President Obama on screen

An unusual collaboration between The New York Times' two first-string film critics, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott, produced an insightful and timely essay on Friday about the development of male African-American personae on the big and small screens over the past fifty years: "Barack Obama's victory in November demonstrated, to the surprise of many Americans and much of the world, that we were ready to see a black man as president. Of course, we had seen several black presidents already, not in the real White House but in the virtual America of movies and television." Dargis and Scott connect the dots which link Sidney Poitier, blaxploitation, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Bill Cosby, Morgan Freeman, and Denzel Washington, among others, and point out that Dennis Haybert's president on 24 may have not just suggested Barack Obama was in our near future, but helped make it so.