Stunning Ignorance on Display
in "Barack the 'Magic Negro'" Flap
(from Rush Limbaugh's website—@libertyrant)
January 5, 2009
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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Rob in Nashville as we head back to the phones. Rob, thank you for calling. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Dittos, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Just fine, sir.
CALLER: Rush, I've been dying for you to get back on the air to hear what you have to say about the "Barack the 'Magic Negro'" brouhaha. I was listening when you conceived of that idea and listening the next day when Paul Shanklin came out with his brilliant song, and I'm livid about the way this has been used by Republicans to hurt other Republicans. It's using political correctness and ignorance, and it's being used in my opinion by the wizards of smart who picked John McCain as our standard-bearer and who want to stay in control of the Republican Party.
RUSH: Well, you know, you're describing Republican Party distraction. You're a little late on that. The Republican Party destructed a number of years ago. "Barack the 'Magic Negro'" had nothing to do with the Republican Party's destruction. But I'm running short of time here to address all of your concerns. All I can tell you is that I watched all this go by, and the thing that you have to understand is that everybody in the Drive-By Media commenting on this knew they were lying about it. They knew the truth, they knew the origins, they knew that this was aired in 2007, they knew that when Obama was asked about it, he laughed and said, (paraphrasing) "Hey, Rush does what he does, no big deal," we've got the audio of that. What was amazing was to find out how many people that I think are informed, just on daily events, that are literally ignorant, particularly in our party, on our side of the aisle. It was comical, almost, to watch the way this went down, except to note how many stupid people there are on our side of the aisle who had no idea what this was about.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right. "Barack the 'Magic Negro'" first aired in 2007. Let me tell you what the controversy last week taught me. It taught me that being right is irrelevant to winning elections. It taught me that winning arguments is irrelevant to winning elections. It taught me how apparently, sadly, dangerously uninformed people in the Drive-By Media (and several Republicans on our side of the aisle) are. It was breathtaking, it was amazing to watch this unfold. It's something that had happened in the spring of 2007. I'll tell you something else, just to illustrate. I made the comment in the previous hour that all of the Drive-Bys last week that were raising holy hell about this... Actually, I need to amend something. They know exactly what this is about. They know where it came from.
They know what inspired it. That didn't matter. This is what I mean: Truth doesn't matter in politics. Winning arguments, being right doesn't matter in politics, not today, not to this moment. It has in the past; it may in the future. But right now, it doesn't. During the "heighth" of the crisis -- not the crisis. During the heighth of the original airing of "Barack the 'Magic Negro'" there was not nearly the controversy that there was last week. In fact, the greatest controversy I had with "Barack the 'Magic Negro'" was at one of my radio stations, one of our affiliates, one of the top-ten markets. An African-American employee threatened to quit, and the general manager of the station called me and said, "You gotta stop playing this." And I said, "What? Do you have any idea what this is about?"
So I, on three different occasions, started at point A and went to point Z explaining all this. I did it two or three different times, all during 2007. Now, it tells me that a lot of people on our side didn't hear it, are not smart enough to understand it. But what was "Barack the 'Magic Negro'"? Well, let's start at the beginning. I, El Rushbo, am sitting here minding my own business one day, when all of a sudden... In fact, let's start at the very beginning of this. The very beginning of this goes back to 1984 when Jesse Jackson is the first black Democrat to have a chance at winning the Democrat Party presidential nomination. He has a lot of support from a lot of liberals, but, of course, he doesn't get there. In succeeding years, the Reverend Jackson is joined in his quest by the Reverend Sharpton.
Both the Reverend Sharpton and the Reverend Jackson ran campaigns of grievance. They were owed. They had been mistreated. African-Americans had been mistreated for their lives, their entire lives, throughout this nation's history. They ran campaigns of grievance. Campaigns of grievance don't get you anywhere except they do pad your fundraising. We ran a parody during one of these periods of Reverend Sharpton saying, "Mama Told Me Not to Run," a takeoff on Three Dog Night's "Mama Told Me Not to Come" or told me not to go, whatever. And one of the lines in the song is, from Sharpton, "As soon as I get my matching funds, I'm out the door," which is what the campaign was about, plus being able to stay in nice hotel rooms without paying full price.
