When members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted on whether to publicly condemn President Donald Trump’s latest racist outburst — this one directed at a quartet of non-white Democratic congresswomen — the results were predictably partisan.Democrats voted to censure Trump, and the bulk of House Republicans voted against the measure. We can track just how low expectations have sunk by noting that only four Republicans felt comfortable noting for the public record that blatantly racist comments from a sitting president are out of line.Total vote tally: 240 in favour of rebuking Trump’s Twitter rant, 187 against. The sides in this conflict are clearly defined — either you reject racist statements from elected officials or, like those 187 Republicans, you accept them out of solidarity with either the party or the sentiment. But if you’re the PGA, which has a long history of hosting major events at Trump-owned country clubs, you try to choose both sides. Last weekend’s Twitter screed prompted calls to relocate the 2022 PGA Championship, scheduled for a Trump golf course in New Jersey. Instead, the organization told Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold they would rather “stick to sports.”“We are fully committed to diversity and inclusion, but we are not a political organization (and) simply don’t weigh in on statements made in the political arena.”Except politics infuse any decision to trade with a president who regularly funnels government business to his privately-owned hotels. Common decency is at play here, as is marketing for a sport that’s struggling to retain casual fans. The PGA’s refusal to speak out against Trump’s racism undermines them on all fronts.There’s no good-faith debate over whether the president’s tweets about congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib were racist. They were. The only discussi ...
|
