Hirsi Ali under threat in US- Dutch News

So now, foreign dissenters to political Islam are not safe within our own borders. The lemmings will jump up and down about the so called ‘police state’ created by the Patriot Act. But they won’t find it disturbing that dissidents are being actively targeted on US soil.

Hirsi Ali under threat in US, Dutch News, The Netherlands, Holland, Expatica

AMSTERDAM – Former MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali is now in danger in the US as well. Her security has been stepped up for the past three weeks. Because of concrete threats, she is now receiving the same level of protection as she previously needed in the Netherlands, the Volkskrant reports.

Hirsi Ali had more freedom of movement when she first arrived in the US last September. Her lack of freedom in the Netherlands was one of the reasons for her move.

The forced isolation made it impossible for her to continue in her position as MP at the time, she said. The Liberal VVD politician had to travel by armoured car in the Netherlands, accompanied by six bodyguards. In the US just two security workers, who kept an eye on her from a distance, sufficed.

Hirsi Ali’s protection is carried out by American security personnel commissioned by the Dutch Justice department. Hirsi Ali works at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, a think-tank that has close ties with the Republican party.

As in the Netherlands, the threats against her come from Muslim extremists. They are in connection with the lectures and media appearances Hirsi Ali has been making since the publication of the American version of her autobiography, “The Infidel,” in January.

The book has sold 148,000 copies over the past two months and led to heated debate in the US.

Besides glowing reviews in The New York Times and other media, Hirsi Ali is also coming up against opposition because of her uncompromising criticism of Islam.

Thanks to NOIP for the find!!

Army Recruiter Investigated For Bigoted E-Mails

It is the truly ignorant among us that make it difficult to have meaningful political discussion and debate of conservative values in American society. As the operator of a conservative website, it would be pretty intellectually dishonest to let this slide. But I also find it sad that with Hostages in Iran, terrorism, illegal immigration and a host of other issues, this is what is getting all the buzz.

wcbstv.com – Army Recruiter Investigated For Bigoted E-Mails

(CBS) JERSEY CITY, N.J. An Army recruiter is in hot water after taking part in a war of racial and anti-gay words with a Jersey City resident who had simply posted his resume on a Web site in search of a job. Corey Andrew, an openly gay black man said the heated exchange began in late February after the recruiter responded to his resume displayed on CareerBuilder.com.

U.S. Army recruiter Sgt. Marcia Ramode wrote to Andrew from her official military e-mail address, but after Andrew said he wasn’t interested in joining the Army, he did probe the recruiter on the Army’s policy on gay and lesbian soldiers. The fireworks set off when he revealed he’s openly gay.

Ramode told Andrew that being gay made him unqualified, and that it was “disgusting and immoral.”

“In any other corporate structure in America, an e-mail like this going around in an office building would result in termination immediately,” Andrew said.

But the message that struck the strongest chord with Andrew was when Ramode wrote: “GO BACK TO AFRICA AND DO YOUR GAY VOODOO LIMBO TANGO AND WANGO DANCE AND JUMP AROUND AND PRANCE AND RUN ALL OVER THE PLACE HALF NAKED THERE. … THAT’S WHERE YOU BELONG”

To say Andrew, a musician who is a copywriter by trade, was shocked would be an understatement. “I thought she was absolutely out of her mind,” Andrew said.

Andrew admits he lost his cool at times during the exchange and shot back at Ramode, taking shots at her for spelling and grammatical errors, but also told her after he’d found she was Native American to “take that to your next rain dance.”

The spokesman for an advocacy group for gay members of the military told CBS 2 that action should be taken against Ramode. “She should be relieved from her duty. She was not just homophobic, she was also racist. And if that’s the public voice the Army wants to put out there, then shame on them,” said Steve Ralls, a director of communications for the Service Members Legal Defense Network.

