The L.A. Times, which for months has been sniping from the weeds at Senator Obama, is finally dropping the daisy-cutters.  In an editorial today, David Ehrenstein explains Senator Obama's popularity as being a product of white folks attraction to the mythical "magic negro,"

The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia http://en.-wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro .

He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.

As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic -- embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is "Magic." ...

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.

The editorial is not only an attack on Senator Obama, but on the people who support him.  Linking Obama supporters to people who think the sappy Driving Miss Daisy is a great movie is a particularly low blow.  Nobody in the Obama camp is stooping to link Senator Clinton's supporters with the fan base for Charlie's Angels.

And once again, somebody is trying to turn Senator Obama's gift for clear-speaking into a negative.  But haven't we learned in the last eight years that jumbled speech is usually the result of a jumbled mind?  It is hard to be as articulate as Senator Obama when you're not speaking from the heart, when you're trying to present the reasons for unreasonable policy. 

Here at Obamafest, we didn't like Driving Miss Daisy, found Guess Who's Coming to Dinner to be a bore, and we left in the middle of The Legend of Baggar Vance.  But we still like Senator Obama, not because he is magic, but for a number of reasons, not least because he is the only leading candidate who does not have this on his resume:


To say that "Obama's fame right now has little to do with his political record" ignores the reality of images like this.