Occasionally I’ve heard black people mention that they respect a racist who owns up to his prejudice forthrightly more than a hypocrite who uses tortured arguments and code words. Like many of President Obama’s right-wing critics, Karl Rove still falls into that latter dishonorable category.
But Rove was scarcely subtle in his latest attempt to agitate the drooling bigots in the Fox News audience. (Not every Fox viewer is a white racist, of course, but every white racist with cable watches Fox. As Karl knows.) Last night on Fox, he barked that the president has “a lazy attitude toward the job that he’s got.”
The Republican boss is himself evidently too lazy to come up with a different line of innuendo — possibly involving watermelon, fried chicken, welfare, or basketball. Wait! He actually did use the basketball meme to slam Obama in a Wall Street Journal column in 2008 – and then added, in case any readers missed the point: “He is often lazy.”
Well, Obama was energetic enough to kick the butt of Karl Rove’s preferred candidate in that election and again in 2012, but that hasn’t discouraged Rove, Hannity, Palin, Beck, or a million other wingnuts from repeatedly using that same slur. (Doesn’t that mean they’re all lazy?)
If we have to measure the industriousness of presidents – and it’s a stupid exercise, but they insist – then let’s examine two of their favorites. It is established fact that George W. Bush took more than three times as many vacation days as President Obama, probably more than any president since that other great GOP success, Herbert Hoover. Rove ought to know, since old “Turd Blossom” was largely responsible for foisting the Dubya disaster on his country.
And let’s not forget the late Ronald Reagan, who spent plenty of recreational time at his California ranch — and made sure to take a nap without fail every day. The sainted Ronnie once explained that the White House job wasn’t really too taxing on him because…
[He] had a great routine: he walked to the office before nine and was home in the residence by 5 or 5:30. He ate dinner and often watched a movie with his wife, then went to bed. “I have three guys who mostly run things for me.”
But then Reagan was a white man, which apparently means he’s always working hard, even when he’s napping.
