background.
The ball is in his court.
Would you vote for the guy?
Well, he certainly appeals to me very much.
Would you vote for the guy?
Well, I can't say that.
Somebody call AAA!
No, the point is that the answer to the question is yes, but.
You would, so then you would vote for Colin Powell.
But, but, but, but a vote is much too serious to give when it has not been
asked for.
You get the point.
I understand.
I understand what you're saying.
Uh, Ross Perot?
Guy's wacky.
A little wacky?
A little wacky.
Right.
You let Ross alone.
And, and, uh, Bob Dole, what do you think of this guy?
He's a money changer in the temple.
Uh-huh.
He's switching.
Yeah.
And now, coming back to you, are you going to run or not?
I've not made the decision, but I'll tell you what.
Would you run, if Colin Powell runs, would you run as well or not?
I do not know.
I really can't answer that question.
Because there is too many, no, there's too many unanswered questions to know
what scenario
it would be.
I'll tell you what, he right now is really on the roll as a, as a author, a
very popular
general.
That's right.
And I think he is.
But people really don't know much about him substantively, do they, when it
comes to political
issues?
Or do they?
Do we know, have those questions been answered?
The more they will know, perhaps the more they will like, because he is highly
principled.
And when you look at the array of American