OK So Bush isn't *Completely* Stupid

I have a billion diaries to write about the events of the last two weeks, but fiercely overwhelming emotions combined with body-slam work levels has prevented them all. But I couldn't overlook this gem buried in today's NY Times story ("Casualty of Firestorm: Outrage, Bush & FEMA Chief") about the shitcanning (banishment is a more accurate descriptor) of Michael D. Brown aka Brownie aka So-called FEMA Director:

Behind the president's public embrace of Mr. Brown was the realization within the administration that the director's ignorance about the evacuees had further inflamed the rage of the storm's poor, black victims and created an impression of a White House that did not care about their lives.

One prominent African-American supporter of Mr. Bush who is close to Karl Rove, the White House political chief, said the president did not go into the heart of New Orleans and meet with black victims on his first trip there, last Friday, because he knew that White House officials were "scared to death" of the reaction.

"If I'm Karl, do I want the visual of black people hollering at the president as if we're living in Rwanda?" said the supporter, who spoke only anonymously because he did not want to antagonize Mr. Rove.

Rove Envisions Rwanda


Assuming that the feelings attributed to Karl Rove are both fairly ascribed to Dubbya himself, I don't know whether to feel complete outrage or the refreshment of a spring breeze of truth when I read the bolded quote.

Rove/Bush was "scared to death" to visit the Black victims in New Orleans.

Rove/Bush was scared to have "black people hollering.....as if we're living in Rwanda".

Well, if nothing else, we have confirmation of two things:

Rove/Bush ain't stupid. He (when we're talking about Bush and Rove, we're talking about only one brain, as everyone knows) is well aware that Black folks have absolutely, positively, nothing to lose by letting him know exactly what they think and that most are not beggars for their rights, but demanders for their rights who really have no patience for platitudes when the shit is hitting the fan.

Rove/Bush ain't stupid. He knows that he would have been in real danger of an asskicking had he said even 1/2 of the stupid shit he said last week directly to the faces of these folks in the midst of their suffering. After all, most of them have never heard of that federal law prohibiting threats to the President. And, to teh extent that he didn't know it before, he certainly knows now that he cannot control what Black people say or do, and they don't care who he is (as Bush's little tete-a-tete with the two Black women from Mississippi showed most attentive viewers).

Which is why he hid, for the most part, safely behind the doey appreciation of white victims who think more like he does and would never "embarass him" (or give him a verbal ass-whuppin) before the cameras.

Now, if we can just get Bush that scared of the American people at large - we might just get something done.