The Ehrenstein Effect

The shockwaves of writer (and frequent JMG commenter) David Ehrenstein's Magic Negro column continue to reverberate, this time causing a little bit of Christmas trouble for a Republican National Committee candidate.

RNC candidate Chip Saltsman’s Christmas greeting to committee members includes a music CD with lyrics from a song called “Barack the Magic Negro,” first played on Rush Limbaugh’s popular radio show. Saltsman, a personal friend of conservative satirist Paul Shanklin, sent a 41-track CD along with a note to national committee members. “I look forward to working together in the New Year,” Saltsman wrote. “Please enjoy the enclosed CD by my friend Paul Shanklin of the Rush Limbaugh Show.” The CD, called “We Hate the USA,” lampoons liberals with such songs as “John Edwards’ Poverty Tour,” “Wright place, wrong pastor,” “Love Client #9,” “Ivory and Ebony” and “The Star Spanglish banner.” Several of the track titles, including “Barack the Magic Negro,” are written in bold font.

The song, which debuted on Limbaugh’s show in late March 2007, latches onto an opinion column in the Los Angeles Times of the same title. That column, penned by cultural critic David Ehrenstein, argued that Obama could serve as a balm to whites who felt guilty about past treatment of African Americans. Limbaugh first highlighted the column the day it ran, according to a contemporary report by Media Matters, the liberal watchdog agency. Media Matters reported Limbaugh repeated the phrase more than two dozen times the day the column ran.

From Ehrenstein's original column:

"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.

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."

I excerpted Ehrenstein's essay here on JMG in January, almost a year after it was first published. Read reactions here.

Ehrenstein On Buse

Writer David Ehrenstein has published a piece in the LA Weekly about the John McCain's gay chief of staff Mark Buse, Manhunt, and gay Republicans. Ehrenstein, a regular JMG participant, interviewed Log Cabin's Patrick Sammon, Michelangelo Signorile, Mike Rogers, and me. The article begins:

“If an outing happens in the forest and no one hears it, is it an outing?” wonders gay activist Mike Rogers. It’s a question that he and outing pioneer Michelangelo Signorile have been asking since September 22, when they outed Mark Buse, longtime Senate chief of staff to Republican presidential candidate John McCain. With the economy tanking, Sarah Palin on the attack, Lindsay Lohan “going lesbian” and Clay Aiken making the cover of People the day after the Buse revelation, you may not have heard about it. If you heard of Buse at all, it was likely for the $460,000 in lobbying fees he earned in 2003 and 2004 from troubled loan giant Freddie Mac (not to be confused with the more than $2 million McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, received over the years for work he and his lobbying firm did for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as recently as August). On political Web sites ranging from Daily Kos, Eschaton and Firedoglake all the way to the gay-centered Towleroad, JoeMyGod and Pam’s House Blend, Buse has been Topic A — especially afterSignorile provided on-the-record quotes from an ex-lover of Buse’s, Brian Davis. Rogers even went to Buse’s Washington office to personally deliver the latest Roy Cohn Award for most harm done to the gay community by a gay man.

“Did the gay readers of my blog go, ‘Oh, my God, I live in D.C. and I can’t believe he’s gay’” Rogers asks. “No. But One News Now, an online news service that’s about as right wing as you can get, was quite upset, and they’re hardly the only ones.”

Read the rest.

HomoQuotable - David Ehrenstein

[From a March 17, 2007 column in the L.A. Times. Pertinent, in light of recent commentary regarding Barack Obama.]

"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.

"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."

"Poitier really poured on the "magic" in "Lilies of the Field" (for which he won a best actor Oscar) and "To Sir, With Love" (which, along with "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," made him a No. 1 box-office attraction). In these films, Poitier triumphs through yeoman service to his white benefactors. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" is particularly striking in this regard, as it posits miscegenation without evoking sex. (Talk about magic!)

"The same can't quite be said of Freeman in "Driving Miss Daisy," "Seven" and the seemingly endless series of films in which he plays ersatz paterfamilias to a white woman bedeviled by a serial killer. But at least he survives, unlike Crothers in "The Shining," in which psychic premonitions inspire him to rescue a white family he barely knows and get killed for his trouble. This heart-tug trope is parodied in Gus Van Sant's "Elephant." The film's sole black student at a Columbine-like high school arrives in the midst of a slaughter, helps a girl escape and is immediately gunned down. See what helping the white man gets you?" - David Ehrenstein, in his March 17, 2007 Los Angeles Times piece, Obama, The Magic Negro.