Opinion: Of BBFs and ‘Magic Negroes’

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Greg Braxton’s Calendar-section examination of Hollywood’s ‘Black Best Friend’ (BBF) phenomenon was reminiscent not just of the classic Hollywood-stereotypes flick Hollywood Shuffle, or its white-guilt mirror image in Crash the Short Cuts to the Grand Canyon, but also to one of my favorite bits of recent L.A. Times op-edifying: David Ehrenstein’s Obama the ‘Magic Negro.’ Which itself, in another fantastic leap of inversion, was converted into a Rush Limbaugh song to the tune of ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ (‘Barack the Magic Negro,’ don’tcha know).

Ain’t America grand?