RUSH: Bill Clinton is all upset, ladies and gentlemen. He’s starting to take shots at Obama on his message of hope. Now, if I recall, wasn’t there a video at the 1992 Democrat convention in New York? It was produced by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason, and it was entitled, The Man from Hope. So Bill Clinton is attacking his own message as it is being delivered by Barack Obama. I also have to note, here you have Michelle Obama getting all upset here about ‘the fear bomb.’ People are throwing the fear bomb by using her husband’s middle name. For those of you that don’t know what it is, it’s Hussein. By the way, as I pointed out yesterday, the first people to put all this out there were Democrats. It was Bob Kerrey, former Nebraska senator who in speech after speech after speech, ‘Barack Hussein Obama.’ It was Bill Shaheen, Clinton cochair in New Hampshire, who raised the specter that: Well, you know, the Republicans are going to not stop with the fact that he admits he used drugs. They’re going to start asking if he sold cocaine and so…
It was the Democrats who put all of this out there — including the middle name business, including Obama being a drug lord, and any number of other criticisms of Obama. This is their MO. They put it out there. It’s like Algore was the first guy to ever mention Willie Horton. Somehow the Republicans get blamed for all this. This is my take on it. Michelle Obama runs around, and everybody — and Obama himself — is acting terribly offended at the use of his middle name. The media now coming to their defense, the media circling the wagons, cable news networks, others in the Drive-Bys talking about the hatemongers ‘on the right, of course,’ that are using the name, because it what? Because it conjures up anti-Muslim feelings. This is the same Drive-By Media that trashed Mitt Romney and his religion. The same media that trashed Romney and Mormonism are now circling the wagons to protect Obama from any association with Muslimism because of his middle name. Romney went out and gave a speech about it to deal with the attacks on his religion that were coming from the Drive-By Media. He went down to Texas in fact at the George H. W. Bush library and made a speech. Will Obama make a speech about this? No way, folks.
Obama is too busy telling people how to raise their kids. He forgot to tell ’em to brush their teeth at night, too, by the way. The Democrats continue to be just obsessed with race. Did you see the Washington Post today? It’s a story by Paul Farhi, who does their media reporting at the Washington Post. ‘Did Saturday Night Live Go Beyond the Pale with Fauxbama? — When Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president…’ It’s the left. I’m telling you, they are obsessed with race. They’re obsessed with gender, sexual orientation. You know, you would think that liberals would get exhausted dwelling on race politically. Now they have extended their obsession to entertainment. ‘When Obama announced his candidacy for president last year, some observers questioned whether the senator from Illinois was black enough to embody the hopes and aspirations of African-Americans.’ Well, you know, that’s another thing. It was the libs who put that out there! It was Democrats who asked: ‘Is he black enough?’ It wasn’t us. It was guys like Biden. ‘Hey, you know, it’s about time our side got a clean, articulate black guy in our presidential race.’ They were asking, ‘Is he down for the struggle?’ He’s not.
I have to tell you something. His mother was white, his father was Kenyan. He grew up in Hawaii, other places. He doesn’t have the traditional background. From what I read about Michelle Obama, her childhood and life were not spent particularly absorbing the lessons of the civil rights movement and era. These are two people that largely have been, I don’t know what, immune or removed from the standard African-American experience in this country. There is no ‘there’ there, when you talk about being down for the struggle or being part of the civil rights movement. There is no ‘there’ there, in that sense. Obama, his mother was white, and Saturday Night Live went out and did a Fauxbama character and used a white guy to play Obama. The Democrats are just wringing their hands. ‘Oh no!’ Clinton called Saturday Night Live, called Tina Fey to thank her for the skit that they did portraying the media’s bias toward Obama. Other liberals are calling Saturday Night Live and giving them grief for using somebody, a white comedian, that wasn’t African-American to portray Fauxbama.
