They’re at it again.

As the fish gobble up the last of Osama bin Laden, and as President Obama enjoys a polling holiday with the public, the Right has returned to an old theme: Barack Obama is a Scary Negro.

Let me start with the family values/serial adulterer Newt Gingrich’s appearance on Fox’s Reich Ministry of Propaganda Hour Sean Hannity Show.  (By the way, if you are one of those who mistakenly think Newt Gingrich is an “ideas man,” then you should read the transcript from Hannity’s show and get yourself right.)

During the “interview,” Hannity ask Gingrich about Obama being “difficult to beat” in the upcoming election:

GINGRICH: He will be. Because first of all, he is going to say whatever he needs to win…they are going to try to raise a billion dollars for a very practical reason. He can’t afford to run in a fair election… If he was on an equal playing field, he would lose.

HANNITY: Just — you are saying on his record?

GINGRICH: Yes. On his record, on his values, on his beliefs…

You see, President Obama has different values, different beliefs. He’s the Scary Negro. That was the theme conservatives tried to push in the 2008 election.  In fact, Hannity mentioned “President Obama’s background and associations” during his talk with Gingrich and to this day Sean Hannity’s radio show still features audio of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. 

Which leads us to the so-called controversy over an appearance at a White House poetry celebration by Grammy-winning rapper, Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr., who calls himself Common.  

Conservatives in the media—particularly Hannity and Glenn Beck—have accused the hip-hop artist—who apparently attended Reverend Wright’s church—of essentially endorsing cop-killing and the assassination of President Bush, using as evidence some controversial words he has written for his music and performances.

You know the gittin’ is good when Sarah Palin chimes in. She told the refurbished host, Greta Van Susteren:

The judgment is just so lacking of class and decency and all that’s good about America with an invite like this. They’re just inviting someone like me or someone else to ask, ‘C’mon Barack Obama who are you palling around with now?’

But the news that Common is some kind of angry gangsta rapper is news to most people.  Here’s the way a commenter on RapRadar, a hip-hop site, put it:

RN (Real Nigga) says:

Common may be the squeakiest cleanest rapper in the game ever. This is some bullshit. 

 Here’s  how NPR described the largely unknown artist in 2007:

He shuns popular trends in hip hop and focuses on some of the art form’s core principles: storytelling and presenting music with a message. is part of a tradition of so-called “conscious artists” like Dead Prez, The Coup and Mos Def who try to bring social and cultural messages back to the airwaves.

An interviewer said this to Common last October:

…your music is very positive. And you’re known as the conscious rapper. How important is that to you, and how important do you think that is to our kids?

The interviewer who asked the telling question above was not some crazed lefty working for a radical news outlet.  It was Jason Robinson, a reporter for none other than FoxNews.com.  Of course, that was then, but now is the time to ramp up the Obama-Is-A-Dangerous-Negro meme:

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JUST FOR FUN: As for me, I’m not one who appreciates the aesthetics of hip-hop music, although I can appreciate the fact that other folks do. I do know that a lot of conservatives love country music, with its cheatin’ and drinkin’ and fightin’ songs. Go figure.

And I know a lot of people, including myself, who appreciate a sub-genre of country music, bluegrass.  Some bluegrass songs feature the strangest—and most murder-drenched—lyrics imaginable.

One of my all-time favorites is the Ralph Stanley version of “Pretty Polly,” based on the old folk song about a young lady who is enticed into romance with a man who impregnates her and eventually murders her. Yep. He knocks her up and knocks her off all in one good ol’ timey, four-and-a-half-minute American tune.

That makes Ralph Stanley, and those who like this kind of bluegrass music, murderous thugs, I suppose.  Oh, wait. Can’t be. They tend to be white. Nevermind.

Here is the best version, featuring the greatest living voice in country music, Kentucky’s Patty Loveless: