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Limbaugh Repeats Myth That Obama Is Of ‘Arab-African’ Descent

Yesterday on his radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh falsely claimed that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is “Arab.” “He’s Arab. You know, he’s from Africa. He’s from Arab parts of Africa,” Limbaugh claimed.

Today Limbaugh repeated the lie. While attempting to deny that race may play a role in the presidential campaign, Limbaugh read portions of a Philadelphia Daily News article by Dave Davies. Limbaugh inaccurately quoted Davies’s article, inserting the word “Arab” into a description of Obama’s ethnicity. According to Limbaugh, the article read:

Obama’s name and his Arab-African heritage are obstacles to the party’s chances of capturing the White House, party activists are finding.

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In reality, Davies’s article reads:

Obama’s name and his African heritage are obstacles to the party’s chances of capturing the White House, party activists are finding.

As Yglesias notes, “Obama’s father was, for the record, from Kenya which is not an Arab part of Africa.” Limbaugh’s latest attempt to stoke racist fears of Obama is particularly ironic considering the fact that Limbaugh penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last Friday accusing Obama of “stoking racial antagonism.”

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Limbaugh, however, has used his radio show again and again to do exactly that. In the last 18 months, Limbaugh repeatedly played a song that called Obama the “Barack the Magic Negro,” argued that Obama has “disowned his white half,” and referred to Obama as the “affirmative action candidate.”

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