Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:28 pm
On his radio show today, Rush Limbaugh fired back at NAACP president Benjamin Jealous for saying that the radio host is trying to revive the days of a white male dominated society. Limbaugh said that Jealous could not find one syllable from his show to back up his claim. Has Rush forgotten Barack the Magic Negro?
On CNN last night, NAACP president and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous was asked by Campbell Brown about the Republican Party and reaching out to minorities. Jealous said, “The reality is that there does seem to be sort of a war for the base of the party. You have Rush Limbaugh out there very aggressively with this kind of retrograde tone, trying to resurrect a day that will no longer — it just isn’t possible for sort of a white- male-dominated society.”
He continued, “They need to push and move beyond that. The folks who are kind of sitting there in the shadows, very much part of the base of the Republican Party who do believe in Lincoln’s dream of one united country need to come out and support their chairman. If not, that party will just become less and less relevant over the next few years.”
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Here is the audio of Limbaugh’s response courtesy of Media Matters:
Limbaugh said, “Here he is accusing me of opposing Obama because I don’t like a black guy in the White House. I predicted this a year and a half ago…He could not find one syllable to support that claim if he went through every hour of this program for the last 20 plus years, but this is what they do, sic you with the racist charge, irresponsibly and without fact, because nobody has got the guts to stand up and say you can’t say that because they are minorities, they get away, they can’t be racist, you see they don’t have the power to implement their racism, but this is a pure racist allegation. It’s bilge. It’s drivel, and it’s something I called.”
The very fact that Rush described the NAACP as “they” as in this what “they do” support’s Jealous’ point. Here is a short list of Rush on Obama and race from Media Matters, “Limbaugh had previously declared in June 2008 that Obama’s “only chance of winning” the presidency “is that he’s black.” During the 2008 presidential campaign, Limbaugh also called Obama “an affirmative action candidate” and asserted during the May 14, 2008, broadcast of his show, “If Barack Obama were Caucasian, they would have taken this guy out on the basis of pure ignorance long ago.”
Since Obama’s election, Limbaugh has based his show around making white men feel better about their loss of power. Who can forget this little gem when Rush misapplied his racism, “On February 14, 2006, Limbaugh invented a racial component to explain Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett’s departure from the Ohio Democratic Senate primary race. While reporting on Hackett’s decision to withdraw from the race against then-Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Limbaugh asserted: “And don’t forget, Sherrod Brown is black. There’s a racial component here, too,” adding that “the newspaper that I’m reading all this from is The New York Times, and they, of course, don’t mention that.” In fact, Brown is white — a point on which Limbaugh was corrected later in the program.”
The topper is Barack the Magic Negro, which was played on his show in 2007:
It took me all of 3 minutes to find evidence of Limbaugh’s scorn for the loss white male political power. Notice that Jealous didn’t call Limbaugh a racist. Rush called Rush a racist, and then tried to claim that there was no evidence for his own claim against himself. There is so much evidence that I could fill pages with Limbaugh quotes and videos. Jealous was correct to point out that the GOP is follow Rush down a path of destruction, and the evidence of this is overwhelming.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
