RUSH: Barack Obama, it’s getting bad out there. He’s saying some things here, folks, that are really stupid — well, let me retract, impolitic — and that were he anyone else, would have him laughed out of the race by now. Now, to put this recent spat here in some historical context, from yesterday in the UK Guardian, ‘The wife of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama on Sunday admonished those who question her biracial husband’s credentials as a black man, calling the issue ‘nonsense.’ ‘We’re still playing around with the question: Is he black enough?’ Michelle Obama told a campaign event on Chicago’s South Side. ‘Stop that nonsense. We are messing with the heads of our children.’ She said that raising the specter of whether her husband was sufficiently black sent a confusing message to kids. She also told several hundred people that she hoped her husband serves as a role model in how he helped raise their two young daughters, ‘If you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House.”
Okay, so she’s upset that they keep asking, ‘Is he black enough?’ Well, here we go, the Washington Post today, and we got a headline: ‘The ‘Black Enough’ Question: Who’s Asking? — In case it wasn’t clear enough the first time, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and his wife Michelle have each said repeatedly — and increasingly forcefully — in recent days that they’re fed up with the ‘black enough’ debate.’ Well, I’ve been fed up with it since the first time I read about it in the Los Angeles Times! I think it’s demeaning, it’s insulting, and it is indicative of who the real racists in this country tend to be, and they are liberals. The people who see a human being and note skin color, sexual orientation or other factors first more often than not are going to be liberals and form judgments based on it. If you dig deeper in this Washington Post story, ‘Campaign aides didn’t cite a specific example of the criticism they hoped to put to rest, noting instead that reporters have questioned both Obamas on the issue.’
They’ve done more than question Obama. They’ve written pieces. They have written stories. Why, the LA Times, a black columnist actually wrote a column entitled, ‘Barack the Magic Negro.’ His point was he hasn’t been around long enough, nobody could possibly know what he stands for, so a bunch of guilty white liberals are going to vote for him because he’s the magic negro. Why, they can make themselves feel really good about themselves. The Chicago papers, Indiana papers, a number of papers have kept this question alive, ‘Is Barack Obama black enough? Is he down for the struggle?’ He got into a little dispute early on back in March with the Reverend Sharpton. The Reverend Sharpton wouldn’t sign onto his campaign real fast. The Reverend Jackson did, but the Reverend Sharpton was not yet convinced. He was getting a little jealous. In fact, Joe Biden, another Democrat, went out and said about Obama, (paraphrasing) ‘You know what’s really great? We finally have a clean and articulate black guy in our presidential field, it’s really good.’ Now, he’s trying to be complimentary, of course, but if you think we finally have a clean and articulate black guy, what must you think of other blacks that have been in the race, like the Reverend Jackson and the Reverend Sharpton? So Sharpton, he’s sitting there, ‘Hey, wait a minute. I take a shower every day; I’m clean; I’m articulate; I can speak; I’ve been doing it for a long time. I can even be understood through the bullhorn at the public protests.’ So it inspired a tune here. Everything in this stems from what we found said or written by liberals. Paul Shanklin as Reverend Sharpton.
(Playing of ‘Barack, the ‘Magic Negro” song.)
It’s just typical. The Reverend Sharpton could not stick to the lyric line and ended up protesting outside the song. He went off script. Everything in that song was spawned by liberals, and they’re not through. Now in Newsweek, how does Obama woo downscale Democrats? ‘He charms elites. But how does Obama woo a must-have: ‘downscale Dems’?’ Now, what’s a downscale Democrat? If they were talking about Republicans, they’d just say rural hayseeds or rural pro-life Christians or some such thing. Downscale Democrats, we’re talking about poor, downscale poor and stupid Democrats. That’s what we’re talking about. Newsweek’s asking, ‘How does Obama woo them?’
