5-10-07, 9:29 am

Death threats prompt early watch from US intelligence & protection agency. A lot of people thought my odds of being elected President was a trillion to one, that wasn't the odds I was worried about. The odds I was worried about-had I got elected-was getting from Chicago to the White House, because once I got there you'd never see me no more. -Dick Gregory- from back in the early '70's.
You know you've arrived as a presidential candidate when the US Secret Service is offering their services. They're purpose in this regard is to make sure someone else doesn't arrive; your killer. Maybe all this talk from right wing nutcase Rush Limbaugh about IL Senator Barack Obama being a 'Magic Negro,' i.e. a harmless non-threatening Black man with universal appeal or appease, was making some White Americans universally nervous, or maybe just the very fact that the astonishing success he is having in the primary race is prompting some would-be assassins to make plans to go '24' on him. At any rate he doesn't look so 'Magic' anymore does he? But this really isn't '24,' the Secret Service is its own reality show called 24/7 and that's what Obama needs.

Of course manifesting fear of a Black president is nothing new. Back in '88 I recall one hard street brother I knew saying he didn't want Jesse Jackson to run and he wouldn't vote for him because he thought Jackson would get shot. This latest talk of Obama becoming a target of someone first officially came from-not surprisingly-a conservative talk radio host back in mid- January and written by the editor of a Greensboro NC web-journal named Beth: 'Not more than the day after Martin Luther King Day, the white (I assume) Disc Jockey from conservative NC is insinuating that Barack Obama would be assassinated if he was to take office… and we all know half of America is dumb as bricks but, to think in 2007 a presidential candidate has to worry about his life simply based on his race is proof we are less like we think we are and more like that which we don't want to be.' To Beth the host seemed to advocate an assassination, according to her one of the callers stated: 'we might be ready for a woman… but not a Black male.'

The Rev. Jesse Jackson told CNN.com that his '84 and '88 runs were among the best times he had in his life but 'we received the most threats of any candidate ever.' Understand that Jesse was very much hated by many in White America; this was years before the Rev. Al Sharpton arrived and redirected some of that hate towards himself. Michael Chertoff of the Dept. of Homeland Security approved of the Secret Service (USSS) after a meeting with a congressional committee. Congress has been requesting USSS protection for US Presidents since the assassination of William McKinley back in 1901. So much for Limbaugh's twisting LA Times David Ehrenstein's 'Magic Negro' column about the harmless Black with no past, who shows up one day to help the white protagonist, or Gary Younge's 10/06 piece calling Obama 'a Black man who does not scare white people.' It seems those on the fringe are being roused; the white protagonists want him dead.

--Chris Stevenson is a columnist for the Buffalo Criterion , Contact him at

| | |