Sgt. Douglas Smith, a public affairs officer for the Army said Ramode’s comments are being investigated. “The command expects its recruiters to conduct themselves in a professional manner in all dealings with potential applicants and members of the public. We are ambassadors for America’s Army,” Smith added.

Officials say for now Ramode is still working in the military, but not in recruiting. Andrew is hoping she’ll be removed from the post for good, especially for violating the Department of Defense’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in which recruiters are barred from asking applicants about their sexual orientation.

“She’s telling me that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ meant racism. It meant social injustice. It meant sexual discrimination and bigotry,” Andrew said.

Is Obama all style and little substance?

The vetting of Obama continues… 

Is Obama all style and little substance?

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer 3 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – The voices , , ) all style and little substance?

He has focused instead on motivating his impressive following with a call for unity and change in Washington. But along with the attention comes a hunger to hear more about what he‘s about.

Obama has a lot of time to fill in the blanks between now and Election Day, and certainly many other candidates are short on details this early in the race. But they don‘t have such a barrier to prove they are qualified to be president.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards , the only other candidate to serve less time in elective office than Obama, described in detail his health care plan to provide insurance for all Americans. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton doesn‘t have a written plan yet, but no one questions her expertise, since she was the chief proponent of the issue during her husband‘s presidency.

“I believe that he needed to know a little more about health care issues and he was just unprepared,” Romo said.

David Peter, a child support case worker and member of the SEIU in Las Vegas who was also in the audience, said Obama may have been better off not participating in the forum. Peter is a local organizer for anti-war candidate Dennis Kucinich , but said he was impressed with Clinton‘s health care plan and disappointed in Obama.

Obama was pressed by a union member in the audience who said she went to his Web site to learn more about his health care vision, but didn‘t find much beyond his commitment to reduce HIV / AIDS and lead poisoning.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said the discussion will begin April 3, when Obama plans to talk to New Hampshire hospital workers and other community members at a meeting co-sponsored by the Portsmouth Herald.

If Obama were running in a different time, he might get more of a break for lacking specifics. Primary votes were already being cast in the 1984 Democratic primary when Walter Mondale famously ridiculed opponent Gary Hart by asking, “Where‘s the beef?” Four years ago, no candidate for president had a health care plan this early in the game.

Obama has offered a plan to get troops out of Iraq , beginning with a drawdown in May that would extended through a March 2008 goal of redeploying all combat troops. The plan is unlikely to become reality with Bush in office, but is what Obama says he would do if he were in the Oval Office today.

Obama also has laid out broad goals such as covering the uninsured by the time his first term is over. He has downplayed the importance of the specifics at this stage, saying that it‘s not a lack of details that are the problem.

“Every four years somebody trots out a white paper, they post it on the Web,” Obama said Saturday. “But the question we have to challenge ourselves is do we have the political will and the sense of urgency to actually get it done.”

___

Associated Press Writer Nedra Pickler covers the Democratic presidential race for The Associated Press. Associated Press writer Ryan Nakashima in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

Sean Penn’s angry Rant.

Click the link for the full story at SFGate. Audio will be in the pod viewer. Full story and embedded audio are on our homepage. EDIT: While the audio is being uploaded, you can also listen here.

Actor Penn, Rep. Lee appear at town hall meeting on Iraq war / Hundreds gather in Oakland to discuss how to get U.S. troops home

18:20 PDT OAKLAND — Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn was the star attraction at a town hall meeting today in Oakland, where hundreds of people gathered to denounce the war in Iraq and call for an immediate withdrawal of American troops.

Neither Penn nor Rep. Barbara Lee, the Oakland Democrat who has opposed the war since before it began four years ago, offered much in the way of specifics for ending the conflict, and they were largely preaching to the choir. The enthusiastic and occasionally boisterous crowd of 800 or so crammed into the Grand Lake Theatre wildly cheered as Penn excoriated President Bush.

“You and your smarmy pundits — and the smarmy pundits you have in your pocket — can take your war and shove it,” Penn said. “Let’s unite not only in stopping this war, but in holding this administration accountable.”