So after all this, after all these experiences, Barack Obama says, "You know, I want to be president," and out of the blue, Joe Biden says... Now, this is where this gets critical. This is where this gets crucial. And I refuse to believe I'm the only one that knows this, but maybe I am the most informed person in media. Maybe I am the only person in media who learns things that are reverent and salient as events unfold after events occur. Joe Biden, the Chia Pet, upon learning that Obama is going to run for president, announces that it's great that "finally we have a clean and articulate black man running for president on Democrat side." Now, the Democrats don't think anything of this because of course Biden is a Democrat and the Democrats are incapable of putting their feet in their mouths.
When they do, it's, "Oh, that's just Joe! He didn't mean anything by it." Well, to me, that's big news. When a Democrat says of Jesse Jackson -- he was talking about Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, not Obama. When he says that Jackson and Sharpton are not clean and not articulate, that to me is news. And it was news to Sharpton, who was not thrilled about it. Sharpton takes showers! He thinks he's clean. He thinks that he can speak okay. He thinks he's articulate. He also, when we parody Sharpton, don't forget, what's his image? Leading protest marches with a bullhorn. So every time we use Sharpton, it's through a bullhorn. The Drive-Bys last week portrayed us as having altered his voice to make it sound racially whatever.
No. It's a great Al Sharpton impersonation through a bullhorn. So then Obama gets close to getting the nomination and Sharpton is still not happy -- and all of this is on my website! Anybody who cared could have gone at any time and looked at this. There were a couple newspaper stories, one I think out of Chicago, that Sharpton was miffed and wasn't going to endorse Obama because he felt like the Democrats were sort of ignoring him and screwing him. "Who is this guy? He doesn't have any experience. He hasn't been down for the struggle. He doesn't know what the civil rights movement's all about." Sharpton was saying all of these things. That led us to run parodies of Sharpton standing outside Obama's headquarters demanding Obama come out, and Sharpton started telling a bunch of fat mama jokes about Obama. "Obama, your mother is so fat, when she cuts, she bleeds gravy," things like this.
Nobody said a word. The stuff is hilarious. It is stuff, in my mind, that is cutting edge. Then the LA Times runs a piece by a black liberal called "Obama the 'Magic Negro,'" and this piece, in addition to using that term, asks the question whether or not Obama is authentic enough; meaning, does he come from the civil rights struggle? Is he down with the struggle? And it wasn't just David Ehrenstein at the LA Times. There were countless columns written by leftist journalists questioning the authenticity, as a black man, of Barack Obama. I'm watching the racism in this country take root right in the Democrat Party during their primaries. So out of all this came "Barack the 'Magic Negro.'" We were sitting here, I was sitting here on the program one day basically writing the lyrics to the tune of Puff the Magic Dragon.
"Barack the Magic Negro lives in DC; The LA Times, they called him that, 'cause he's not authentic like me," Sharpton singing this stuff. I mean the dirty little secret here is that "Barack the 'Magic Negro'" is a parody of Al Sharpton. Obama's incidental. Obama's incidental in it. It is making fun of Al Sharpton and his pique over the fact that the Democrat Party's basically thrown him under the bus and is adopting this "clean and articulate" black guy. You know, we illustrate the absurd by being absurd here, and regular listeners know this. Not only was this funny -- and if I may say so myself, it was brilliant. However, as is the case with many elements on this program, if you just tune in one day and hear "Barack the 'Magic Negro'" and have not heard all of the news that led into the creation of this parody, then I admit you might be a little stunned and shocked by it.
