Rush Limbaugh is The Magic Right-Wing Cracker

I know this one has been out there a while. This is Rush Limbaugh with the Barack Obama spoof "Barack The Magic Negro".

Here's a clip:


Limbaugh carefully precedes the multiple airings of the song with an explanation why he's using the term "magic negro", which was supposed to justify creating the song. He cited the Los Angeles Times columnist David Ehrenstein: "But it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the 'Magic Negro."

Read his article here. It's pretty weak, in my opinion. Sounds like he's getting bored of writing movie reviews and wants to get in political editorials. Anyway have a look.

Ehrenstein is African-American, while Limbaugh is as white as a sheet of fax paper. That gives him slightly more of a right to use a term like "negro". Also, Ehrenstein's premise that a white person voting for Obama is in fact a way to "assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history." Then he goes into a history of the "magic negro" in popular films. He concludes with "Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him."

Huh? Is he any more a mythic transformation of Rudy Giuliani from semi-unpopular NYC mayor to post-911 superleader? He was knighted by the Queen! I'd call that mythic.

Dude, I'm white, and I feel no guilt about slavery, besides thinking it was wrong and I'm glad it was ended. I am, however, looking for someone to vote for that isn't full of shit -- so far Obama is full of less shit that most -- so he's a potential person to vote for. That's as far as my thinking goes. I never even SAW Driving Miss Daisy.

The issue here is Rush Limbaugh frothing at the mouth because he was able to quote a column as an excuse to get away with saying "negro" on the air, and slamming Obama was just a nice added benefit. It may be argued he was trying to make some kind of point about race relations or Al Sharpton being jealous of Obama, etc. Let's just call it like it is.

Rush Limbaugh just couldn't pass up the chance of calling Obama a negro on national radio.