11 | May | 2007 | Et Cetera: Publick and Privat Curiosities

Limbaugh Fights Broadcast of Obama “Magic Negro” Video

May 11, 2007 — Patrick Zimmerman

Rush Limbaugh Billboard in Baltimore this Week

Limbaugh Attacks: Stop Broadcasting The Magic Negro!

(Click Image for Video)

It only took a few words on the CBS13 (Sacramento, CA) morning show to bring heated criticism from nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh. What brought it on? A question had been posed about a song that had been on the Rush Limbaugh show for the past month and a half.

The song, Barack the Magic Negro, had been produced for the Rush Limbaugh show by songwriter Paul Shanklin. Limbaugh, according to the website Wikipedia, had referred to Obama many times as “Obama the Magic Negro,” each time prefacing the comment by saying that the title with regard to Obama really originated in an L.A. Times opinion article by freelance writer David Ehrenstein.

Before the CBS13 show, anchorman Chris Burrous said that he had read a newspaper article about a group who found the Obama song racist. After he read the article, he immediately went to his computer to listen to the song, but said that at first he hesitated, feeling like he should turn down the song because of a black co-worker nearby. This prompted him to pose the question to viewers of whether viewers thought it was racist. He asked the question on-air and also posted a poll on the website asking the same thing. Hours later, the poll was the focus of Rush Limbaugh’s show.

“KOVR must have just heard about “Barack the Magic Negro,” Limbaugh said during his show, adding that the song had been aired for months, without any listeners getting upset.

Limbaugh then quickly followed up with an on-air threat aimed at KOVR-TV, issuing a stern warning, “All right. You people at KOVR, Channel 13 in Sacramento, you had better take that video down off your website or you are going to be in serious trouble. That video was produced by somebody on the Internet. We do not do videos here. We do not put pictures with our songs. There is a video that’s running, it’s out there on YouTube, purportedly produced by us here at the EIB Network with racial characterizations and caricatures of these people. It’s not ours, we didn’t do it, and you’re making it look like it’s ours on your website, KOVR, and I demand you take it down now.”

Soon, access to all the Barack the Magic Negro videos on YouTube, was blocked, with an announcement stating: “This Video is No Longer Available Due to a Copyright Claim by Premiere Radio Networks, Inc.”

All of this made me think remember an article that I posted on April 27th about this video. Well, you can go ahead and read about what I had to say about it then. Nothing has altered my thoughts about it since that time. Here it is:

Al Sharpton Sings: Barack Obama the Magic Negro

(Impersonation by Paul Shanklin)

This classy act was aired by none other than Rush Limbaugh himself, no stranger to racial controversy (remember him getting kicked off of ESPN’s pregame football show for saying Donovan McNabb was only a good “black” quarterback?). Well, guess what! Rush Limbaugh, the man of many delusional tales about liberal wrong-doing has come up with another racial episode on his show: “Barack Obama the Magic Negro” sung by Paul Shanklin imitating Al Sharpton to the tune of Puff the Magic Dragon. What wonderful timing too! Especially coming just a few weeks after the whole Imus “nappy headed hos controversy.” I wonder if Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have washed the blood off of Imus’ noose yet??