Patterico's Pontifications

3/19/2007

Banned Patterico Commenter Appears in Pages of LAT

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 10:39 pm



David Ehrenstein: banned from Patterico, but not from the L.A. Times.

P.S. But what about the substance? Let’s take a look at it:

AS EVERY CARBON-BASED life form on this planet surely knows, Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, is running for president. Since making his announcement, there has been no end of commentary about him in all quarters — musing over his charisma and the prospect he offers of being the first African American to be elected to the White House.

But it’s clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the “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.

I’ll take Allah’s observations over David E.’s any day:

The reason the “Magic Negro” meme has purchase in Hollywood has less to do with racism, I suspect, than sensitivity to the accusation of racism, for which they overcompensate by assigning the most cartoonishly noble and good-natured roles to black actors.

That sounds about right.

6 Responses to “Banned Patterico Commenter Appears in Pages of LAT”

  1. I found Ehrenstein’s piece to betray the same racism in himself that he claims to see in others:

    http://laurasmiscmusings.blogspot.com/2007/03/repulsive-obama-editorial-in-la-times.html

    Shame on the L.A. Times for printing it.

    Best wishes,
    Laura

    Laura (d8da01)

  2. David E. will no doubt read this, and this is an overwhelmingly sensitive time for those of us in Cathy’s World. I hope that David E. will post here again, in passionate yet respectful defense of his beliefs.

    One of the many admirable qualities of Cathy is that she refrained from demonizing those who disagreed with her. John Adams said in his famous letters to Thomas Jefferson: There’s a moment late in the correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, in the twilight of their years, when Adams says to Jefferson, “You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.”

    And so I hope that while you both are alive and healthy, Patterico and David E. can begin to explain themselves to each other.

    Bradley J. Fikes (1c6fc4)

  3. Ehrenstein and “Allah” are making the same point.
    “The Illinois senator lends himself to white America’s idealized, less-than-real black man.”

    Morgan Freeman went from playing the perfect servant to playing th perfect teacher to playing the president or playing god.
    As to House-nigger. Well I suppose David E couldn’t call JC Watts an Oreo

    AF (f0c94f)

  4. how about since before announcing his run for the president… Oh and I feel no guilt for slavery… But I think Obama is running his campaign very well

    G (722480)

  5. Oddly, Patterico hasn’t been on those pages of late. Probably banned. Do you suppose this is payback of some kind?

    Kevin Murphy (805c5b)


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