Barack the Magic Negro

vince

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Candidate For RNC Chair Sends Out CD With Song Called "Barack, The Magic Negro"

By Eric Kleefeld - December 26, 2008, 12:30PM
If one of the Republican Party's challenges is how to effectively oppose the first black president without coming off as racist, one of the candidates for RNC chair is hardly off to a good start -- he is now distributing a CD that includes a racially-charged song called "Barack, The Magic Negro."
Chip Saltsman, the former campaign manager for Mike Huckabee, has distributed a goodie bag to committee members that includes a CD by Paul Shanklin, a writer of right-wing parody tunes who is often featured on Rush Limbaugh. The "Magic Negro" track, which first gathered controversy in the Spring of 2007, featured Shanklin portraying Al Sharpton as an Amos & Andy stereotype, ridiculing white liberals who support Obama.
Saltsman defended the choice of the Shanklin CD, telling The Hill: "Paul Shanklin is a long-time friend, and I think that RNC members have the good humor and good sense to recognize that his songs for the Rush Limbaugh show are light-hearted political parodies."


"The CD sent to RNC members, first reported by The Hill on Friday, is titled "We Hate the USA" and also includes songs referencing former presidential candidate John Edwards and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, among other targets.
According to The Hill, other song titles, some of which were in bold font, were: "John Edwards' Poverty Tour," "Wright place, wrong pastor," "Love Client #9," "Ivory and Ebony" and "The Star Spanglish Banner.""


I guess you have to be a racist to see the humour here. Or maybe the joke is on the RNC.


RNC chairman candidate defends 'Barack the Magic Negro' song - CNN.com


TPM Election Central | Talking Points Memo | Candidate For RNC Chair Sends Out CD With Song Called "Barack, The Magic Negro"
 
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deleted15807

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I've always said it the Republican Party while not being a 'racist' party however if you are 'racist' they are the party for you.

Paul Krugman of the NY Times predicted it:
... the G.O.P.’s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat.
 
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D_Cyprius Slapwilly

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Whether this actually merits offense or not is worthy of debate, but one thing is for sure. The Republican Party is going to have a really hard time adjusting to the future demographics of this country. Tactically speaking, this was a silly thing to bring back from the dead. It's a distraction from actual policy debate that makes Republicanism look bad without even acknowledging what Republicanism (or conservatism) is, and that is unfortunate for their own cause.
 

D_Martin van Burden

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You know, if you gotta go out, go out in a blaze of glory -- no matter how incredible ignorant or thoughtless. What really disturbs me though is that this bullshit will appeal to the people that are still uncomfortable with the idea that the United States voted for an African-American president. It's the same folks with a penchant for identifying the pro-America / real America crap.
 

Rikter8

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What really disturbs me though is that this bullshit will appeal to the people that are still uncomfortable with the idea that the United States voted for an African-American president.

I thought he was Hawaiian?

Either way, It's curious on how the Republican party can get away with this and go unpunished...and if the democrats did this....they would be strung up on the highest post.

They are such sore loosers it's pathetic.
I honestly believe that if we wouldn't have elected Barack, the U.S. would be more of an outcast than we are right now.
At least now a display of evolution to the rest of the world is present.

The world is anxious of change - Let's hope he doesnt botch it up.
 

B_VinylBoy

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This would have been better written, sung and even received if this was done by Chocolate News, Katt Williams or even Dave Chapelle. If they wanted to have the freedom to say racy, controversial stuff, they should have became comedians and not politicians.

However, this just looks bad. REALLY bad. They should stick to what they know. You know, such as causing recessions and impeaching presidents for blow jobs.
 

uniqueusername

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You morons.

Rush Limbaugh did not use coin the phrase "magic negro." It was a term Spike Lee used to describe black characters that seemed to enter in and solve the problems of the white protagonists, like Chubbs from Happy Gilmore or Morgan Freeman in practically anything. This supposedly helps absolve them of their "white guilt." Rush had Paul Shanklin record the parody after the following article was printed by the left-leaning LA Times:

Obama the 'Magic Negro' - Los Angeles Times

AS EVERY CARBON-BASED life form on this planet surely knows, Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, is running for president. Since making his announcement, there has been no end of commentary about him in all quarters — musing over his charisma and the prospect he offers of being the first African American to be elected to the White House.

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."






The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia Magical negro - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .

He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, 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."


Poitier really poured on the "magic" in "Lilies of the Field" (for which he won a best actor Oscar) and "To Sir, With Love" (which, along with "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," made him a No. 1 box-office attraction). In these films, Poitier triumphs through yeoman service to his white benefactors. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" is particularly striking in this regard, as it posits miscegenation without evoking sex. (Talk about magic!)

The same can't quite be said of Freeman in "Driving Miss Daisy," "Seven" and the seemingly endless series of films in which he plays ersatz paterfamilias to a white woman bedeviled by a serial killer. But at least he survives, unlike Crothers in "The Shining," in which psychic premonitions inspire him to rescue a white family he barely knows and get killed for his trouble. This heart-tug trope is parodied in Gus Van Sant's "Elephant." The film's sole black student at a Columbine-like high school arrives in the midst of a slaughter, helps a girl escape and is immediately gunned down. See what helping the white man gets you?

And what does the white man get out of the bargain? That's a question asked by John Guare in "Six Degrees of Separation," his brilliant retelling of the true saga of David Hampton — a young, personable gay con man who in the 1980s passed himself off as the son of none other than the real Sidney Poitier. Though he started small, using the ruse to get into Studio 54, Hampton discovered that countless gullible, well-heeled New Yorkers, vulnerable to the Magic Negro myth, were only too eager to believe in his baroque fantasy. (One of the few who wasn't fooled was Andy Warhol, who was astonished his underlings believed Hampton's whoppers. Clearly Warhol had no need for the accouterment of interracial "goodwill.")

