Look, free speech is important. Run with it, boys!
Four days after news broke that the former Tennessee GOP chairman had sent a CD including a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” to the RNC members he is courting, some of those officials are rallying around the embattled Saltsman, with a few questioning whether the national media and his opponents are piling on.I gotta tell you, I have felt pretty restricted by not being able to tell my Jew and Chinaman jokes. I may be a liberal, but I'm secretly rooting for you guys. Maybe we could even effect change... I'd like to see those dizzy woman drivers taken off the road! Don't stop believin'!
“When I heard about the story, I had to figure out what was going on for myself,” said Mark Ellis, the chairman of the Maine Republican Party. “When I found out what this was about I had to ask, ‘Boy, what’s the big deal here?’ because there wasn’t any.”
Alabama Republican Committeeman Paul Reynolds said the fact the Saltsman sent him a CD with the song on it “didn’t bother me one bit.”
“Chip probably could have thought it through a bit more, but he was doing everyone a favor by giving us a gift,” he said. “This is just people looking for something to make an issue of.”
17 comments:
Just out of curiousity, who was the first person to call Obama a "Magic Negro"?
I don't recall your angst over this when it was first published. In 2007.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ehrenstein19mar19,0,5335087.story?coll=la-opinion-center
And isn't the Shanklin song more of a parody of Sharpton.
Assuming you have even heard it, that is..
I do recall your issue with all of the cartoons portraying Condi Rice as a "house negro". Oh, wait..
See, that's what I'm saying! What's wrong with encouraging ALL white folks to talk this way! 2012 can't come soon enough.
So when your side says it, it's ok, but when my side does it's racist?
I'm saying when you guys do it, fair or not, your party is perceived as racist. And there are two ways to deal with that. The less sensible one is to insist that you're in no way racist, because that's what any racist would say.
Have you listened to the song, Piker?
I have to confess, up until just now I had neither read the read the original op-ed nor heard the song. I have now.
The song is funny, especially if you're a white guy who likes to make fun of the way them black folk talk. I do see the point though, that Barack is non-threatening and that's why he got elected. So the song came down on the "not black enough" side of the debate.
But now, after the election, what is still funny about it? After all, the controversy this time is over it being distributed now.
The Op-Ed, by the way, takes the much more interesting tack that Barack was electable because white America sees him as a benevolent darkie. Arguably true, in an ugly I-don't-wanna-know kind of way.
The song isn't making fun of Obama, it's making fun of Al Sharpton. It's "Al" that's singing the song.
Because Al was the one initially saying Obama wasn't "black enough".
Oh! I didn't realize it was Sharpton. A white guy imitating Sharpton as as ignorant black man certainly isn't controversial at all.
Well, just tell the African-Americans that you're trashing that leader instead of Obama, and I'm sure they'll come flocking back to the Big Tent.
Fist of all, that was ONE song on the CD. It was ONE parody on a CD with nearly 20 songs. So, Saltsman didn't send "Barack the Magic Negro" to everyone. He sent a CD with all sorts of songs ONE of which was Barack the Magic Negro.
But, I agree that Saltsman made a major mistake. He failed to be prepared. He should have had an entire campaign ready for race hustlers like you, Piker. He should have been all ready to use the liberal who made up the name and to highlight the hypocrisy on the left.
But the whole thing blindsided him. THAT is why he is unfit to be the leader of the GOP. He failed to anticipate, he failed to react, and he made a hash out of a perfectly good opportunity to highlight liberal hypocrisy.
Humor. Satire. Parody.
"Race hustlers!" I'm not sure what you're getting at - are African Americans not bothered by all this stuff unless people like me or Sharpton tell them to be?
Maybe you're right though - they should just laugh this stuff off. Like the way you do when we make fun of Sarah Palin or tease you for being racists. That's why you're always watchin' the Daily Show, right?
I have to confess, I've never once seen either the Daily Show or Steven Coldbert. What they do does not interest me. That's also why I have rarely written about either of them.
Fair enough.
And probably the way most African Americans feel about the Republican Party nowadays.
Wait! As I remember it, "Magic Negro" a sort of dry term used in film theory and criticism. It describes redemptive African-American characters like Will Smith in "Bagger Vance" and Michael Clarke Duncan in "The Green Mile."
I suppose in the current context it's not what it means, but what one does with it. :-p
Doesn't look like some folks will be able to watch The Daily Show or Colbert soon:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081231/ap_on_bi_ge/viacom_time_warner_cable
As a guy without cable, I know I can always get a little Colbert through HULU.com. Shorter commercial breaks! Lousy picture quality though.
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