How many times, however, over the course of 20 years has this happened where Drive-By listeners hear something, take it out of context, raise holy hell, only later to be embarrassed when they find out what the roots are? This is why we wrote the song specifically as it's written. If you listen to the lyrics of "Barack the 'Magic Negro'" it is clear who is being made fun of and it is clear the origins of this as in when Sharpton says, "They say Barack's articulate." It's all there. As I say, if I can pat myself on the back here, to me it was a funny and brilliant assemblage and parody of news events that the Drive-By Media fully ignored. Folks, there were times during that Democrat campaign where Southern Christian Leadership Conference people in Atlanta said, "Hey, just because Barack may get elected doesn't mean that the race business or the race wars in this country are over, because he doesn't have slave blood.
"Michelle has slave blood, but he doesn't." I see this, and I ask, "Does nobody else see this? Does nobody else see this stuff?" The Drive-Bys report this stuff. So to close the loop here, this whole thing breaks out last week, and I was waiting. I was waiting to hear from my trusted chief of staff, H.R. I was expecting to get voluminous requests to appear for comment and a quote by the Drive-By Media, and there wasn't one. Now, I've been on vacation where things have happened and they've sought me out in hotels. They have had H.R. try to find me at any corner of the planet, but in this one, nobody sought me out. Well, this tells me something. They didn't care what I had to say about it because they knew. They knew that what they were doing with this and the way they were reporting this last week was a total scam.
They took the occasion of what actually was the inappropriate use of elements of this program, (but that's another story). They took the occasion of somebody running for the RNC chairmanship sending out a CD that had this song on it to revive it anew, and frame it and cast it as they wanted it cast. The last person they wanted commenting on it was me because I'm the one who could have set it straight. Newt Gingrich couldn't set it straight because Newt Gingrich was clueless about what this was all about. Instead, Newt Gingrich sends a note to the Drive-By Media saying, "This is wholly inappropriate. I can't believe it! This is not how we reach out." This was not reach-out, and this show is not the Republican Party, and this show has never been the Republican Party.
This show does not exist for the Republican Party. It does not exist to empower the Republican Party. This program is a business. It is in the broadcast business. It has its own requirements and ingredients for success in the broadcast business -- and those ingredients do not include the election of incompetent, foolish Republicans, nor do those ingredients include the defeat of Democrats. That is not what this show is about, and it never has been. And I have written about that in my books. "My success is not determined by who wins elections." But had the people on our side, who decided to jump off the cliff and try to please the Drive-Bys by castigating this, just taken a moment to figure, "Okay, what's this really all about?" and then put it in some sort of context (which would not be hard) they could have diffused this the first day. Instead, Snerdley took an international vacation. Is it okay if I tell 'em where you went?
Snerdley went to the Philippines, and said the only media they get over there is the BBC and CNN and all week long he's on vacation, all week he's watching "Barack the 'Magic Negro'" from Manila on CNN and the BBC. Of course, he's watching and he's chuckling. He can't believe it. "My gosh, even though we're on vacation, we lead the news." So the truth of "Barack the 'Magic Negro'" in this incident last week didn't matter. Winning an argument over "Barack the 'Magic Negro'" would not have mattered last week because this was about something totally different. It was not about "Barack the 'Magic Negro.'" It was about the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party once again being able to promote the myth that racism exists only on the Republican side of the aisle, when in fact all of the racism in the 2008 presidential campaign was found on the Democrat side of the aisle, and we laughed at it.
We parodied it with "Barack the 'Magic Negro.'" It also illustrated that there was this bit of analysis from some Republicans saying, "Well, this is not the way to reach out to minorities. This is harmful." This is 2007! Look, you Republicans better understand something. You had the candidate you wanted. You had the moderate who was gonna go out and get the Hispanics. You had the candidate who was gonna go get minorities. You had a moderate who was going to say, "The Republican Party is not what it's always been," and look what happened. You tanked, and the Republican Party tanked because it's afraid to use the blueprint for landslide success, which is called Reaganism -- and Reaganism is simply freedom. Reaganism is conservatism.