But the same can't be said of most white Americans, whose desire for a noble, healing Negro hasn't faded. That's where Obama comes in: as Poitier's "real" fake son.

The senator's famously stem-winding stump speeches have been drawing huge crowds to hear him talk of uniting rather than dividing. A praiseworthy goal. Consequently, even the mild criticisms thrown his way have been waved away, "magically." He used to smoke, but now he doesn't; he racked up a bunch of delinquent parking tickets, but he paid them all back with an apology. And hey, is looking good in a bathing suit a bad thing?

The only mud that momentarily stuck was criticism (white and black alike) concerning Obama's alleged "inauthenticty," as compared to such sterling examples of "genuine" blackness as Al Sharpton and Snoop Dogg. Speaking as an African American whose last name has led to his racial "credentials" being challenged — often several times a day — I know how pesky this sort of thing can be.

Obama's fame right now has little to do with his political record or what he's written in his two (count 'em) books, or even what he's actually said in those stem-winders. It's the way he's said it that counts the most. It's his manner, which, as presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Biden ham-fistedly reminded us, is "articulate." His tone is always genial, his voice warm and unthreatening, and he hasn't called his opponents names (despite being baited by the media).

Like a comic-book superhero, 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.

If you had actually LISTENED TO THE SONG (and it is obvious none of you have), you would know that it is not critical of the President Elect at all. It makes fun of people like Al Sharpton and Jesse "cut his nuts off" Jackson, who don't believe Obama is "authentic" enough to call himself a black person.

All this is is an innocent parody of racist bigots.
 

B_VinylBoy

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You morons.

Rush Limbaugh did not use coin the phrase "magic negro." It was a term Spike Lee used to describe black characters that seemed to enter in and solve the problems of the white protagonists, like Chubbs from Happy Gilmore or Morgan Freeman in practically anything. This supposedly helps absolve them of their "white guilt." Rush had Paul Shanklin record the parody after the following article was printed by the left-leaning LA Times:

If you had actually LISTENED TO THE SONG (and it is obvious none of you have), you would know that it is not critical of the President Elect at all. It makes fun of people like Al Sharpton and Jesse "cut his nuts off" Jackson, who don't believe Obama is "authentic" enough to call himself a black person.

All this is is an innocent parody of racist bigots.

What makes you think that nobody listened to the song?
To be honest, I'm not offended by the song at all. It takes a LOT more than that to offend me. But everything about this is in bad taste. Considering all of the questionable statements and controversial comments around Rush in regards to black people over the years, the LAST person who should be thinking about trying to make a parody like this is him.

If you're gonna do a parody, you better go for the gusto. They should leave things like this to the professionals. As for a parody video & song, the execution is poor, the reasoning is shallow and the video footage is even worse. Anyway you look at it, this sucked more ass than Elliot Spitzer in a whorehouse. I'd advise that you not try to defend it at all.

Free speech, yeah, yadda yadda... but if you're gonna use it, don't fuck it up. Right now, Limbaugh & Shanklin look worse than Sharpton & Jackson. They did enough damage to their own careers with their comments. What did Rush & Paul think they were going to accomplish by kicking a dead corpse?
 

Qua

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As for a parody video & song, the execution is poor, the reasoning is shallow and the video footage is even worse.

The video footage was created by the Youtuber, for what it's worth.

I was actually gonna post the article, but unique beat me to it. Doesn't mean the RNC looks any better putting it on their Christmas cds. But it at least puts the song in persective: well executed or not, it was meant as an attack to those who latched on to Obama as a black man they could identify with who'd relieve them of racial guilt. Not racist, beyond the degrees of absolute bad taste. Still can't forgive the RNC for thinking it appropriate distribution material though. The term political correctness's first word is why. It's their job to be politically correct, and regardless of intention, that kind of humor is not suited to a political environment. A polemic like Rush, sure, but not one of the major parties.
 

B_VinylBoy

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The video footage was created by the Youtuber, for what it's worth.

Okie doke. At least the RNC is off the hook for the bad iMovie footage. :biggrin1:

I was actually gonna post the article, but unique beat me to it. Doesn't mean the RNC looks any better putting it on their Christmas cds. But it at least puts the song in persective: well executed or not, it was meant as an attack to those who latched on to Obama as a black man they could identify with who'd relieve them of racial guilt.

That was easy to figure out. The problem I have is with the people making the message. Many times Limbaugh and other hardcore conservatives stated, in numerous ways, how they felt most white people were voting for Obama out of racial guilt, among many other things that didn't have anything to do with his policy or stance on the issues. I know some people voted for him based on his color. To act like nobody thought like this during the election would be foolish. But I honestly believe Limbaugh thinks the majority of people voted for Obama either out of guilt or based on his skin color. To think this way of 66 million people in this country is just really stupid if you ask me.

Knowing all of this, and seeing that he's one part of this whole fiasco is why I find this whole thing to be in bad taste.

Still can't forgive the RNC for thinking it appropriate distribution material though. The term political correctness's first word is why. It's their job to be politically correct, and regardless of intention, that kind of humor is not suited to a political environment.

Exactly. Not even bringing political correctness to the table (because I know I enjoy a few out of bounds comments now and then), but on a matter of common sense. Somewhere down the line, the RNC must've known the negative backlash this would cause. And you have to wonder if they are that desperate for attention that they would stoop to this level? ESPECIALLY if they want to convey a message of acceptance and diversity.