Rush Limbaugh describes arguments that everyone should hope for Obama‘s success as a president in somewhat crude terms:
We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles … because his father was black.
Huh. You know, back in the day, the homoerotic undertones of miscegenation fears were usually at least somewhat obscured. I’m not sure what else Obama’s father being black would have to do with Limbaugh’s fear of being forcibly sodomized, but I do know that for Limbaugh, this fear is always bubbling close to the surface. Last year, Limbaugh expressed similar racially tinged sentiments responding to a listener’s question (the “10 percent” and “2 percent” in this quote refer to the percentage of the population that is gay or black):
“Let me see if I can get your question right. You want to know why the Republicans are willing to say, ‘Screw you,’ to 30 percent or more of their voters and yet Democrats will bend over, grab the ankles, and say, ‘Have your way with me,’ for 10 percent and 2 percent of the population?”
In 2005, when Ken Mehlman was going to appear at an NAACP event, Limbaugh said this:
Know what he’s going to do? He’s going to go down there and basically apologize for what has come to be known as the Southern Strategy, popularized in the Nixon administration. He’s going to go down there and apologize for it. In the midst of all of this, in the midst of all that’s going on, once again, Republicans are going to go bend over and grab the ankles.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say Rush Limbaugh has some deep-seated fear about being raped by black men. Perhaps he should consider therapy?
— A. Serwer
