By now you’ve heard Jesse Jackson’s apology about wanting to cut Barack Obama’s you-know-whats off because “Barack been, um, talking down to black people on this faith based ...“

Jackson made the comment off camera—but into a live microphone—during an appearance on Fox News Channel Sunday.

FNC host Bill O’Reilly had teased earlier this week that the Channel actually had more than it had made public. In his July 10 “Talking Points Memo,“ O’Reilly said, “We held back some of Jackson’s comments because they weren’t relevant to public policy. If we were trying to hurt the man or the Democratic Party, we surely would have used those comments ... we didn’t run some trash talk that had nothing to do with policy.“

Wow ... worse than wanting to—well, you know—to the Democratic presidential nominee-to-be—who’s black?

What could those OTHER comments be?

Cue Jackson’s OTHER apology, this one referencing comments he made about Obama’s recent speeches about responsibility in the black community. Jackson said Obama was “telling n———how to behave,“ a FNC spokesman confirmed Wednesday.

This is the same Jesse Jackson who, two years ago, called on everyone everywhere to stop using the N-word because “its roots are rooted in hatred and pain and degradation.“

A lot of luck he had with that.

I have never understood the double standard that exists between black people using the N-word and white people using the N-word.

Sure, I’ve heard all the arguments: Context is everything; it’s only a perjorative when used by a white person; the word is a part of the African-American culture.

But it is the same word.

And isn’t the fact that it’s part of the African-American culture the biggest stumbling block to eradicating the word from general use, as a group in Texas tried to do with a symbolic “funeral” for the word last year?

Of course, we have the First Amendment and freedom of speech in this country, so this entire discussion is about what’s morally or ethically appropriate, not what’s legal.

Certain civil rights activists, like Jackson, do themselves and their cause no favors when they talk about equality on one hand and practice inequality on the other.

And Jackson knows it. Watch him writhe through this almost-unintelligible interview with CNN’s John Roberts earlier this week. Roberts asks about the Sunday comments; Jackson references levee breaches, day-care facilities and foreclosures.

No obfuscation there.

Is Jesse Jackson even relevant anymore? Do we even care what he says (unless he’s uttering a verboten racial slur)?

One writer from the Fredericksburg (Va.) Free Lance-Star says, “Maybe Jesse should cut off his tongue.“

Latoya Peterson, editor of Racialicious.com, says, “If calling an entire group of people the n-word isn’t talking down to blacks, I don’t know what is.“

And as long as we’re talking about Obama’s trip to Europe, read this interesting take on America’s race issues and word-related hubbub from London’s Daily Mail .