Rush Limbaugh Called Obama 'Our Little Boy President.' In 2012.

On March 9, 2012, Rush Limbaugh was complaining that journalists protected Barack Obama from criticism over the economy. His show's own published transcript preserves the expression he used for the president:

The surrounding passage is sarcastic. Limbaugh was mocking a Politico article about the political risks of expectations for improving employment. He portrayed the press as fretting that Republicans would attack Obama whatever the jobs figures showed. The phrase was part of his imitation of that protective attitude, not a line he attributed to Obama.

There was an economic argument available. The Bureau of Labor Statistics release that morning reported February payroll growth of 227,000 while unemployment remained at 8.3 percent. You could argue about the pace of recovery without hauling a grown man back into the nursery.

And this particular nursery has a history. The National Park Service's language guide at Arlington House explains how calling adult African American men boys stripped them of status and reinforced racial hierarchy. The disrespect was the point of that historical usage. Applying the word to a Black president carries that baggage into the broadcast.

Limbaugh had used similar language before. Media Matters' October 2009 compilation documents earlier instances of him describing Obama as a boy or a child. The wording had a record before this broadcast. Our February 2012 entry on his mortgage-plan remarks records a separate broadcast.

Limbaugh's target was an adult Black president, and the put-down demoted him. Sarcasm supplies the sneer. It doesn't scrub the history out of the word.