Larry Elder Makes a Fool of Himself Defending the GOP's Racism
By Heather Tuesday Dec 30, 2008 6:00pm
Larry Elder makes a fool of himself defending the GOP distributing the racist CD on Anderson Cooper 360.
ELDER: It's much ado about nothing. Let's remember the genesis of this, there was an article Anderson, in the "L.A. Times" calls "Barack the magic Negro." It was not written by a conservative, in which he made the argument that the reason that people appeal to Barack Obama is that he's not offensive, he's not scary, he's not a criminal, and that's why whites like him.
Limbaugh then did a parody to, as you pointed out, "Puff the Magic Dragon," but the parody really was a Sharpton-like singer. And what the Sharpton-like singer was saying is, I'm unhappy that all these white people like Obama, because if Obama wins, what the hell am I going to do for a living? And so that's what this was. If anybody ought to be offended, it's Al Sharpton.
What bothers me, Anderson, is this whole piece. Democrats say things that are racist or at least racially insensitive about Republicans all the time.
Donna Brazile, who works for your network, once referred to the Republican Party as having a white-boy study.
Howard Dean once said, well, if Republicans were here at this convention, Democrats -- blacks were -- Republicans were here, the only blacks here would be serving tables.
Claire McCaskill running for senate said, George W. Bush let people suffer and die on rooftops in Katrina because they were poor and they were black.
Charlie Rangel, the head of the house and ways committee --
COOPER: You're saying a double standard?
ELDER: -- said that Republicans want taxes. They don't say "N" word or "s" word anymore, they just say, let's cut taxes. They make blatant racist appeals all the time that you let a Republican do a parody, and the fit hits the shan (ph). It's nuts, Anderson.
No Larry what's nuts is calling anyone who points out that the Republican party is full of racists "racially insensitive" or making "blatent racist appeals". I'll say it's becoming increasingly unnecessary to point that out to anyone since the GOP is doing a fine job all on its own of making sure that racism is in your face.
ELDER: It was -- Ms. Rosen, it was satire. And I don't think you want to go over the racist history of the Democratic Party; the party that was opposed to the 13th, the 14th, the 15th amendment, the party that founded the Klan. I'm not defending Republicans' insensitivity in the last two years. They were wrong.
ROSEN: What are you defending?
ELDER: If you want to go over the history of the party, the Democratic Party is a party, historically --
Well Larry you also forgot to point out that those Democrats you're talking about became Republicans.
Full transcript below the fold.
