Rush Limbaugh and his Magic Negro

Rush Limbaugh on the magic of Barack Obama 

As some of you may have noticed, buzz surrounding Barack Obama’s campaign has become even more petty and ridiculous than ever. For kicks, I read through a number of the comments posted following Media Matter’s story on the article and was flabbergasted by the obviously-livid posters attacking Limbaugh for taking Ehrenstein’s mind-numbingly stupid column and running with it. Ehrenstein laid the editorial equivalent of a turd on the floor, and Limbaugh, ever the political shock-jock scamp that he is, has taken hold of Ehrenstein’s fetid crap and is parading it in front of all to see. Limbaugh has said on many occasions that you can’t take everything he says or does seriously, and yet . . .

My basic impression of this entire scandal is:

1. The use of the term “Magic Negro” in film critique is rather racist and offensive in and of itself. Ehrenstein does not get a pass for having a film critic background, nor is it acceptable to use the term in mass media publications even if film critics use it to deride hollow “token black guy” characters in movies.
2. Attempting to label Obama as a “Magic Negro” by likening him to empty “token black guy” movie characters is ridiculous. He may not have the qualifications to be President, but the guy is as real (and as black, I guess) as anyone else. Whether or not he’s a “real black man” is not for you or I to judge, nor should it have any real bearing on his viability as a Presidential candidate.
3. Ehrenstein may not be a paid hitman for Hillary, but he is doing her dirty work.
4. Limbaugh is infantile in his fixation upon this stupid editorial, but everything he’s done in mockery of it has been pure gold publicity-wise. In a world where we often assume that all publicity is good publicity (even the bad kind), he’s managed to slap Ehrenstein with notoriety that can not possibly be good for him: he’s a black liberal columnist for a left-leaning paper that has used a racially-charged epithet to insult Obama, a favored black Democratic candidate for President. Limbaugh is making it stick and is getting his critics up in arms over what is essentially nothing. He’s also derailing Obama’s entire campaign by dragging this nonsense into the open. Most of us would never have noticed Ehrenstein’s mostly-irrelevant op-ed column.

For those of you who loath Limbaugh and would rather Ehrenstein’s op-ed would just go away, the best thing you could possibly do is ignore it. Of course, I’m making that rather difficult aren’t I?

Matthew Anderson is a non-violent postal worker, freelance columnist, father, husband, and oddball.
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