Republican National Committee chairman candidate Chip Saltsman blamed the media Tuesday for the uproar over a CD he sent out in December that included a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro.”

Saltsman did not apologize for sending out the song, a parody referring to a 2007 Los Angeles Times column of the same title that is written to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon.” He said during an interview on MSNBC that the episode exposed media bias.

“We’re definitely not playing on a level playing ground with the media on that issue,” Saltsman said. “I mean, there was no outrage when the L.A. Times article coined that phrase.”

Questioned by host Contessa Brewer why he was pointing a finger at the press, Saltsman responded: “Contessa, I’m asking you, were you outraged when you read the article in the L.A. Times a year and a half ago?”

“It was a parody Christmas gift, and I sent it out without even thinking about what was on it,” he said. “Obviously, when you do something like that, you don’t want to offend a lot of people when you do. That’s something you don’t want to do. And, you know, hopefully that we’ll move on, talk about the future of the party.”

Note to Chip, thinking is of the good.

UPDATE: Saltsman gets the smackdown by a lady in a silken bow. (h/t Kleinheider & Pith)

She picked Dawson. Ruh-row.

Turns out that up until last September, Dawson – who announced his candidacy for the chairmanship in November – was a member in good standing at the 80-year-old Forest Lake Club, that has no black members and a deed with a “whites-only” restriction.

Nice big tent you got there, Robin. But if it’s set up at Forest Lake, our new President can’t get in.

UPDATE: Mr. Dawson has also been endorsed by American Family Association founder Don E. Wildmon, a vocal opponent of marriage equality and a guy just nutty enough to think that he can get a boycott of McDonalds to take root. Wildmon wrote in a statement to his supporters, “if the Republican Party is to survive, it must get back to its roots. I believe that Katon Dawson…has the ability to take the party where it needs to go – to Burger King.” (OK, I added that last bit).

(Strike 2: Dawson was also kind of dick to Stephen Colbert.)

(Stike 3: Fuzzy math and the “absolute poster child for the Republican Party’s long-term demographic ills.”

Although born in Nashville just days before Martin Luther King, Jr.’s tragic death in Memphis, my life and the life of my country have been shaped by Dr. King’s vision of an America that was united by brotherhood and justice and that refused to be divided by race, color or creed.

Since those dark days of 1968, our nation has made tremendous progress towards his noble hope. While more work remains, his life and his service provide an ideal to which we should always aspire and which we should never forget.

While the pretty words are nice, Dr. King would probably have preferred that an initial disgust at the recording of ‘Barack the Magic Negro‘ would have prevented Saltsman from adding it to the Christmas mix cd he sent out as a gift last year.

And while Saltsman and his party try, in the words of Frank Rich in yesterday’s NY Times, to get passed the “spirited debate” about whether or not he did the right thing by sending it, the more troubling question is that after the insensitivity was brought to his attention, why didn’t he realize his gross error in judgment and simply apologize?