Barack Obama has become the earliest presidential candidate to receive secret service protection.  This is just as well, considering how front-loaded the process is.  Mind you, Hillary Clinton has secret service protection, but that is by dent of her status as former First Lady, which solves one of the odd riddles:  The reason Barack Obama is so kill-worthy is that he is black.  In the battle to see whether the undercurrent of fear and hatred of the prospects of a black president or a female president, the test of threat assessment to arrive at Secret Service Protection has been mooted.

Pondering the imponderables, our friend Rush Limbaugh, in his usual coy way to “expose liberal hypocrisy” (if you say so) has adopted a theme song for Barack Obama.  “Barack the Magic Negro”.  It is by way of an LA Times editorial, with his assertion that “the drive by media” and “liberal bloggers” will claim Rush created it.
Sure, why not?  If it’ll get me mentioned on the show, than by all means: Rush Limbaugh created the term “Magic Negro”.  Weeeee!  Fun.
I suppose this is a teaching moment.  It is important that the word “negro” be used in the term as a reference to our uncomfortable compact to our racial attitudes of the past, and continuation into the present.  Frankly, I have come to understand all or most presidential candidates as people who are waffly enough that we project stuff onto.  We could not really get a handle on George W Bush in 2000.  Or Bill Clinton in 1992.  It is sort of why John Kerry wasn’t successful against a weakening incumbent.  Obama just adds a racial dimension to the mix.

For Rush, it really is just an excuse to throw around the term “negro”.  He will be picking up any leftover editorial comment and flogging it in a “What me worry?” manner.  I do not know if he termed “Halfrican”, but I do know he can claim to have picked up the idea of “not too black… not too white” from the political ether, and… well, if he wants to, subtley toss the Jeffersons theme song when discussing any number of black politicians.

I will say this in passing.  I have noticed an uncomfortable ease with which the word “negro” is being used, generally with an understated quotation marks around the word.  Michael Richards notwithstanding, nobody white says “nigger” — at least not in my presence.  (The “behind closed doors in the privacy of their own country club” scenario will have to play out somewhere else.)  It is almost as though we’ve quietly shuffled from that to the other “n” word.  But what’s in a word? — I don’t know… Truman would have used that term and not had the faintest idea what an “African American” is.

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