Hmm, I don't think that government healthcare will be the issue really, because I don't think it's something the majority really wants (more of a 50/50 issue I think).  I do however see some serious wall street regulation overhauls being passed in 2009.  I also think that Obama is going to put some serious effort into summits with other nations to "rebuild" Americas reputation so-to-speak.  So I think will be a year of him flying all over the world as well.

I just hope to god that Obama becomes the first president to keep his beak out of the mideast peace talks, I really do.  Nothing drives me more nuts than when they get an Arab and a Jew to shake hands and say "peace in our time" because the foundations for peace between them just won't work.  It's a horrible waste of our president's time.  He needs to stay focused on America.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-1230edit2dec30,0,3342271.story

Poof goes the GOP

Republicans have been rejected by American voters in the last two national elections. They've lost the House, the Senate and the White House. They have just about given up on the African-American vote. More Hispanics turned away from them this year.

Yet some of the people who want to run the national Republican Party think that a song mocking the race of the next president is all good, clean fun.

There's going to be a little more interest now in who wins the race for chairman of the Republican National Committee. If it's Saltsman and company, the party is going to be in the wilderness for a long time.

I don't really know what to say about that.. Just plain silly? Stupid?
And if you look at the definition of "magical" negro, it's not necessarily a bad one, just "politically incorrect". Although I wouldn't pass it on some people as negro itself being offensive, it most likely is. From your own "definition": "The word negro, now considered by many"; Many, not all. This is quite different from the other N-Word, don't you agree?

And about spike Lee... You shouldn't have mentioned him:

"In May 1999 The New York Post reported that Lee said of National Rifle Association President Charlton Heston, "Shoot him with a .44 Bulldog." Lee contended, "I intended it as ironic, as a joke to show how violence begets more violence," Lee said Thursday. "I told everyone there it was a joke. I said I did not want to read in the papers, 'Shoot Charlton Heston.'" Insisting that he has no reason to apologize, Lee further explained that the remark was in response to a question about whether Hollywood was responsible for the then-recent rash of school shootings, saying, "The problem is guns," he said. Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey issued a statement condemning Lee as having "nothing to offer the debate on school violence except more violence and more hate."[8]

In 2003, Lee filed suit against the Spike TV television network claiming that they were capitalizing on his fame by using his name for their network. The injunction order filed by Spike Lee was eventually lifted."

Lee sparked controversy on a March 28, 2004 segment on ABC when he said that basketball player Larry Bird was overrated because of his race, saying, “The most overrated player of all time, I would say it'd be Larry Bird. Now, Larry Bird is one of the greatest players of all time, but listen to the white media, it's like this guy was like nobody ever played basketball before him--Larry Bird, Larry Bird, Larry Bird, Larry Bird, Larry Bird.”[11][12]

"At the 2008 Cannes Film Festival Lee, who is making Miracle at St. Anna, about an all-black U.S. division fighting in Italy during World War II, criticized director Clint Eastwood for not depicting black Marines in his own WWII film, Flags of Our Fathers. Citing historical accuracy, Eastwood responded that his film was specifically about the soldiers who raised the flag on Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima, pointing out that while black soldiers did fight at Iwo Jima, the U.S. military was segregated during WWII, and none of the men who raised the flag were black. Eastwood also pointed out that his 1988 film Bird, about the Jazz musician Charlie Parker featured 90% black actors, and that his upcoming movie about post-apartheid South Africa will not feature a white actor in the role of Nelson Mandela, angrily saying that Lee should "shut his face". Lee responded that Eastwood was acting like an "angry old man", and argued that despite making two Iwo Jima films back to back, Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers, "there was not one black soldier in both of those films".[13][14][15] In fact, black Marines are seen in scenes during which the mission is outlined, as well as during the initial landings, when a wounded black Marine is carried away.[citation needed] During the end credits, historical photographs taken during the Battle of Iwo Jima show black Marines.[citation needed] Although black Marines fought in the battle, they were restricted to auxiliary roles such as ammunition supply, and were not involved in the battle's major assaults, but took part in defensive actions."

Via: Wikipedia (copy & paste, so it might be a lil messy)



It's Idiots like spike Lee that only push race relations backwards, and I'm sure you might see a few similarities to some of the things in this thread?

Oh, and no body insults Clint Eastwood. He will hunt you down

I think people are missing the key element. These aren't private citizens producing art, like Spike Lee, this is the RNC distributing morale boosting music.

I wonder how everyone would be acting if it was the Obama campaign that sent out a recording of "We sure showed the White Folks"?

I would be outraged.

Strategy King... listen bro.

I am an ardent conservative, and I make no secret of this. I was a member of the RNC and the Republican Presidential Roudtable starting when I was only 19-years old (please wiki me if you think I am joking). I received the Republican Senatorial Medal of Freedom for my contributions to the party... so I am no amateur here, I promise you.

With that being said...

Please, stop justifying the stupidity of the RNC. We can whitewash it however we see fit, but it doesn't change the fact it was an insanely stupid move. And no matter what you say will change that.

