obama and donovan mcnabb

donovan mcnabb and barack obama have something in common (besides the fact that they are both black, which even bill clinton knows). they have both been pretty good at their jobs, and they both have to deal with people assessing how "black" they are when they do them. but the crazy thing is that their strengths have nothing to do with the "black" archetype in each of their roles.

the philly president of the NAACP tells mcnabb to run more, which is crazy, because the best thing he has ever had was his throwing arm. for people who question his accuracy and decision-making, listen: among the 137 QBs to have thrown at least 75 TDs, he is #3 all time in td/int ratio. that's after tom brady and steve young, and followed by peyton and montana. so maybe he's accurate when healthy. i mean, i should be sending this in to rush limbaugh.*

obama had a similar issue late last year, when he wasn't black enough. which was white punditry's way of saying he doesn't talk about civil rights or sound like a preacher. well, he's not a preacher, and he doesn't sound like the past. and that's why he can win black votes and white votes. and it's why clinton's race attack fails. it's because he's not a guy who projects his race. rather, he projects his vision...like kennedy. and like bill clinton (pre-hillary clinton's campaign). he's just a politician, not a "black" one. (i would argue that he's a really good one too, but that's not the point.)

the point is that both of these guys have plenty in common with other people who were very successful in their fields. and those people were white. why they should be trying to mold their styles around racially defined standards of behavior (which turned out to be less successful) is beyond me. i'm guessing it's beyond them too.

*rush limbaugh once said that the media was "desirous" for mcnabb to succeed because he was black, whereas he actually was no good. rush limbaugh is an idiot. (in fairness, though, he said this in early 2003, before a few of mcnabb's best years. which came after he stopped running so often.) if you want to read someone defend rush, go here: http://www.slate.com/id/2089193/. it's a pretty reasonable defense, for when it was written.