‘On a sunlit Friday afternoon in July, Barack Obama stopped by Beverly Van Fossen’s farm in Adel, Iowa, to speak about ‘rural issues.’ It was standard Hawkeye State stumping — until the senator took a stab at sympathizing with farmers whose crop prices have stagnated. ‘Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?’ he asked.’ Now, in Iowa, where he was, there’s not one Whole Foods store. Number two, how many people in Adel care about arugula? I don’t think that it’s arugula country. Andrew Romano, the author of the piece here, said, ”Someone near me whispered, ‘What’s arugula?’ says Van Fossen, 74. ‘You can’t find that in Iowa.’ Same goes for Whole Foods. The closest locations, reported The New York Times that evening, are in Omaha, Neb.; Kansas City, Kans., and Minneapolis.’ And, of course, the bloggers all pounced out there. So he’s gotta go out and develop a solid base among downscale Democrats. ‘If you don’t get the downscale Democrats, it’s very hard to get the nomination,’ he said. So now in addition to not being black enough, he’s not poor enough. He doesn’t know how to relate to the poor.
Then there’s this: ‘Presidential hopeful Barack Obama was warned by a friendly voter Monday to avoid public spats with his Democratic rivals but remarks he made later could add fuel to the criticism against him. Maggie North of Claremont told Obama he risks becoming part of the usual political scene if he keeps being drawn into well-publicized disputes with rivals.’ Now, how ridiculous is this? He’s in a presidential primary campaign. He’s got to argue with these people. You gotta campaign. I guarantee you that independents, moderates, and so forth, if you ask ’em what they’re all about, what they care for, everything’s about them, me, me, me. ‘I want to feel good. I don’t want to be around rancor. I just want to feel good. Can’t you all just get along?’ I suspect that this is what Maggie North of Claremont was attempting to convey to Barack Obama. ”You can be it,’ North said at a small gathering at a Hanover restaurant Monday morning that drew eight people.’
Let me read that to you again. This complaint from a supporter came at a Hanover, New Hampshire, restaurant Monday morning that drew eight people. You can be the nominee, ”But you’ve got to stop, excuse me for being blunt, you’ve got to stop getting involved in the way people are fighting each other, chewing you up a little more.’ ‘That’s what you do when you run for president,’ Obama responded, getting a laugh. But during a later appearance before about 800 people in Nashua, Obama made a comment likely to further the spats he was warned about. Asked whether he would move U.S. troops out of Iraq to better fight terrorism elsewhere, he brought up Afghanistan and said, ‘We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.” Okay, so out of the blue comes this allegation that the US military is bombing villages and killing civilians.
Now, I know why he’s saying it because if you go read your average kook left-wing blog, that’s what they think. He’s just trying to appeal to them here, but that was very impolitic, folks. Seasoned, intelligent presidential candidates, even in primary circumstances, especially in the general, but even primaries, you haven’t heard somebody say — I mean, the closest we’ve got is Tom Tancredo said he would bomb Mecca, and that’s about the same thing, you just don’t say it. Obama’s also saying he’d go in there to Pakistan, whether Musharraf knew we were coming or not and so forth, he’s not racking up points. I have to tell you, he’s getting away with it a lot more than say if Hillary had said this or if John Edwards had said it. The static that would have descended upon them would have been pretty loud. He’s getting a little bit of a pass on some of this stuff, not a total pass, but he’s getting a little bit of a pass on it. But this is not good. I’m talking about in terms of just being smart, something to say in the middle of a campaign, you just don’t say something like that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Chicago, and Jim, thank you, sir, for your patience and welcome to the program.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. It’s a pleasure to speak with you again.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: You know, what you’ve said about the liberal media and is Obama black enough, well, it’s really the liberal white media for the most part, because the liberal whites in the Democratic Party have always been able to tell the blacks who their leaders were, like the Reverend Jesse Jackson. This goes back to Clarence Thomas for uppity black people, so Obama is not black enough, so who do you vote for? You vote for Hillary. He’s not poor enough, so who do you vote for? Hillary. They want to keep their power, the white liberal power, so they throw back down any black candidate or any black person that wants power in the Democratic Party.
