The laziness of John Sununu

John Sununu indulged his habit of calling Barack Obama "lazy" yet again during a MSNBC interview Thursday, the third time in as many weeks that the Mitt Romney mouthpiece has lobbed a cheap, racially loaded insult at the nation's first African American president.

Perhaps we should be grateful that Sununu, the co-chairman of the Republican challenger's presidential campaign, didn't re-implicate Obama's purported indolence in the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens -- like he did September 27 on Greta Van Susteren's show.

According to a transcript posted on Foxnews.com, Sununu opined that Obama skimps on/skips over essential security briefings. "This president thinks he's so smart...He thinks he doesn't need to put the extra work in for going through that process," Sununu said. "That's why I say he's lazy and detached. And unfortunately, Ambassador Stevens suffered the consequences of us not providing adequate security there."

Predictably, some right-wing bloggers are accusing Sununu's critics of "political correctness," a facile charge so over-used it has lost its meaning.

But the adjective "lazy" does mean something in this context. As my colleague Annette John-Hall points out in her column today,  the word lies in a musty yet trusty lexicon that effortlessly enables a speaker to wink-wink, nudge-nudge racist stereotypes into a conversation, or a campaign.

Sununu, sometimes referred to as a "bully" but rarely if ever as a "dullard," surely knows what he's doing. And he should know better.