Oh, this Kanye West-George W. Bush thing just gets better and better, doesn’t it? Let’s go back five years, when a hurricane named Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of the United States. Levees surrounding New Orleans gave way, flooding the city. When problems arose in evacuating New Orleans residents (many of them black and poor) seeking refuge in the city’s Superdome, charges of racism started to fly.
But not against those in city, county and state government in Louisiana. No, the incompetence in evacuating and aiding flood victims was placed squarely at the feet of one man, and one man only: then-President George W. Bush.
During a television spot that aired in which he was supposed to urge Americans to help flood victims, rapper Kanye West spouted his now infamous accusation “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
That lie soon morphed into another one. The phrase “care about” was switched to “like,” so that it became the slander, “George Bush doesn’t like black people.”
Fast-forward five years. Bush has published his memoirs, in which he writes that West’s scurrilous accusation was “the worst moment of my presidency.” In an excerpt published in the United Kingdom newspaper the Telegraph, Bush elaborated:
“He called me a racist. I didn’t appreciate it then. I don’t appreciate it now. It’s one thing to say, ‘I don’t appreciate the way he’s handled his business.’ It’s another thing to say, ‘This man’s a racist.’ I resent it. It’s not true. It was a disgusting moment, pure and simple.” West has recently apologized for that “disgusting moment,” but no sooner had he done so than another rapper, Shawn Carter (aka Jay-Z) decided to chime in with his two cents’ worth.
“It was bad timing,” Carter said of West’s 2005 rant, “but it was absolutely an honest emotion. We all felt like that. We didn’t feel like Katrina was a natural disaster. We felt like it was an attack on black people. All you saw was black people on the roof with ‘help’ signs.”
Meanwhile, back in the real world — you know, the one where facts still matter — the more levelheaded among us can do a little research to prove what kind of alternate universe Carter lives in. In 2006, Juan Williams’ book “Enough” was published. Williams devoted a section of his book to Katrina, New Orleans, and the puerile notion that the inaction of the Bush administration was racially motivated.
“Senator Barack Obama,” Williams wrote, “concluded the incompetence was colorblind. Carl Brasseaux, director of the Center for Louisiana Studies, who had a firsthand look at the aftermath of the hurricane, said, ‘I don’t think race was the fundamental issue here.’ And a leading white Democrat from Louisiana, former Sen. John Breaux, got very specific in taking apart the charge that the Bush administration performed its rescue efforts so badly because of the color of the people in harm’s way. ‘The two parishes south of New Orleans, St. Bernard and Plaquemines, are mostly white,’ said Breaux. ‘They are devastated and they arguably got a lot less attention than New Orleans.’ ”
Those facts didn’t stop rap mogul Russell Simmons from heaping praise on West, who advised the rapper “there is no need to apologize.” (Carter’s and Simmons’ comments appeared in Rolling Stone magazine.)
Simmons added, “It was not the particulars of your words that mattered, it was the essence of a feeling of the insensitivity toward our communities that many of us have felt for far too long.”
Translation: It’s not the truth that matters, just our feelings of eternal, blessed victimhood.
