Do you remember when Kanye made his mark in the collective post-Katrina conscience when he said Bush doesn’t care about black people? Those on the west coast may not have seen it in the CA NBC telecast of the Katrina fundraising event, because Kanye’s comments were edited out.

Despite NBC’s unfortunate editing, everyone knew about it. It spread through MySpace, text messages, and blogs like wildfire. And it was shocking - especially to Mike Myers, did you see his face while Kanye was going off? Oh and Chris Tucker’s expression was equally priceless. But people started to see Kanye in a new light.

I did - it gave me a new found respect for Mr. West and the diamonds he owns…

Yesterday, Bush spoke at an NAACP meeting, his first ever in the past five years. Everytime the organization has invited him, it seems, he has declined. But this time, he showed up with a message of reconstruction and reconciliation, to build a relationship with African-Americans. He lamented how Abraham Lincoln’s party let go of its historic ties to African-Americans. The grand ole party misses black people! Bush, in fact, loves black people!

Was Kanye wrong?

Maybe I’m missing the point, but I thought parties were run by people, and as is the case with most large groupings of people (and from my own experience), people often stop attending meetings and their involvement when they see that organization no longer stands for them.

In other words, I don’t think the Republican party let go of black folks; black folks got rid of the party. It didn’t stand for them or their needs. But, Bush really doesn’t have much firm ground to stand on, so his grabbing at straws makes a bunch of sense.

But he did receive a standing ovation, once. When he discussed how the Voting Rights Act of 1965 needed to be renewed. Man, people stood up for that. Hours later, the senate passed it unanimously.

On nearly every other subject, his southern twang only hit seated silence or adversarial hooha. He tried, oh how he tried, to defend his track record. Not very easy. He was booed when discussing charter schools. A heckler heckled him while talking about whats going down in the Middle East.

He pronounced NAACP as N-A-A-C-P, not the ubiquitous vernacular N-double-A-C-P. But that is a fine sum up - Bush is so disconnected from the realities of African-Americans that he cannot even pronounce their organization’s name correctly! Granted, he might have a language problem, but still. In a speech trying to win over the hearts of the audience (tangent: can a single speech win the hearts of anyone?), the first point of connection is on the surface. And there is nothing more superficial than the name of the organization that invited you to speak.

At least get that right.

Edit:  Check out this article in the Washington Post about the speech.  Its a nice summary.

Posted by Vivek on Thursday, July 20th, 2006 at 11:51 pm.