The Obama Haters: Behind the Right-Wing Campaign of Lies, Innuendo & Racism

3 Barack the Magic Negro: How Racism Oozes from Extremists into Mainstream Media

27 Barack the magic negro: How Racism oozes from extremists into mainstream media 3 Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after electing the first president of African descent, most Americans wanted to see their country evolve into a post-racial society in which people are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously saw in a dream. The Obama haters, however, don’t want to move on. They hurl filthy racial epithets and have the chutzpah to accuse the president himself of harboring racial animosity. Obama had not even declared his candidacy for president when the first racist salvo screeched across the bow. “Barack Obama has picked up another endorsement: Halfrican American actress Halle Berry,” Rush Limbaugh wisecracked on the radio on January 24, 2007. “Halfrican” became one of Limbaugh ’s favorite lines, and he gorged himself regularly on racial taunts, so Obama knew what he was getting into before he announced his candidacy three weeks later. After Los Angeles Times columnist David Ehrenstein wrote March 19, 2007, that Obama was reminiscent of a stereotypical benevolent “Magic Negro ” who is “like a comic book super hero,” Limbaugh showed off how he could get away with saying “Negro.” Like an insolent schoolboy, he said “Magic 28 — — — — — — tHe oBama HateRs Negro” twenty-seven times that day. Soon after that, he began playing a parody , “Barack the Magic Negro,” sung to the tune of the 1960s hit “Puff the Magic Dragon.” During the battle for the Democratic nomination, Limbaugh made double entendres degrading to blacks and women on January 15, 2008: “Obama is holding his own against both of them [Bill and Hillary Clinton], doing more than his share of the ‘spadework,’ maybe even gaining ground at the moment, using not only the spade, ladies and gentlemen. But when he finishes with the spade in the garden of corruption planted by the Clintons, he turns to the hoe. And so the spadework and his expertise, using a hoe. He’s faring well.” “Spadework” is a common term for completing preliminary tasks, while “spade” has been a slur toward blacks for decades. “Hoe,” or “ho,” is slang for whore. If it was unintentional, why did he keep repeating spade and hoe for emphasis? “It is clear that Senator Obama has disowned his white half,” Limbaugh said on March 21. He called Obama “unqualified” on August 19 and said “I think it really goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.” He described Obama’s nomination as “perfect affirmative action.” If nobody “had the guts” to “say no” to a black presidential candidate , why did Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton not become president? Limbaugh was the loudest voice in a synchronized chorus of racist remarks. At the ironically titled Values Voter summit in Washington, D.C., in September 2009, the Family Research Council sold boxes of “Obama Waffles” showing a caricature of Obama wearing a Muslim headscarf with the inscriptions “Change you can taste” and “Point towards Mecca for tastier waffles.” The drawing resembled Aunt Jemima racist stereotypes. What kinds of “values ” condone brazen hatred? A local Republican official in California distributed “Obama bucks,” a parody of food stamps, showing Obama’s face along with drawings of stereotypical fried chicken, watermelon, and ribs. The Republican Party in Sacramento posted a picture on its website in October with two captions: “The only difference between Obama and Osama is BS,” showing pictures of bin Laden and Obama, and “Waterboard Barack Obama.” barack The magic negrO — — — — — — 29 Election night saw scattered ugly incidents. The car belonging to a black family near Pittsburgh was torched as they watched Obama’s victory speech on TV. Vandals spray-painted “Obama” across the trunk of the car and threw an Obama yard sign through the family’s window. On Staten Island in New York City, seventeen-year-old Ali Kamara, a black Muslim, was beaten with baseball bats by white men yelling “Obama.” Other racist incidents ensued. A player on the University of Texas football team wrote, “All the hunters gather up, we have a Nigger in the White House” on his Facebook page, which earned his expulsion from the team. Two police officers...