RUSH: Well, you make a good point, and I’d say that the percentage of what you’re saying is accurate, that those in the Drive-Bys are doing everything they can to boost Hillary. Although the last couple days, she’s taken a couple hits. But I also think that there is a systematic narrative in all these Barack stories, as written by white liberals. And the question, is he black enough, is something they really are curious about, some of them are really wondering about. And you touched on it.
CALLER: When have they ever supported a black candidate? You’ve touched on it many times in your program.
RUSH: Well, I gotta tell you something —
CALLER: A black candidate, they left them lurching out in the wind.
RUSH: I’m going to answer the question. Barack Obama is where he is precisely because of pop star treatment that he got early on from the Drive-By Media, building this guy up, crafting an image for him. He couldn’t have done it himself, not been around long enough. He’s been in the Senate less than two years. He hasn’t done enough to have this image of himself. He gave one speech at the ’04 Democrat convention, the Drive-Bys built him up. I know what you’re saying, when have they ever wanted a black person to actually win? They’re promoting the guy, but he’s gotta be a certain kind of black. He has to have roots to slavery, civil rights movement and all that because that’s a fundamental element of the liberal Democrat coalition.
CALLER: No, he has to give the power to the white liberals, and that’s why Jesse Jackson is the liberal white black leader, because whenever there’s an issue about minorities or black issues, white liberals, media, turn to who? The Reverend Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: When Al Sharpton wanted to be president, they put up Carol Moseley Braun against him because they were worried about South Carolina and Washington, DC. After that she bowed out, and he went back and made a speech, and they gave him some money and he went away. Follow the history of the white liberals.
RUSH: Federal matching funds, that’s right. Mama told him not to run.
CALLER: I initially called about the 25 cent bottle tax. Being here from Chicago, the highest volume gas station in the country is right here on the Indiana border with Illinois. The thriving business is the sale of cigarettes, and that’s not on the Illinois side, it’s on the Indiana side. So these idiotic politicians from Illinois have destroyed the gasoline industry on the Illinois border, the cigarette business on the Illinois border, and I got one even better for you. When aldermen went to a Cubs game and saw all those fans up on rooftops, guess what, Rush? Sure enough there’s now a tax on people that watch the games from the rooftops in Chicago.
RUSH: Is it a city tax or is it a Chicago Cubs ticket —
CALLER: No, it’s a Chicago city tax. Alderman saw all those people up there and said, ‘Wow, they’re not being taxed,’ and this is the honest-to-God truth, Rush.
RUSH: Look, you don’t have to tell me. A liberal will see anything walking and moving and if he discovers that it’s doing pretty well, he will tax it. It’s just the way it is. Thanks for the call, Jim. I want to go back to his point here about the Democrat Party and the white liberals. I’ve often described white liberalism and the Democrat Party as the plantation. Because he’s right, the way this works, the reason why Clarence Thomas was such a threat during his confirmation hearings, Clarence Thomas is a conservative, would thus become the most powerful black man in America as an associate justice of the US Supreme Court. He’s not an activist in such a sense, but he threatened the prescriptions necessary to get anywhere, if you’re black in this country, because he didn’t go affirmative action. He didn’t adopt the procedures that liberals demand and the people like the Reverend Jackson demand.
That made him a huge threat because the civil rights coalitions in this country exist precisely because the Democrat Party grants them positions at the power table. So the Reverend Jackson is a prominent and well-paid Democrat, his job is to make sure that he keeps the thinking in the black community the way it’s been for the last 50 years, to make sure that vote turnout remains 90% or more Democrat, and then he gets repaid. Obama, when it comes to the Drive-Bys, they’ve built him up and so forth, and they’ll take him out in time as will Clinton, Inc., but there is a genuine concern here that he may not be black enough. He doesn’t have the roots that the Democrat Party requires of black leaders.