The town hall meeting came six days after peace marches were held nationwide to mark the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and one day after the House of Representatives voted 218-212 to withdraw combat troops by Sept. 1, 2008.

Penn reiterated a point often made by opponents of the war when he said he supports the troops but opposes the war.

“Let’s make this crystal clear: We do support our troops, but not the exploitation of them and their families,” he said. “The money that’s spent on this war would be better spent on building levees in New Orleans and health care in Africa and care for our veterans. Iraq is not our toilet. It’s a country of human beings whose lives that were once oppressed by Saddam are now in Dante’s Inferno.”

Anger Is All The Rage

RealClearPolitics – Articles – Anger Is All The Rage

By George Will
During the divisive War of 1812, a livid woman famous for her long hair rode to the White House, stood in her carriage, let down her tresses and proclaimed that she would gladly be shorn of them if they would be used to hang President James Madison. That anecdote, from Catherine Allgor’s biography of Dolley Madison, shows that today’s theatrical anger is not without precedent. But now there is a new style in anger — fury as a fashion accessory, indignation as evidence of good character.

Under the headline “San Franciscans Hurl Their Rage at Parking Patrol,” the New York Times recently described the verbal abuse and physical violence — there were 28 attacks in 2006 — inflicted on parking enforcement officers in a city that has a surplus of liberalism and a shortage of parking places. Parking is so difficult that George Anderson, a mental health expert, has stopped holding lectures there because his audiences arrive seething about their parking frustrations. Anderson represents the American Association of Anger Management Providers.

Of course. San Francisco, a showcase for expressive individualism, is full of people bristling with rights and eager to rebel against oppressive authority, but having a hard time finding any. The only rules concern parking.No wonder Americans are infatuated with anger: It is democratic. Anyone can express it, and it is one of the seven deadly sins, which means it is a universal susceptibility. So in this age that is proud of having achieved “the repeal of reticence,” anger exhibitionism is pandemic.

There are the tantrums — sometimes both theatrical and perfunctory — of talking heads on television or commentators writing in vitriol (Paul Krugman’s incessant contempt, Ann Coulter’s equally constant loathing). There is road rage (and parking lot rage when the Whole Foods Market parking lot is congested with expressive individualists driving Volvos and Priuses). The blogosphere often is, as one blogger joyfully says, “an electronic primal scream.” And everywhere there is the histrionic fury of ordinary people venting in everyday conversations.

Many people who loathe George W. Bush have adopted what Peter Wood describes as “ecstatic anger as a mode of political action.” Anger often is, Wood says, “a spectacle to be witnessed by an appreciative audience, not an attempt to win over the uncommitted.”

Wood, an anthropologist and author of “A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now,” says the new anger “often has the look-at-me character of performance art.” His book is a convincing, hence depressing, explanation of “anger chic” — of why anger has become an all-purpose emotional stance. It has achieved prestige and become “a credential for group membership.” As a result, “Americans have been flattening their emotional range into an angry monotone.”

Wood notes that there is a “vagueness and elasticity of the grievances” that supposedly justify today’s almost exuberant anger. And anger is more pervasive than merely political grievances would explain. Today’s anger is a coping device for everyday life. It also is the defining attribute of an increasingly common personality type: the person who “unless he is angry, feels he is nothing at all.”

That type, infatuated with anger, uses it to express identity. Anger as an expression of selfhood is its own vindication. Wood argues, however, that as anger becomes a gas polluting the social atmosphere, it becomes not a sign of personal uniqueness but of a herd impulse.

Once upon a time, Americans admired models of self-control, people such as George Washington and Jackie Robinson, who mastered their anger rather than relishing being mastered by it. America’s fictional heroes could be angry, but theirs was a reluctant anger — Alan Ladd as the gunfighter in “Shane,” Gary Cooper as the marshal in “High Noon.” Today, however, proclaimed anger — the more vituperative the better — is regarded as a sign of good character and emotional vitality.