The RNC made a huge screw ball move here. I swear to god that republicans are starting to sound like the Clinton apologists now. Excuses, excuses, excuses.

Just admit that our party screwed up royally, and move on. Trust me, it's the right thing to do.

I thought it was a funny song, and most of the black people I know did to. There was not much racial in the song, but then again I only heard it once.

I even read that Barack heard it, and thought it was funny.

We should start a "Who's your favorite magic negro?" thread.

Super duper magic negroes have almost completely replaced the "wise old bearded white dude" archetype. And Morgan Freeman almost has a monopoly on the role today. He was a god and a janitor at the same time in Bruce Almighty. He has unlimited godly powers, but he just steps aside to mop the floors and give advice to Jim Carrey. But then again, Morpheus in the Matrix is a pretty damn epic magic negro with the pills and the kung fu skills, but he's just there to teach and train the young white Neo.



Discussing the racist archetype/stereotype in films is one thing, but calling a political figure a magic negro is another. Calling Obama a magic negro is saying that he is a token black, and a puppet for the white man's agenda, and that's just more of this "he isn't black enough" crap.

I doubt most of the people who hear the song have even heard the term "magic negro" before, but either interpretation is very racially insensitive and stupid for a politician to defend.

Man, steven is on fire!  I don't even have to say anything else!

I'm all for open discussion, so here is a good article that takes an opposite view.  I do think it makes a few generalizations towards the end without providing any examples though if I do have any complaints.

GOP Song Boneheaded, Not Racist

By Ruben Navarrette

SAN DIEGO -- Here's a debate that strikes a familiar chord. When do song lyrics that are meant to be entertaining hit a sour note and become offensive?

Many conservatives think rap music crosses the line. In 1990, Republican officials in Broward County, Fla., declared obscene an album by the group, 2 Live Crew, and sheriff's deputies arrested members of the group after a performance. In 1992, the rapper Ice-T released an album featuring the song "Cop Killer," which President George H.W. Bush called a threat to police officers. After law enforcement associations boycotted his record label, Time Warner, Ice-T pulled the song from the album.

During those skirmishes in the culture wars, you would hear liberals defend the creative process, praise the First Amendment, and dismissively tell anyone who was offended by vulgar lyrics to "get over it" and develop thicker skins. Now those on the left have the chance to show us how it's done and walk it like they talk it.

And it's all thanks to "Barack the Magic Negro," a cheeky parody of "Puff, the Magic Dragon" that pokes fun at the jealousy and resentment that older black leaders initially exhibited toward Barack Obama.

Did you catch that? This is not a song that makes fun of Obama -- as some might assume from media reports -- but rather one that makes fun of those who claimed that Obama was not being black enough or appreciative enough of the struggles of those who came before him. Mimicking the voice of the Rev. Al Sharpton, the song -- which first aired on Rush Limbaugh's radio show -- starts off:

"Barack the Magic Negro lives in D.C. The L.A. Times, they called him that 'Cause he's not authentic like me. Yeah, the guy from the L.A. paper Said he makes guilty whites feel good. They'll vote for him, and not for me 'Cause he's not from the hood."

The "guy from the L.A. paper" is Los Angeles-based writer David Ehrenstein, who penned an op-ed piece that ran in the Los Angeles Times on March 19, 2007. Describing himself as "an African-American whose last name has led to his racial 'credentials' being challenged," Ehrenstein wrote that, besides running for president, Obama was also "running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination -- the 'Magic Negro' ... (who is) there to assuage white 'guilt' (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history." The only hiccup, Ehrenstein wrote, was "criticism (white and black alike) concerning Obama's alleged 'inauthenticity', as compared to such sterling examples of 'genuine' blackness as Al Sharpton and Snoop Dogg."

Why is Obama magic? Because like the dragon in the 1960s folk song, Obama is -- according to Ehrenstein -- not real. Instead, he's "like a comic-book superhero" -- "the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him."

That's radical stuff. It's basically a message to white folks that just because they've accepted Barack Obama doesn't mean they're off the hook for more than 200 years of oppression and discrimination against African-Americans and other minorities.

That's not the kind of thing you'd normally hear from the Republican National Committee, which finds itself embroiled in this controversy after Chip Saltsman, a former chair of the Tennessee Republican Party who is running for RNC chairman, sent fellow Republicans a CD that included "Barack the Magic Negro."

It was a boneheaded thing to do, if Saltsman really wants to lead a party that has managed to scare off or tick off just about every color in the rainbow and now finds itself with an ever-shrinking base of white rural voters right about the time that Census figures are telling us that whites are just three decades away from becoming a statistical minority.

But it wasn't racist. The racism is coming from those on the left, and their simpaticos in the media who twisted this story to fit the narrative of a GOP hostile to minorities. That story line lets the Democratic Party look progressive by comparison -- which allows it to rest on its laurels instead of doing its part to improve race relations.

That's how it is in the game of racial politics. Conservatives are often held to higher standards while liberals skate by on what we might call -- to borrow a phrase -- the soft bigotry of low expectations.