Why is half-black black?

Rush Limbaugh got it exactly right today. He said that every news story about Barak Obama's finally nailing down the Democratic nomination started off the same way--"the first black presidential nominee," "the first African-American nominee for president," "the first presidential nominee who is black," etc. The fact that Obama is black apparently just blows the socks off all those reporters. They are thrilled right down to their Fruit of the Looms.

And that brings up another point. Obama is only half black (and was raised in a white environment by white grandparents) yet the mainstream media universally refers to him as black. I wonder how little black blood Obama would have to have before they quit calling him the first black presidential nominee. What if his father was half white and half black and his mother was all white? That would make Obama only one quarter black. Would the mainstream media still refer to him as the first black candidate? Suppose he were only 1/8 black or 1/16 black?

I have heard people try to explain why the media calls Obama black when he's clearly only half black. They say it's the old one drop of blood rule. But that is a rule from the 19th-century. Are today's reporters, most of whom are liberal, saying they consider themselves bound by a racist rule 150 years old?

Probably one reason reporters consider Obama black is that he really is no more dark than a lot of other Americans who consider themselves black which is another way of saying that most blacks in America have a lot of white blood. I guess in America we are used to thinking of racially mixed people as black because they consider themselves black. But that is a silly rule. What if somebody who is 100% white goes around pretending to be black? Would people act as if he really were black? Is that all it takes to be black in this country--just to claim that you are? Or what about former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who famously (and falsely) claimed he was part Indian. Are we bound to accept his delusions?

Barak Obama is a mixed-race cnadidate but the mainstream media would rather dfie than call him that. (One exception. Ron Brownstein, an LA Times columnist, just called him a "mixed-race" candidate. Good for him.)