Perhaps this should not be surprising, now that Americans are inclined to elect presidents who advertise their emotions — “I feel your pain.” As the late Mary McGrory wrote, Bill Clinton “is a child of his age; he believes more in the thrust-out lower lip than the stiff upper one.”

The politics of disdain — e.g., Howard Dean’s judgment that Republicans are “brain dead” and “a lot of them never made an honest living in their lives” — derails politics by defining opponents as beyond the reach of reason. The anger directed at Bush today, like that directed at Clinton during his presidency, luxuriates in its own vehemence.

Today, many people preen about their anger as a badge of authenticity: I snarl, therefore I am. Such people make one’s blood boil.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Video is available in the pod viewer. I have a companion ppt. sent to me by a Canadian scientist who has asked to remain nameless. I’ll be putting all of this on the homepage as soon as my webmaster can get the video and ppt. embedded.

Story Here @ brentroos.com

Man-made global warming is a hoax. It is a theory based upon some scientific evidence, which conveniently leaves out a lot of scientific data, which would otherwise, disprove it’s credibility.

What you are about to watch is an excellent documentary, aired on UK TV Channel 4, which disproves the hysteria behind the theory of man-made global warming. It uses scientific data to show that climate change is a natural occurrence, which is mainly caused by the Sun. Of course, other factors are involved, but it all comes back to the Sun.

You might call this film man-made global warming anti-propaganda, which grossly discredits Al Gore’s (the world’s leading scientist, inventor of the Internet, and self-proclaimed savior of the world) film, An Inconvenient Truth, which makes the claim that the Earth’s climate is changing on the basis that man’s industrialization has lead to higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.

In this documentary, scientific data shows that rises in CO2 are a result of climate change, not the other way around (CO2 causes climate change). In other words, the Sun warms and cools the planet, and the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are a result of this change, in reaction to the ocean’s and the atmosphere’s temperatures –heated by the Sun of course.

The documentary features Richard Lizden, a renowned and credible scientist, one of the world’s foremost experts on Meteorology, and man-made global warming skeptic, as well as many other respected scientists in the field.

This is one of the most intelligent arguments that I have seen thus far. All of it makes sense, and is supported by scientific evidence. Much of the hysteria created by the hoax known as man-made global warming has such a lack of real scientific evidence that it is laughable.

The extent of the sheer absurdity and hysteria that people like Al Gore (the world’s leading scientist, inventor of the Internet, and self-proclaimed savior of the world) have created has reached to the outer edges of the extreme. And to sustain itself [the hysteria] has must go further and further to the extreme to remain of vital interest. Money and politics are at the center of this scam and it is a story which the mainstream press gobbles up like a Thanksgiving feast, because everyone knows that doom and gloom sells, especially to those without the capacity to question it.

What the environmentalist extremists do not want you to know, is that there is real scientific data which disproves their theory. There is also evidence that there is a true political agenda behind this; one which is sponsored by those who see communism as a good idea.

This is an excellent and thought provoking documentary which gives great support in disproving the [un]scientific theory of man-made global warming/cooling/climate change/pick your buzzword.

Hot Air:House Republicans introduce bill to protect passengers from flying imams’ lawsuit

Hot Air » Blog Archive » House Republicans introduce bill to protect passengers from flying imams’ lawsuit

Did anyone not see this coming? This is why I never understood the hand-wringing about CAIR allegedly trying to exploit the flying imams to help Democrats get their anti-profiling bill passed. If anything, it’s the GOP that’s going to use the imams and their quirky little air-travel habits to get the bill killed. The latest shinola about suing the passengers for reporting suspicious activity is just hot fudge on the sundae.

House Republicans are pushing legislation to protect airline passengers from lawsuits for reporting suspicious behavior that might be linked to a terrorist attack.

