Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times published a highly offensive, overly simplistic piece about Barack Obama. Titled “Obama, the Magical Negro”, it makes no difference that the author, David Ehrenstein, is African American. Ehrenstein doesn’t get it. The term ‘magic Negro’ was coined in the 1950’s to describe a particular kind of black presence in film and literature.  The ‘magic Negro’, or what Spike Lee calls the ‘super duper magical Negro’, sometimes has special powers that serve to enlighten or make better their white counterparts. At the end of the story, …