So, as you may or may not have heard, one of the worst moments of President George W. Bush’s life was when Kanye West intimated that Mr. President did not care about the plight of Black people, specifically those in New Orleans during Katrina.
Now, as anyone who knows me knows, there’s nothing more that I enjoy more than mocking various current and former leaders of the free world. And, given my opinion of his policies, President Bush 43 is a great target. Having said that, there was something about this criticism that does not sit well with me. And after a week and a half or so of thinking about, I think I know what it is.
Think about your life. Think about the worst thing that ever happened to you, the worst moment of your existence. Now be honest. Was it Katrina? Was it September 11th? Was it the Oklahoma City bombing or the Atlanta Olympic bombing? Was it Darfur, Bosnia, or Rwanda? Or was it that car accident, that awful diagnosis, that death of a loved one?
For most of us, it is the latter category. We recognize the others are horrible tragedies and most of us would regard them as some of the worst things to happen to people as a collective. However, when we get personal we, well, get personal. The things that affect only us and our loved one usually hit much harder than the things that affect the world at large.
Now was it politically stupid? Yes. Does it speak to President Bush’s privileged life and, perhaps, something of a distance from his own time in office? Probably. We should all be so lucky to have our worst moment involve a rapper calling us out on TV (even if it is the certifiable genius Mr. West). But that doesn’t mean he is being callous when he says it. For him, that moment was personal and hurt like hell. He knows Katrina and 9/11 were worse in the grand scheme of things, but they did not cut him to the bone in the same way.
Thus, while I do think he was a lousy president, I think here, he’s just being an honest guy.
What? I had to do something to reset the balance of the universe after standing up for him. Also, it is kind of cute, isn't it? In a vaguely disturbing way.
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What? I had to do something to reset the balance of the universe after standing up for him. Also, it is kind of cute, isn’t it? In a vaguely disturbing way.
You couldn’t find a picture of Dubya hamming it up with the live turkey right before it gets butchered for the White House Thanksgiving meal?
Incidentally, while I don’t necessarily disagree with the sentiments behind your post, I do disagree with some of the assumptions being made — that the Kanye West comment and Katrina / big picture catastrophes are totally separate subjects. You have to recall, Dubya was elected in a highly controversial election in which many pundits cried foul about black people in Florida (among other demographic categories) being disenfranchised, throwing the state — and the White House — to the Republicans. In the run-up to that election, the NAACP and others ran ads about Bush happily putting dozens of black convicts to death in Texas and turning a blind eye to hate crimes and racism — Exhibit A being that ad with the grainy video of the truck pulling a chain and referencing the gruesome James Byrd murder.
Bush then goes on to ramp up an incredibly expensive drive to take on HIV in Africa, and is probably going half insane trying to make the gears of the clusterfucked government work in response to Katrina.
With that background, of course it makes sense that Kanye’s comment that “George Bush hates black people” cut straight to the bone. So in sum, you’re right about the personal psychology of this, but the Katrina and other big-picture stuff is part and parcel of why this affected him so much as well.
Another minor point to note, in the ramp up to the 2000 elections, it was a significant part of the RNC strategy to try to hack away at the Dem advantage among blacks. Yes, everyone figured Bush would do well with Hispanics too given his positive history with them in Texas, but the black thing was a bigger deal, and the thinking was, if Republicans could get 15-20% of the black vote instead of just 10%, that’d be enough to make it impossible for the Dems to win anything of significance. No doubt the outrageous lies and attacks by the NAACP and others were in direct response to this threat, and they proved to be incredibly effective: Bush did so poorly amongst blacks, the RNC largely abandoned that effort to make inroads among blacks in future elections, with little to no progress made in 2004, and the nadir being in 2008 having to face a black Democratic presidential candidate. We’re probably 6-10 years away from the GOP again making any progress with black voters, and in the meantime, urban Republicanism has more or less died on the vines.
AMLTrojan …
2 words …
Allen West …
1 word…
And?