In 1996, a young Barack and Michelle Obama were interviewed as part of a project on couples in America. They had their picture taken on the sofa, said lovely things about each other, and generally gave off the same smart-people-in-love vibe that we get from them today.

This is just the latest effort to humanize the new President, remind everyone that he’s just a normal person like us, and hopefully dispel any lingering rumors of a hidden radical agenda. Like all the previous efforts, it will mostly fail, not because he actually is a secret radical, but because his detractors are too committed to hating him. A handful of people will say, “Well, I guess he’s not so bad after all,” but many more will see this as another PR stunt, possibly planted by agents of the Obama Conspiracy.

So. If a few cute photographs won’t sway the die-hard haters, why does the media keep putting them out there? My first instinct was to assume they were acting out of white liberal guilt, but that seemed too obvious. No, they’re trying to bring about a phenomenon that I’ll call the Huxtable Paradox*.

I takes its name from the family featured on the Cosby Show, which many critics regard as the series that truly humanized African-Americans in the mind of the average viewer. The question is, why this show? Since the 1970s, there had been plenty of shows whose casts were mostly (and in some cases, entirely) African-American, but they aren’t treated as revolutionary. It’s not as if they were too “edgy” for the average viewer; if Richard Pryor could sell as many albums as he did, then white America could handle George Jefferson’s insults.

The simple answer, and the foundation of the Paradox (which I swear I’m getting back to) is that Cliff Huxtable was a doctor married to a lawyer, while Fred Sanford ran a junkyard with his idiot son. The Huxtables weren’t just an atypical African-American family; they were an atypical American family, period. Disregarding race for a moment, how many affluent medical/legal power couples do you know? And how many of them have time to be the World’s Greatest Parents for five kids?

Exactly!

And therein lies the Huxtable Paradox: in order to be accepted as real human beings, minorities must often transcend mere humanity and demonstrate superhuman talent. Probably the same deal for women, too, and if Hillary Clinton had won the primaries, I’d be writing that post right now.

We’re witnessing this phenomenon play out in much of Obama’s press coverage. As much as George W. Bush relied on his regular-guy image in 2000, I don’t recall hearing much about George W. Bush, the regular guy. He’d had his “youthful indiscretions,” and he cleared a hell of a lot of brush after he got elected, but I’ve never seen his baby pictures. I’ve seen tons of Obama’s baby pictures (seriously, scroll down to the one where he’s dressed as a pirate — so cute!). I’m sure pictures of Baby Dubya exist, but they were never considered newsworthy.

Barack and Michelle Obama are moving into the White House in less than a week, and one could argue that they’ve bested Cliff and Clair Huxtable in terms of superhuman feats. To a certain portion of the population, the Obamas will always remain too “unknown,” too “distant,” and too “foreign.” For many others, though, seeing Obama as President has finally allowed them to admit that yes, they would probably enjoy hanging out with that guy.

And who knows? Maybe, on some glorious day in the future, Americans will also be capable of being friendly and open-minded to non-Presidents.

*Distinct from the Huxtable Effect, which claims that the Cosby Show laid the groundwork for America’s acceptance of Obama.