[New Mexico Rep. Stevan] Pearce has 10 Republican co-sponsors for his bill, including: Rob Bishop of Utah, Dan Burton of Indiana, Geoff Davis of Kentucky, Trent Franks of Arizona, John Kline of Minnesota, Thaddeus G. McCotter of Michigan, Howard McKeon of California, Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania, Lynn A. Westmoreland of Georgia and Frank R. Wolf of Virginia…

A public interest law firm that fights against religious discrimination publicly condemned the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) yesterday for supporting a case it calls “legal terrorism” and said it will file a brief with the court on behalf of the passengers.

“This is a first for us,” Kevin Hasson, president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, wrote in a letter to Nihad Awad, president of CAIR. “We have never opposed someone else’s claim for religious discrimination.

Hasson (who served in the DOJ under Reagan) has put the PDF of his letter online. Your quote of the day: “In short, we know religious liberty. Religious liberty is a client of ours. And this claim is not about religious liberty.” If you support profiling and are the praying sort, pray that CAIR and the imams ignore him and pursue the suit anyway. They very well might — CAIR is always looking to maximize its victimization, and a conservative firestorm over the suit would be even better for them in that regard than suing and winning on the discrimination claim.

Incidentally, Powerline had the scoop about Pearce’s bill yesterday, a day before WashTimes had it. Audrey Hudson, the Times’s reporter on this beat, also credited Powerline by name for information in her last article about it. Funny to see a blog feeding a fairly major paper on a story.

Mel Goes Ballistic — Tells professor to “F@ck Off!”

Mel Goes Ballistic — “Lady, F**k Off!” – TMZ.com

TMZ has learned Mel Gibson exploded in anger last night on a college campus after an expert on Mayan culture accussed him of racially stereotyping the Mayans in the movie “Apocalypto.”

It happened last night at Cal State University at Northridge in the San Fernando Valley. Gibson was speaking to a film class about his movies, and several members of the Mayan community came to hear the famous director.

After Gibson’s presentation, the crowd was allowed to ask questions. Alicia Estrada, an Assistant Professor of Central American Studies at CSUN, challenged Gibson, asking him if he had read about the Mayan culture before shooting the controversial film. Gibson said he had.

Estrada persisted, stating that representations in the movie that the Mayans engaged in sacrificial ceremonies and had bloodthirsty tendencies were both wrong and racist. Estrada and others tell TMZ that Gibson exploded in anger, responding, “Lady, F**k off.”

We’re told Gibson also became extremely angry when members of the Mayan community protested on how they were portrayed in the film. The emotional Mayan members were escorted out of the room, and we’re told Gibson screamed a parting shot — “Make your own movie!”

UPDATE: Gibson’s publicist, Alan Nierob, told TMZ, “This person was a heckler who was rude and disrupted the event, so much so that the event organizers had to escort her out.” For the record, Nierob, not Howard Rubenstein, reps Gibson.

A Great Presidential Speech.

I got this from another forum. 

Great email I received. I’m voting for this guy!

WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT TO TURN ON THE TV AND HEAR ANY U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN GIVE THE FOLLOWING SPEECH?

My Fellow Americans: As you all know, the defeat of Iraq regime has been completed.

Since congress does not want to spend any more money on this war, our mission in Iraq is complete.

This morning I gave the order for a complete removal of all American forces from Iraq This action will be complete within 30 days. It is now time to begin the reckoning.

Before me, I have two lists. One list contains the names of countries which have stood by our side during the Iraq conflict. This list is short. The United Kingdom , Spain , Bulgaria , Australia , and Poland are some of the countries listed there.

The other list contains everyone not on the first list. Most of the world’s nations are on that list. My press secretary will be distributing copies of both lists later this evening.

Let me start by saying that effective immediately, foreign aid to those nations on List 2 ceases immediately and indefinitely. The money saved during the first year alone will pretty much pay for the costs of the Iraqi war.

The American people are no longer going to pour money into third world Hellholes and watch those government leaders grow fat on corruption.

