A leading contender to become chairman of the Republican Party has left senior officials horrified after he distributed a CD featuring a parody song called Barack the Magic Negro.
At a time when the party seeks to recover from heavy electoral defeats in November - and amid calls that it should reach out to younger and ethnically diverse voters - the emergence of the parody, sung to the tune of Puff the Magic Dragon, has left many Republicans cringing.
Chip Saltsman, a former leader of Tennessee Republicans, who is seeking to take over the party's national committee, sent the CD to party members as a Christmas gift. But unlike him, few found it funny.
The ditty, written by Paul Shanklin, a conservative parodist, alludes to an opinion piece penned by the black writer David Ehrenstein in the Los Angeles Times last year headlined “Obama the Magic Negro”. In the article the author argued that voting for the “warm and unthreatening” Mr Obama helped whites to alleviate guilt over the country's past racial injustices.
