Republicans Shoot Themselves in Foot, with a Democratic bullet.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/29/saltsman.obama.song/index.html

I am a long time listerner and sometime fan of the Rush Limbaugh radio show. For practically as long as his shown as run on radio, he has frequently run parodies that poke a great deal of fun at politicians and celebrities. One of his most common philosophies is to "illustrate the absurd by being absurd".

One of the more recent "illustrations" was a parody/filk song created and performed by musical satirist Paul Shanklin who is frequently featured on the Rush Limbaugh radio show. This particular song, "Barack, the Magic Negro" was inspried by an similarly entitled article written by David Eherenstein for the LA Times which appeared on March 17, 2007. Now, I should expect that anybody reading this blog would clearly know that a) Mr. Ehrenstein is certainly no right-wing demagogue and b) that the LA Times is not exactly a champion of Conservative values. In fact, Mr. Ehrenstein's article clearly points out that Senator Joe Biden (who later was chosen to be Obama's running mate) expressed the opinion that people like Barack because he "articulate" and "clean" and that major figures in the Civil Rights movement are dubious about Barack Obama's "authenticity" as a black man. The major point of the article is that Barack Obama affords "white America" the chance to assuage their "guilt" of black repression by supporting a non-threatening less militant person of color.

The song by Paul Shanklin takes very liberally (and in some cases, very literally) from this article printed by a left-leaning newspaper and written by a left-leaning writer.

Nearly every time that Mr. Limbaugh has played this parody on his show he has reminded his viewers that this song isn't an expression of how Republicans or conservatives feel about the President-elect but about how long-time civil rights activists and commentators of the political left of this country feel about him.

And yet, we now have this current imbroglio where a contender for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee who distributed copies of this song to friends and acquaintances is now being held in contempt by his colleagues for encouraging "racist" views.

I'd like to remind all who read this blog to remember that in this particular instance, the song being pilloried was nothing more than a satire of the expressions of Mr. Ehrenstein and printed in the LA Times. Consider the source, folks. Consider the source.