Rush Limbaugh hopes to eviscerate "Barack the magic negro"

(via NY Times)

Back when I was a pharma/medical sales rep spending countless hours of my life canvassing the back roads of South Louisiana, I spent a lot of time listening to conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh on the radio. I even called in to the show one day and spent about a half hour on the air (an extraordinary length of call length time on his show) with him debating something regarding a Senate campaign that was taking place in Louisiana at the time. I was, needless to say, a fan. Though I didn't always agree with what he said, I was almost always entertained, even when I was mildly offended. Say what you want about him, the term "gift of gab" was invented to describe Limbaugh. He is, if nothing else, exceeding eloquent.

That all said, this week's New York Times Sunday Magazine features an interesting, well-rounded, and insightful article by Zev Chefets on Limbaugh. I have long found the guy to be utterly fascinating, even during the times when he has done or said something that revolted me. In that same regard, the article doesn't disappoint. A few excerpts...

On Aug. 1, Limbaugh will celebrate the 20th anniversary of his national radio program. At 57, he is an American icon, although his fans and critics don’t agree on precisely what he is iconic for. I’ve heard him compared to Mark Twain and Jackie Gleason, the Founding Fathers and Father Coughlin. Serious people have called him a serial liar and a moral philosopher, a partisan hack and a public intellectual, nothing more than a radio windbag and nothing less than the heart of the Republican Party.

Karl Rove pops in to genuflect at the Limbaugh altar...

One thing is certain: Limbaugh has been a partisan force for two decades. In 1994, he was so influential in the Republican Congressional landslide that the grateful winners made him an honorary member of the G.O.P. freshman class. He moved not only voters, but the party itself. “Rush talked about the ‘Contract With America’ before there was a ‘Contract With America,’ ” Karl Rove told me. “He helped set the agenda.”

His audience isn't near as dumb as some people like to think...

Limbaugh’s audience is often underestimated by critics who don’t listen to the show (only 3 percent of his audience identity themselves as “liberal,” according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). Recently, Pew reported that, on a series of “news knowledge questions,” Limbaugh’s “Dittoheads” — the defiantly self-mocking term for his faithful, supposedly brainwashed, audience — scored higher than NPR listeners. The study found that “readers of newsmagazines, political magazines and business magazines, listeners of Rush Limbaugh and NPR and viewers of the Daily Show and C-SPAN are also much more likely than the average person to have a college degree.”

Rush wields a rhetorical sword while walking an ethical tightrope...

So far Limbaugh’s tactic has been to frame his attacks on Obama in the words of liberals themselves. Among the musical parodies, which he writes with the comedian Paul Shanklin, in his arsenal is “Barack the Magic Negro,” sung to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” by a dead-on Al Sharpton impersonator. The song was met by indignation when he first played it in March — until Limbaugh revealed that the title and the idea of Obama as a redemptive black man à la Sidney Poitier — came from an op-ed piece written by a black commentator, David Ehrenstein, in The Los Angeles Times.

Sharpton is too much a master of such signification to miss the art in Limbaugh’s boomerang trick. “I despise his ideology,” Sharpton told me, “but Rush is a lot smarter and craftier than Don Imus. Limbaugh puts things in a way that he can’t be blamed for easy bigotry. Some of the songs he does about me just make me laugh. But he’s the most dangerous guy we have to deal with on the right, including O’Reilly and Imus. They come at you with an ax. He uses a razor.”

Probably my favorite part of the article is his candidness about what he thinks of Bill O'Reilly...

At dinner the night before, Bill O’Reilly’s name came up, and Limbaugh expressed his opinion of the Fox cable king. He hadn’t been sure at the time that he wanted it on the record. But on second thought, “somebody’s got to say it,” he told me. “The man is Ted Baxter.”

And his bright, shiny hope for the future of the conservative movement is a Louisiana boy...

As for politics, Rush has already picked his candidate for the Conservative Restoration: Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a 37-year-old prodigy whom Limbaugh considers to be a genuine movement conservative in the Ronald Reagan mold — “fresh, energetic and optimistic in his view of America.” In the meantime, though, there’s the Democratic convention in Denver to muck around in, and then the main event in November. Operation Chaos is over, but Rush will come up with something new to delight his fans and infuriate his foes. Presidents rise and presidents fall, but “The Rush Limbaugh Show” will go on, weekdays at 12:06, Eastern Standard Time.

Too bad for Rush that Louisiana folk are ready to lynch Jindal right about now. Whatever, read the piece in it's entirety here...

Late-Period Limbaugh

And oh, here's a YouTube clip of "Barack the Magic Negro." I post, you decide...