Reaganism is not beating the Soviets. Reaganism is not just tax cuts. Reaganism is about individual liberty. That's what conservatism is. Conservatism is devotion to the founding of this country, the entrustment of the individual, working among other individuals to make this the greatest country on earth based on freedom, ambition, capability, and desire. It has nothing to do with specifics on issues. Reaganism, conservatism doesn't need to be "redefined." It doesn't need to be rebranded. It needs to be used, and the Republican Party refuses to use it! There's a simple way to reach any American. There is a simple way to reach minorities, Hispanics, women, gays, straights. There is a simple way to do it. You look at 'em as human beings. You don't look at them as victims like the Democrats do. You don't look at them as people of color or gender or orientation.
You look at them as Americans and you campaign on the basis that this is what you are going to have to do to make this and keep this the greatest country on earth. You campaign on the notion that your prosperity and the country's prosperity are intertwined. You campaign on the notion that our objective is to make life more prosperous, safer, and healthier for everybody. Not that we want government to do more for everybody and contribute more and more to this notion that more and more Americans are victims and incompetent, incapable of doing for themselves. We don't want to live on this class envy business. At any rate, that opportunity was squandered during the 2008 presidential campaign, squandered in the 2006 midterms, squandered during the "Barack the 'Magic Negro'" controversy, all because our side remains petrified of itself.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By popular demand, people have been requesting it since last week. If you're hearing it for the first time, listen to the lyrics. It's all there.
(playing of "Barack the 'Magic Negro'")
SHARPTON IMPRESSIONIST PAUL SHANKLIN: Barack the Magic Negro lives in D.C. The L.A. Times, they called him that ‘Cause he’s not authentic like me.
Stop the tape. Stop the song. Barack Obama, "not authentic like me," Al Sharpton miffed that Joe Biden called him "articulate" and "clean." Sharpton takes showers. The Democrat Party shifting and just shuffling Jesse Jackson and Sharpton aside for this new guy who hasn't done diddly-squat, hasn't been down for the struggle. By the way, this is Al Sharpton through the protest bullhorn, which is how we came to know him. (continued playing of song)
SHANKLIN: Yeah, the guy from the LA paper Said he makes guilty whites feel good They’ll vote for him, and not for me ‘Cause he’s not from the hood.
RUSH: Stop the tape. "A guy from the LA paper said whites will vote for him 'cause he makes them feel good." "Magic Negro," David Ehrenstein, black columnist, Los Angeles Times. (continued playing of song)
SHANKLIN: See, real black men, like Snoop Dogg, Or me, or Farrakhan Have talked the talk, and walked the walk. Not come in late and won!
Refrain: Oh, Barack the Magic Negro, lives in DC The LA Times, they called him that ‘Cause he’s black, but not authentically.
(repeat Refrain)
RUSH: Stop the tape. How many times does this song have to say it? The LA Times, they called him that 'cause he's not black authentically like me, which is the whole point of the Democrat campaign during 2007, even the little bit into 2008. "Who is this? He's not authentic; he's not down for the struggle." We're making fun of Democrats. We're making fun of Al Sharpton, and we didn't invent the term "Magic Negro." Here's more.
SHANKLIN: Some say Barack’s "articulate"
RUSH: Joe Biden reference.
SHANKLIN: And bright and new and "clean" The media sure loves this guy, A white interloper’s dream!
But when you vote for president, Watch out, and don’t be fooled! Don’t vote the Magic Negro in
RUSH: Stop the tape. At this point Al Sharpton is so frustrated that he can't continue the lyric line. He resorts to protesting. He's so upset by the whole notion of what's happened here that he starts protesting, and he starts worrying, all the sacrifice that he's made, all the time that he's spent is worth nothing now 'cause the Democrat Party's investing totally in this clean, articulate guy that nobody's ever heard of, and he's mad, he can't handle it, so he reverts to that which he knows best, protesting. He totally abandons the lyric line while the chorus continues to sing the song.
(music stops, Sharpton rants, music returns and background vocalists repeat refrain and finish song)