It’s no secret that the media is in love with Barack Obama and handles him with kid gloves, but what’s now funny to watch is, not how they fawn over him (that’s old news), but how they get so riled up when anyone attacks the man.  Two cases in point.  The Root says that people are calling Obama arrogant, which, according to them, is a euphemism for uppity.

“Uppity” used to be the preferred term for Negroes who didn’t know their place. There was a time when it was regularly applied to any number of black men and women who strived to be more than day laborers, nannies or sharecroppers.

The GOP, ever aware of the connotative power of words, has steered clear of the direct usage of that loaded term. When they speak of Barack Obama-a man in pursuit of the most lofty of prizes-they simply use the words that define the term. Snobbish. Arrogant. Presumptuous.

Or, those who call him arrogant could just mean arrogant, as in detached, elitist, different, removed, condescending, like when Obama suggested that folks cling to guns and religion because we’re idiots.  And then there’s this piece that suggests those who call Obama skinny must really mean black.

In the Aug. 1 Wall Street Journal, Amy Chozick asked, “[C]ould Sen. Obama’s skinniness be a liability?” Most Americans, Chozick points out, aren’t skinny.

It’s not the most compelling news story about the campaign, but it’s something to consider.  How would America feel about its first skinny candidate in a long time?  Why do we prefer “healthier” (read: bigger) presidents and political leaders?  A nice anthropological question to consider.  But Timothy Noah of Slate.com takes it further.

The sad fact is that any discussion of Obama’s physical appearance is going to remind white people of the physical characteristic that’s most on their minds. Moreover, [one black journalist] points out, “The black male body has been commodified in this country from its earliest days. People were brought here for their bodies.” Better either to leave the whole topic alone, it seems to me, or to address the question of racial prejudice head-on, as Juan Williams did in an Aug. 4 Wall Street Journal column. In the future, the press would be wise to avoid discussing how ordinary Americans will respond to the size of Obama’s ears, the thickness of Obama’s eyebrows, and so on.

I’m not suggesting it’s healthy to make one’s voting decisions based on the size of his blue jeans and sportcoats, but mere consideration of the matter seems, to the media, to be sacrilege.