Too Much, Magic Bus

By
Wednesday, May 06, 2009 at 9:02 am

PajamasTV hasn’t really been in the news since it hired Sam “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher to report on the war in Gaza, but it’s still kicking. Some of its most popular content is coming from black conservative comic Alfonzo Rachel, who sometimes appears as “President Zobama.” He’s put together a music video that is mostly notable for the way it captures the little memes and stories that have been forgotten outside of the deep conservative base.

A little decoding: it is considered noteworthy, and hilarious, that President Obama dispatches political allies who become a problem to him. Indeed, this is pretty strange and no politician has done it before. But since the cliche “throwing [person or thing] under the bus” took hold, conservatives have applied it to anyone that Obama apparently distanced him from, ever.

• The video begins with Rachel running over a TV image of “my white grandmama,” whom conservatives believe was “thrown under the bus” in Obama’s speech on race when he talked about her admitted uneasiness among black men.

• The reference to the “brother in a shack” is to George Obama, the president’s half brother, who lives in Nairobi.

• The lyric about the “magic negro” story is sort of garbled — Rachel says the “New York Times called” Obama that, but it was black critic David Edelstein Ehrenstein in The Los Angeles Times. Rachel jokes that Rush Limbaugh was pilloried for citing the comment, but it didn’t really become an issue until Republican National Committee chairman candidate Chip Saltsman sent around a CD of parody songs including “Barack the Magic Negro,” sung by an Al Sharpton impersonator.

Anyway, that’s the state of PajamasTV at the moment.

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Comments

64 Comments

Ned Resnikoff
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 7:04 am

Here's what's confusing about this video: Are we really supposed to believe that Alphonzo Rachel and the rest of the Pajamas Media crew would be happier with Obama if instead of throwing Ayers and Wright “under the bus” he had tacitly supported their politics?


Kevin K.
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 11:40 am

That may rank right up there as perhaps the worst song parody video ever. Not only is it poorly written and not at all funny, but it's fairly obvious Zo doesn't understand the what the concept of throwing people under a bus means. Hannity? Limbaugh? For reals?


David
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 12:33 pm

I always try to steer clear of the “Make Your Own Video” booth at Carowinds.


erik
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 12:35 pm

that is some crass s*$t.

after the first line, i was like….and IM DONE.


mkd
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 12:38 pm

Why does he act like the next line is still going to be “Under my thumb” when he chooses to go with “Change has come”? You're rhyming the one word you intentionally changed! Stop it!


MLite
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 12:42 pm

The funniest part to me is that Mr. Rachel, while singing as (Z)Obama in the first person, makes no effort to look or sound like President Obama. For the Pajamas crowd, it's apparently enough that he's black for them to “get” the impersonation. I guess when the crowd is so WASPy, all black men look alike.


Paul
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 12:46 pm

Exactly. If I remember correctly, conservatives were vocally calling for Obama to distance himself from Wright. But now that he has, he's supposedly cynical and calculating. You can't win with these people.


Tim
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 12:49 pm

This is horrifying. Will MC Rove be doing a hip-hop remix?

And it was David Ehrenstein, not Edelstein.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ehren…


langx
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 12:51 pm

This proves that Republicans don't do funny.


DavidT
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 12:53 pm

You mean David Ehrenstein, not David Edelstein. There is a world of difference.


Piepiepie
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 1:03 pm

It's not even close to being funny either — I guess that passes for humor.


Jamie
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 1:04 pm

Yeah. THAT'S what's confusing about it. . .

The Ayers thing is particularly strange. Obama “distanced” himself from his non-existent (or just barely existent) relationship with Ayers only because the right wing media kept talking about it. They try to associate him with a controversial figure, Obama pushes back, and so he's throwing the guy under the bus?

Really then.


tompain
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 1:13 pm

It's not so much offensive as it is boring. It's just not funny.


Wrecktum
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 1:21 pm

Brother can't sing worth a damn.


KevoTron
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 1:41 pm

OMG! So funnee!!!!1!! He's black like the preznit and so it's okay to laugh at racist stuff! How come he didn't make a “rap” about his fake birth certificate?


decklap
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 1:46 pm

One can only hope that the wingnuts keep making and consuming this stuff. They can just blame the librul media for all the subsequent elections they lose.


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Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 1:49 pm

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nomoremister
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 1:52 pm

He runs over Reagan, Hannity, Wall Street, and Atlas Shrugged? How do they qualify as ex-friends and ex-allies he's now cast aside as inconvenient?

Or am I just being an idiot for expecting coherence from right-wing comedy?


nomoremister
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 1:55 pm

Oh, and Bush, too. Hunh?

And I think a random passage from the Internal Revenue Code would be more singable than that last verse.


sash
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 2:21 pm

You just know brother has a white girl friend. lol


Ripley
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 2:27 pm

Sam Kinison did it better.


sash
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 2:30 pm

check that. You just know brother has a white boy friend. ……… not that there is anything wrong with that.
lol


Dave
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 2:40 pm

At the 1:21 mark, is that Gordon Brown going under the bus? GORDON BROWN?


Seth
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 4:39 pm

Not funny? It's very funny! Just not in the way he intended.


KeithB
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 7:26 pm

I think the video would have been better if they got a different black guy, let's say maybe President Barack Obama, to do the singing and the dancing and the driving of the bus in question. Then the underbussing of his good friend Sean Hannity would have made more sense.


Jim
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 8:46 pm

Politics aside, it has a kernel of a decent parody. But the lyrics need a lot more polishing, and it needs a different performer altogether–at least one who can hold a tune, and preferably one who can do a decent Obama caricature at the same time.

Makes you realize how good Wierd Al really is.


John
Comment posted May 6, 2009 @ 11:25 pm

The 'Magic Negro' song was out for over a year before the libbies went apesh!t about it. So much for principled objection.

No, this is NOT a defense of Limbaugh – merely an observation on How Things Really Are.


John
Comment posted May 7, 2009 @ 6:11 am

After the Republican party has gone the way of the Whigs (which may be very soon now), and the Smithsonian has a little exhibit on long-departed political parties of the past, this video will be one of the museum's artifacts. This is just how indescribably lame the right got before principled conservatism started to make its slow painful comeback. That is just amazingly unfunny.


tgb1000
Comment posted May 7, 2009 @ 8:27 am

I certainly hope PJTV makes this guy their director of programming. He can lead the effort of Palin / Plumber in 2012. Or maybe Bachmann / Limbaugh. And what does 'ZObama' signify anyway?


Joel
Comment posted May 7, 2009 @ 12:24 pm

These guys are more clownshoes than Tony Allen.

They make Randi Rhodes look like Colbert by comparison.


it's his name
Comment posted May 7, 2009 @ 3:30 pm

'zo is a common nickname for dudes named Alonzo.


Joel
Comment posted May 7, 2009 @ 7:24 pm

These guys are more clownshoes than Tony Allen.

They make Randi Rhodes look like Colbert by comparison.


it's his name
Comment posted May 7, 2009 @ 10:30 pm

'zo is a common nickname for dudes named Alonzo.


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