Centrist writer John Avlon, who also was an adviser to former President Bill Clinton, an adviser to Rudy Giuliani when 911 hit, a columnist and an adviser to Giuliani when the former New York mayor ran for President, warns that the controversy over the “Magic Negro” sign is more than just a tempest in a political teapot.
Writing in The Daily Beast, Avlon says this:
Would-be RNC Chair Chip Saltsman’s decision to send out a Christmas CD to GOP committee-members featuring a song calling our President-elect “Barack the Magic Negro” is the just the latest sign of Republicans’ tone deafness when it comes to race. It’s a problem that has led directly to the pathetic lack of diversity on its political bench and underscores the party’s long-term challenge of regaining relevance in the Age of Obama.
Saltsman presumably did not intend to offend by mailing out the parody CD by Paul Shanklin with songs that first aired during the campaign on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. A look at the lyrics shows that the song’s real target is the Al Sharpton-sound-alike singer who feels that Obama has usurped his rightful place as the protest leader of African-American politics. But now that Obama has been elected the president of all Americans, and Saltsman is attempting to run for leader of the opposition party, the song—whose title comes from a Los Angeles Times column—could not help but become a lightning rod. The failure to anticipate the outrage points to the blinders that exist in racially homogeneous Republican backrooms. Conservatives who take good ol’ boy pride in being politically incorrect are either unaware or don’t care that they come off as being somewhere between indifferent and hostile to the full diversity of American life.
But ultimately, this is not a problem of political perception—it is rooted in the Republican Party’s electoral strategy over the past four decades.
There’s a lot more, so go to the link and read it in its entirety. Avlon needs to be ready closely: he wrote the best book ever on centrists and independent voters in America: The Independent Nation. Since Obama won the election with centrists and independents as a key part of his coalition, centrist reactions could be useful to the (if it wants to get bigger voting numbers in the future).
My earlier take on this issue is HERE.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.