Need help with a famine? Wrestling with an epidemic? Call France

In the future, together with Congress, I will work to redirect this money toward solving the vexing social problems we still have at home. On that note, a word to terrorist organizations. Screw with us and we will hunt you down and eliminate you and all your friends from the face of the earth.

Thirsting for a gutsy country to terrorize? Try France , or maybe China

I am ordering the immediate severing of diplomatic relations with France , Germany , China and Russia Thanks for all your help, comrades. We are retiring from NATO as well. Bon chance, mi amis.

I have instructed the Mayor of New York City to begin towing the many UN diplomatic vehicles located in Manhattan with more than two unpaid parking tickets to sites where those vehicles will be stripped, shredded and crushed I don’t care about whatever treaty pertains to this. You creeps have tens of thousands of unpaid tickets. Pay those tickets tomorrow or watch your precious Benzes, Beamers and limos be turned over to some of the finest chop shops in the world. I love New York

A special note to our neighbors. Canada is on List 2. Since we are likely to be seeing a lot more of each other, you folks might want to try not pissing us off for a change.

Mexico is also on List 2. President Fox and his entire corrupt government really need an attitude adjustment. I will have a couple extra tank and infantry divisions sitting around. Guess where I am going to put em? Yep, border security.

Oh, by the way, the United States is abrogating the NAFTA treaty – starting now.

We are tired of the one-way highway. Immediately, we’ll be drilling for oil in Alaska – which will take care of this country’s oil needs for decades to come. If you’re an environmentalist who opposes this decision, I refer you to List 2 above: pick a country and move there. They care.

It is time for America to focus on its own welfare and its own citizens. Some will accuse us of isolationism. I answer them by saying, “darn tootin.”

Nearly a century of trying to help folks live a decent life around the world has only earned us the undying enmity of just about everyone on the planet. It is time to eliminate hunger in America It is time to eliminate homelessness in America . To the nations on List 1, a final thought. Thank you guys. We owe you and we won’t forget.

To the nations on List 2, a final thought: You might want to learn to speak Arabic.

God bless America Thank you and good night.

If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you are reading it in English, thank a soldier.

Barack Obama, the ‘Magic Negro’.- LA Times

The Illinois senator lends himself to white America’s idealized, less-than-real black man.

By David Ehrenstein, L.A.-based DAVID EHRENSTEIN writes about Hollywood and politics.
March 19, 2007

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.”

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?

And what does the white man get out of the bargain? That’s a question asked by John Guare in “Six Degrees of Separation,” his brilliant retelling of the true saga of David Hampton — a young, personable gay con man who in the 1980s passed himself off as the son of none other than the real Sidney Poitier. Though he started small, using the ruse to get into Studio 54, Hampton discovered that countless gullible, well-heeled New Yorkers, vulnerable to the Magic Negro myth, were only too eager to believe in his baroque fantasy. (One of the few who wasn’t fooled was Andy Warhol, who was astonished his underlings believed Hampton’s whoppers. Clearly Warhol had no need for the accouterment of interracial “goodwill.”)

But the same can’t be said of most white Americans, whose desire for a noble, healing Negro hasn’t faded. That’s where Obama comes in: as Poitier’s “real” fake son.

The senator’s famously stem-winding stump speeches have been drawing huge crowds to hear him talk of uniting rather than dividing. A praiseworthy goal. Consequently, even the mild criticisms thrown his way have been waved away, “magically.” He used to smoke, but now he doesn’t; he racked up a bunch of delinquent parking tickets, but he paid them all back with an apology. And hey, is looking good in a bathing suit a bad thing?

The only mud that momentarily stuck was criticism (white and black alike) concerning Obama’s alleged “inauthenticty,” as compared to such sterling examples of “genuine” blackness as Al Sharpton and Snoop Dogg. Speaking as an African American whose last name has led to his racial “credentials” being challenged — often several times a day — I know how pesky this sort of thing can be.

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.