{UAH} Edward Mulindwa, as I was saying......: KING: Conservatives hated an uppity negro golfing President

No President in American history has ever golfed more per week than Donald Trump. In his first 12 weeks in office Trump took a staggering 18 golf course trips. That's unheard of. In his first 12 weeks in office, President Obama didn't visit a single golf course. By the end of this year, it's likely that Trump will have golfed more than President Obama has in his entire presidency.

And that's strange. It's really strange. Because Donald Trump and other conservative pundits seemed to be deeply bothered by the times President Obama went out and golfed. It appeared to genuinely offend them. They obsessed over it.

Throughout the campaign, Trump frequently riffed on how much Obama golfed and pledged, "I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf." The crowd ate it up.

Throughout the Obama administration, any time President Obama golfed, some famous conservative pundit chimed in. It was a reliable punchline that consistently got a rise out of their base.

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In 2013 Sean Hannity tweeted, "Glad our arrogant Pres. is enjoying his taxpayer funded golf outing after announcing the US should take military action against Syria."

Just a few months earlier, Newt Gingrich tweeted (his misspellings not mine), "Trump and president obsma both golf but trump doesn't charge the taxpayers $920,000 for a golf weekend in florida."

Neither of those tweets have aged well. Now it is Trump enjoying his taxpayer-funded golf outings after announcing military actions all over the world, including Syria. Now it's Trump charging the taxpayers not $920,000 per golf outing in Florida, but reportedly much more.

Suddenly, the costs of golfing don't seem to offend Trump or Newt or Hannity anymore. And I sincerely, genuinely don't think the problem is political. It's racial.

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More than ever, it's clear that conservatives never really had a problem with a golfing President, what they hated seeing was a black golfing President. I also think this was the subconscious message that Trump was pulling on throughout the campaign trail to his almost exclusively white audiences.

The racist caricature of the "uppity negro" has deep roots in this country. Uppity negroes have irritated white folk for over a hundred years. In its most simple form, the uppity negro is a black man or woman who enjoys anything other than working from sunup to sundown. Particularly, an uppity negro is a black man or woman who enjoys creature comforts in life that some whites may not yet be able to afford to enjoy — say a musical, a play, fine dining, or, you guessed it, a round of golf.

It's why referencing Obama golfing got such a rise out of white, working-class crowds. It was a coded way to say, "How dare that uppity negro golf and enjoy leisure time why we work hard to make this country what it truly is?" Of course, they could never use those words, but I truly believe that is what they wanted to say every single time they expressed disgust and disdain seeing Obama golf.


(Luis M. Alvarez/AP)
And it's why those same conservatives are now silent. The problem wasn't that they hated seeing a President spend the money on golfing. The problem wasn't that they hated seeing a President spend precious time on the golf course. A golfing President never disgusted them. The problem was that few things irritate bigoted white men more than an uppity negro.

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And if Obama was anything to the average white bigot, he was just that — the quintessential uppity negro, with his Harvard Law degree, and his beach trips to his home state of Hawaii. Over and over again, white conservatives obsessed over things like the exact costs of Obama's family vacations. Now though — with tons of money being spent to protect the entire Trump family as they gallivant all over the world, for business or pleasure, those same critics are now silent.

Imagine Michelle Obama demanded to live in a gold-plated penthouse in the middle of Manhattan, costs be damned, while President Obama lived in the White House alone. The outrage would be riot-level fierce. Now, conservatives no longer care.

Again, it was never about costs, or convenience, it was all about white rage at the gall of uppity negroes to do anything other than work their fingers to the bone.

Tags:
barack obama
michelle obama
donald trump first 100 days
newt gingrich
us military
syria
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