In terms of race, I think both of these Obamas are sort of… They don’t have a racial identity. You know, I think that they’re trying to plug themselves into various holes within the civil rights movement to appear to be down for the struggle and so forth. Michelle probably more so than Obama, because of her thesis. She had some of the usual anger and bitterness and so forth. But Barack himself, in terms of being down for the struggle… (interruption) She’s down for the struggle. That’s true. She wasn’t proud of America ’til recently. You’re right, Snerdley, you’re right. But Barack, there’s no question he wasn’t down for the struggle. I mean, he didn’t know what the struggle was. He had other struggles, but he didn’t have this. Anyway, Fred Armisen, who is not African-American, played the Fauxbama character on Saturday Night Live last Saturday. It’s being asked: ‘Is he black enough?’ which was the same thing the Democrats asked about Obama himself early on.
‘Debate over that question has been pinging around the Internet since Armisen, a veteran cast member [at Saturday Night Live], donned darker makeup to portray,’ Obama. He ‘played Obama opposite Amy Poehler’s Hillary Clinton in a sketch satirizing the supposedly cushy treatment his candidacy has received from the media. … Nobody much cared about Armisen’s racial background (he is of white and Asian heritage) when he played Prince and Steve Jobs during seasons past of the NBC show. Nor did it seem to matter that ‘SNL’s’ Darrell Hammond, who is white, has impersonated the Rev. Jesse Jackson for years. Or that decades ago on SNL, Billy Crystal played Sammy Davis Jr.,’ by the way, to a T. But now, ‘Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune put the question bluntly: ‘Call me crazy, but shouldn’t ‘Saturday Night Live’s’ fictional Sen. Barack Obama be played by an African-American? … I find SNL’s choice inexplicable. Obama’s candidacy gives us solid proof of the progress that African-Americans have made in this country. I guess SNL still has further to go on that front.’ Hannah Pool, a writer for the Guardian newspaper in Great Britain, suggested the whole setup had ‘minstrel’ overtones,’ using a white candidate with dark make-up.
So the left is wringing their hands. This is a liberal show, liberal writers, liberal comedians, liberal producer, liberal network, liberal everything, making fun of Obama as Fauxbama by using a white guy, and now the liberals and the Drive-Bys are wringing their hands. ‘Oh, this is horrible!’ Don’t you think that they would just at some point get exhausted with all of this focus on surface matters? I guess my question to Lorne Michaels, who is the grand poo-bah of Saturday Night Live, is: ‘What? Can’t you find a qualified black man to play a black man?’ That would be my question. ‘Do you have to go out there and find some white-Asian guy? What’s the message here?’ This is the Democrats who are asking this. ‘Do you mean in 2008, in the United States of America, with as much emancipation as there’s been, you can’t find a qualified black guy to play a black guy? On a comedy show?’
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I just got a note from noted white comedian Paul Shanklin. He says, ‘You better think about reining it in here today. You’re sounding dangerously close to becoming an Obamaphobe.’ Obamaphobe. That’s a new word. We’ve created here a new word, an Obamaphobe. By the way, this Saturday Night Live business, have you noticed how much whining there’s going on in the Democrat Party? Obama, can’t say the middle name, can’t call me liberal. Michelle Obama, it’s the fear bomb. These people are whining and moaning left and right, the Clintons are whining and moaning about how unfair they’re being treated by the Drive-By Media. Then Saturday Night Live turns around and took the Clinton side in this Obama business, and now the Clintons are being treated just like Republicans are by the Drive-By Media. The Clintons, I don’t think they anticipated this. Bill and Hillary Clinton in the Democrat primary have become the equivalent of Republicans, as far as the Drive-By Media is concerned.
Remember the fuss that the Drive-Bys made over white comedian Paul Shanklin during our airing of ‘Barack the ‘Magic Negro,” which again was a Democrat-inspired parody. Noted white comedian, Paul Shanklin. Well, we got a white comedian playing Fauxbama on Saturday Night Live, and the skit which favored the Clintons and the Drive-Bys are out attacking this guy and Saturday Night Live like they attacked us and noted white comedian Paul Shanklin. I don’t think the Clintons ever planned on this, to end up being treated like Republicans in the Drive-By Media. But this whining — and I’m serious about this — this is unbecoming people seeking the highest office in the land. All this whining and moaning and complaining about names and labels and so forth, it also, ladies and gentlemen, bothers a new sponsor here at the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, Calypso Louie Farrakhan.
(playing of Farrakhan spoof)
That thin skin thickening stuff, it really works. (laughing) Uptight, everything’s all right. Okay. (laughing)