That was in itself offensive. Entertainers are just entertainers and to pigeonhole them because they're of a certain race or ethnic group is just wrong.
But then the song came out. Rush thought it was funny and so did his ditto-heads. Most of us of course did not. It features an Al Sharpton impersonator singing these lyrics to "Puff the Magic Dragon." Here's the first stanza:
"Barack the Magic Negro lives in D.C./ The L.A. Times they called him that/ 'cause he's not authentic like me / Yeah the guy from the L.A. paper / said he made guilty whites feel good/ they'll vote for him and not for me/ 'cause he's not from the hood..."
Yeah, that's a feel good song right there. The author of that, by the way, was Al Shanklin, a con commentator.
What's gotten everyone into a lather now? One of the leading candidates to be the new chair of the Republican Party, Chip Saltzman, has been distributing a CD with the song (which also includes about 40 other anti-liberal screeds of a provocative nature, such as "Wright Church, Wrong Pastor" and "The Stay-Spanglish Banner") to other party officials hoping to elect him as the guy who will take on "The Black President." Needless to say, the outgoing chair, Mike Duncan, says the song sends precisely the wrong message and that the GOP needs to reach out to expand its base in the wake of last month's election where the party not only lost the White House but hemorrhaged in Congress as well as the majority of state houses for the first time in over a decade.
For his part, Sen. Obama over a year ago thought it was just another parody and he wasn't going to be bothered by it. On the other hand, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary (and who has been maligned over the decades since many people think "Puff the Magic Dragon," which he co-wrote with Lenny Lipton, is about marijuana) wrote an op-ed piece at HuffPo slamming the piece and the mean-spiritedness it engenders:
What might have been wearily accepted as "the way it was" in the campaign, is now unacceptable. Obama is not a candidate. He is the President-Elect, and this song insults the office of the Presidency, the people who voted for him, as well as those who did not -- and taking a children's song and twisting it in such vulgar, mean-spirited way, is a slur to our entire country and our common agreement to move beyond racism.
It is almost unimaginable to me that Chip Saltzman who sent the CD, would seriously be considered for the top post of the Republican National Committee. Puff, himself, if asked, would certainly agree.
Don't forget, until the Great Depression, most blacks -- those who could vote -- supported the Republicans. I get the joke, but Duncan is right; this is not the way to move race relations forward -- or to take the party back to the future when it and not the Democrats were in the vanguard of race relations.
If the GOP wants to officially position itself as a pro-white party, then it should do so openly and with honesty and not cheap political stunts like this even if it was a lefty who started it. Frankly, Saltzman should be kicked out of the party. He belongs in the Constitution Party, not the Republicans. He just doesn't get it, any more than Lyndon B. LaRouche -- at least in his case he left the Dems before they could force him out.
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