RUSH: To Akron, Ohio, this is Tom. I’m glad you waited, sir. You’re next.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush.
RUSH: You’re welcome.
CALLER: The reason for my call is, this morning I was just watching the TV, and I heard Mrs. Obama make what I felt was a really racist comment. She was being interviewed, and she was being asked why people of, uh — African-Americans, weren’t going for Obama, that the polls were more showing for Clinton, and Mrs. Obama had a reason for that. She said that they would slowly come back to Barack Obama because people of color, as she put it, had always something in the back of their mind that they could not do anything right or they were always, um…
RUSH: Well, you know what? We happen to have here the audio sound bite of this, and this happened on Scarborough’s show today on PMSNBC.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: She was being interviewed by the cohostette, Mika Brzezinski, who had the exclusive interview with Obama. It’s actually going to air tomorrow, but they gave a little preview of that interview today.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: You can listen to it with me here. A lot of people would love to be able to do what you’re going to get to do here in mere seconds: actually listen to a bite with me.
CALLER: (laughs) Right.
RUSH: Mika Brzezinski says, ‘The polls are showing your husband trailing Hillary 46-37 in the African-American community. What is going on here?’
MRS. OBAMA: What we’re dealing with in the black community is just the natural fear of possibility. You know, when I look at my life, you know, the stuff that we’re seeing in these polls has played out my whole life, you know? Always been told by somebody that I’m not ready, you know, I can’t do something. My scores weren’t high enough. You know, there’s always that doubt in the back of the minds of people of color, people who have been oppressed and haven’t been given real opportunities that you never really believe, that you believe that somehow someone is better than you.
BRZEZINSKI: Hmmph!
MRS. OBAMA: You know, deep down inside, you doubt whether you can do — because that’s all you’ve been told is, ‘No. Wait.’ (laugh) That’s all you hear, and you hear it from people who love you, not because they don’t care about you, but they’re afraid. They’re afraid that something might happen.
RUSH: All right, now, is that what you heard her saying basically, Tom?
CALLER: Yeah, because it just struck me: What a racist comment to lump all black people into one common thought, that they’re all afraid.
RUSH: Well, I mean we can use the question and say it’s racist. The assumption that every black voter ought to be voting for Barack and, because they’re not, at least the majority, ‘What’s going on here?’ So she has to explain it somehow.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: I listened to the answer. I’m not quite sure what she’s saying here. Is she saying that blacks have been so beaten down and they’re so run down that they don’t believe that their guy is actually going to win or should win? It’s like they’ve got a fear of success because they don’t deserve it?
CALLER: Yeah, that’s what I thought.
RUSH: Yeah, okay, and she has to overcome that and Barack has to overcome that with blacks. Of course, it doesn’t help that this guy at the LA Times wrote the column on the ‘Magic Negro.’ And you know what the point of the ‘Magic Negro’ was: that guilty whites are supporting Obama because they even don’t know what he’s talking about. They know his policies haven’t been around long enough. Guilty whites are supporting him because it makes them feel better about themselves, as though they’re not racist.
CALLER: I guess maybe her and Biden have a lot in common. You know, he’s clean and articulate, and he’s off the plantation, so…
RUSH: But he was never on it!
CALLER: (laughs)
RUSH: This is the thing. See, that’s another aspect I don’t think she can address. Barack is not from the civil rights generation, he is not ‘down for the struggle.’ So, that’s the tightrope that we’re walking. I know I’m going to have to play the song again for people who don’t know what I’m talking about. ‘What do you mean, ‘Magic Negro’? What do you mean, Rush?’ So we’ll play the song. We’ll play the song at the top of the next hour just to put this all in perspective. I’ve gotta run here, Tom. I appreciate the call.
CALLER: Thanks for having me.
RUSH: No, it’s my pleasure. I got one more bite here. It’s Steve Kroft. Let’s go back, go back to the archives. Steve Kroft, 60 Minutes, February 11th of this year. He’s got Barack and Michelle on there. Kroft says, ‘Michelle, this is a tough question to ask, but a number of years ago Colin Powell was thinking about running for president, and his wife really didn’t want him to run. She was worried about some crazy person with a gun. Is that something you think about?’
MRS. OBAMA: I don’t lose sleep over it, because the realities are, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station. (laughs) You know, so, you can’t make decisions based on — on fear and the possibility of what might happen. We just weren’t raised that way.
RUSH: Now, does this sound like she’s somewhat guilty of the same inferiority complex that she’s accusing blacks of having in the first bite we played? At any rate, Snerdley says, it may be true for a lot of people. They’re starting to now get revved up about the campaign.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, last call, talking about a sound bite of Michelle Obama that’s going to air in its entirety tomorrow on PMSNBC, Mika Brzezinski interviewing Barack’s wife, Michelle, and the question came up, ‘How come black voters are supporting Hillary far more than your husband?’ And her basic answer was their inferiority complex, (paraphrasing) ‘They have a fear of success, they just don’t think it’s our time, they never think it’s our time because they’ve been raised to think that things like that are too good to be true, they’re never going to happen.’ Which caused me to speculate with a caller, it’s kind of like in the early days there were so many whites supporting Obama over Hillary, and the answer was given to us by a columnist, David Ehrenstein, in the Los Angeles Times, referring to Barack Obama as the ‘Magic Negro.’ The ‘Magic Negro’ in lore is a Negro that allows white people to embrace and support even though they don’t know anything about the person, hasn’t been around long enough. It’s a way for elitist white liberals to think of themselves as really good people and not racists by pointing out they support the black guy. He was writing a piece lamenting this.
Of course, this came after Al Sharpton refused to endorse Obama, and it also came after Joe Biden had referred to Obama as, I’m paraphrasing, ‘Finally, we got a guy who’s clean and articulate in the race,’ and that really angered Sharpton, because Sharpton showers and is thus clean, and he can speak, but, apparently, he took this as an insult. So we put all these liberal events together, ladies and gentlemen. We came up with a parody tune sung by white comedian Paul Shanklin to ‘Puff the Magic Dragon,’ ‘Barack the ‘Magic Negro.”
(Playing of ‘Barack the ‘Magic Negro.”)
I just love that. Sharpton can’t stick with the lyric line. He has to start protesting in the middle of the song, and, of course, the background singers kind of keep him on the lyric line by continuing to sing the song. So that’s it, ‘Barack the ‘Magic Negro,” placing last half hour’s comment in context and in perspective.