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Opinion: Limbaugh realizes Obama is black, warns nation

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Right-wing blowhard Rush Limbaugh has been having a ball throwing the N-word at presidential candidate Barak Obama—that’s N as in ‘Negro.’ Limbaugh, who calls Obama ‘Halfrican American,’ has been airing a song by Paul Shanklin* on his radio show called ‘Barak the Magic Negro,’ which is to be sung to the tune of ‘Puff the Magic Dragon.’

The shock jock legitimizes his use of the phrase ‘magic negro’ by noting he plucked it came from an Op-Ed by commentator David Ehrenstein that ran in the L.A. Times. Ehrenstein wrote, in a nuanced argument, that Obama fulfills the classic Hollywood role of a ‘noble, healing Negro’ who assuages white guilt over slavery and segregation....

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‘while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest. As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic—embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that’s not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is ‘Magic.’

Demonstrating the principle that there’s no aesthetic woolgathering so rarefied it can’t be turned into a raspberry, Limbaugh uses the phrase mainly to emphasize that, in case you didn’t notice, Obama is black. Oh, and Al Sharpton is black too. The song actually mocks Sharpton more than Obama, having the phony Sharpton sing that he has more street credibility and is therefore is more authentically black than the senator.

Actually, all questions about Obama’s blackness should have been laid to rest last week when he was given secret service protection—the earliest ever for a presidential candidate—amid concerns raised by racist chatter on white supremacist Web sites.

Oh, and Obama simply calls the song ‘dumb.’

* Thanks to reader Eric for the correction.

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