GOP The Magic Dumbo

The GOP has once again shown why it is the stupid party. Chip Salsman wants to run the GOP, so he plied potential voters with a Paul Shanklin CD that included the song "Barack the Magic Negro." It is a political parody based upon an LA Times opinion piece of the same name. The leadership was caught flat-footed and red-handed, and is now scrambling, crab-like, to defend itself.

Here's part of the hollow, vacuous statement from flaccid, ineffectual party chairman Mike Duncan:

"I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction."

Yeah, right. Shocked and appalled. Millions of Republicans have laughed their heads off at the song, featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show. So spare us the crocodile tears, Mike. You and your party establishmentarians are intellectually and ideologically bankrupt. Bowing down before the PC gods won't save your sorry hide.

Mike Duncan and the rest of the country club Republicans should apologize not for the song, but for for being so politically inept and clueless that they would let something like this get within 10 miles of GOP Headquarters. Half the country already believes the GOP is just a front organization for the Ku Klux Klan. You'd think the GOP apparatchiks would be a little more image conscious.

The song is based on a 2007 David Ehrenstein opinion piece of the same name in the LA Times. He explores how Guilty White Liberal Syndrome could bolster Mr. Obama's candidacy:

But it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the "Magic Negro."

The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro .

He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.

As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is "Magic."

So here's a liberal columnist citing the work of liberal sociologists using the now famous phrase. A white conservative satirist picks it up and makes a funny song based on it, and Democrats mau mau the Republicans into apologizing. Once again, the inept Republicans bring a butter knife to a gun fight.

Is the song funny? I think so. Is it offensive? Not in my opinion, but I'm not black. Does it belong in the public arena? Yes. It's called free speech, and as satire, it's pretty tame when stacked up against South Park or Dave Chappelle. Regardless of the merits of the song, it is inappropriate for the GOP establishment to be trafficking in this stuff.

They only compounded their sin by gutlessly collapsing before the liberal onslaught instead of owning it and intellectually defending it. Ken Blackwell, an African-American contender to run the party, showed true leadership with his response:

"Unfortunately, there is hypersensitivity in the press regarding matters of race. This is in large measure due to President-Elect Obama being the first African-American elected president," said Blackwell, who would be the first black RNC chairman, in a statement forwarded to Politico by an aide.

This is the leadership the GOP needs. No politically correct bowing and scraping to manufactured outrage, of which we have an overabundance in this country. Just an acknowledgment of the hoo-ha and restoring it to a rational context.

In fact, an edgy, 20-something GOP leadership could have flipped this back on the so-last-century media and actually attracted the attention of the Colbert and John Stewart generation. But in the hands of the ancient, white GOP upper-crust, this just looks creepy and racist. If this doesn't convince conservatives that the place needs wholesale firings and fumigation, I don't know what will.

The very existence of the Republican party does damage to the conservative cause. Time to burn it down and start over with younger, more intellectually vibrant leadership.