I don't think it was Magic Negro. I think it was visions of breaking a "colour barrier."


You know what's really funny about this? This: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ehrenstein19mar19,0,3391015.story

Obama's fame right now has little to do with his political record or what he's written in his two (count 'em) books, or even what he's actually said in those stem-winders. It's the way he's said it that counts the most. It's his manner, which, as presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Biden ham-fistedly reminded us, is "articulate." His tone is always genial, his voice warm and unthreatening, and he hasn't called his opponents names (despite being baited by the media).

Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.


I won't actually post the lyrics to Limbaugh's "Barack the Magic Negro" not because it might offend someone, but because it offends me.

The race of white candidates is never even an issue in electoral politics, and they won every election before 2008.

Why I think this is funny is because here we are discussing the greater or lesser degree how Obama's skin color helped him. Where in the world did we get such an idea? But Barack Obama, alone among presidential candidates, was dismissed from the beginning because of his skin color.

John Edwards was charismatic and popular with the Democratic electorate. He even had a longer, if not better, resume. Their positions on the issues were pretty much indistinguishable. At no point was he *as* popular with the Democratic electorate, even before his scandals came to light.


And yet somehow managed to end up on a national ticket, before a black man.

Imagine that.

I think it was because he was white...

Jackson, Sharpton, and even Chisholm were "the black candidate." Obama wasn't. He certainly didn't run as "the black candidate." But he is black. Sharpton and Jackson ran on their civil rights/fighting for black causes records. Chisolm, IIRC, was similar in that respect, and also even more of a fringe candidate politically- she was more socialist than the mainstream of the Democratic party could stomach, and it also wasn't nearly as enamoured with the civil rights movement in her time as it became later. Obama is a mainstream (in his time) Democratic party politician who happens to be black. The Democratic electorate as a whole sees itself as pushing the Republic beyond that history you mention. It's progress, right?


The question before us, tho', is whether his skin color was a net advantage. I don't see how we could measure that, but when we speak of "the Democrats" and their desire for historical boundary pushing, let us recall that almost half of the Democrats voted against him.

Under other circumstances, Barack Obama might not even be able to successfully hail a cab in Chicago.

As for Jimmy, I thought it was the calf muscles.


Could be. It's been a while.