The right-wing media have spent much of this month sniping at President Obama for taking a vacation. Now, some are taking the criticism up a notch, venturing into racially charged territory in the process.
In an August 22 column, WorldNetDaily founder and editor Joseph Farah wrote that “You won’t hear me complain that Obama is taking his 17th vacation in the last two-and-half years,” adding: “We should be grateful the man has no work ethic. Just imagine the damage he would have done to the country if he did.” Farah also asserted that Obama “vacations more than any of his predecessors,” which is simply false.
Then, in his August 23 WND column, Burt Prelutsky took a break from hurling epithets like “loathsome” and “Chicago cockroach” at Obama to declare: “I wouldn’t care if Obama was a Muslim if he weren’t such an arrogant, lazy, snotty, lying socialist.”
That’s twice this week that WND columnists have portrayed Obama as lazy. The idea of the lazy black man is among the hoariest bits of stereotypical racial imagery out there, as Media Matters noted when Fox News’ Eric Bolling described Obama as “chugging 40s” and having “hoodlums in the hizzouse.”
It’s not the first time that the birther-obsessed WND branch of anti-Obama activism has ventured into this territory. Last year, the WND-affiliated Western Journalism Center published an article with the headline “Is Obama Stupid and Lazy?”
(Cross-posted at Media Matters.)