How else then, to describe the mind blowing stupidity of Tennessee GOP fixture Chip Saltsman, a candidate for RNC chairman and the doofus responsible for distributing copies of Paul Shanklin’s “Barack The Magic Negro”, a tune heard widely this week on hate fuck radio and featuring the couplet, “Barack made guilty whites feel good/They™ll vote for him and not for me/Cause he™s not from the ™hood. From the New York Times’ Jason De Parle :
Speaking to The Hill newspaper on Friday, Mr. Saltsman, described it as a œlight-hearted gift that would be received in œgood humor by members of the Republican National Committee.
œI am shocked and appalled, Mike Duncan, the current party chairman, said in a statement released Saturday. Mr. Duncan is competing for a second term against Mr. Saltsman and four others.
œThis is so inappropriate that it should disqualify any Republican National Committee candidate who would use it, Newt Gingrich, a Republican former House speaker, said in an e-mail message. Referring to Mr. Obama, Mr. Gingrich said, œThere are no grounds for demeaning him or for using racist descriptions.
There are two black candidates for the post, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state, and Michael Steele, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland. On Saturday, Mr. Blackwell dismissed the fuss as œhypersensitivity.
œAll competitors for this leadership position are fine people, he said in an e-mail message.
The dispute illustrates a larger Republican challenge in the months ahead: how to oppose the first black president without seeming antiblack. There are no black Republicans in Congress, and a party spokesman could name only 2 blacks among the 168 members of the national committee. Katon Dawson, the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, resigned from an all-white country club in preparing for his campaign to be party chairman.
The parody is sung to the tune of œPuff the Magic Dragon by a character meant to be the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights advocate and sometime political candidate. The character laments that white liberals vote for Mr. Obama while shunning his brand of more confrontational racial politics.