Come On

So Bush is now doing his goodwill tour of New Orleans. I snagged this off Comcast’s front page:


Check out the first sub-head: “Bush Denies Race an Issue in Relief.” Oh, certainly not—even though there’s one lonesome black guy in this picture, in spite of the fact that the majority of New Orleans residents most devastated by Katrina were black, as anyone who has had a passing acquaintance with news coverage in the past two weeks could attest.

I suppose they just didn’t want to misuse President Sideshow’s photo op and accidentally give the false impression that we’re living in Rwanda. Hat tip to Oliver Willis who pulled the following from the Times:

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.

Harrumph.

Btw, read this by Digby if you haven’t already. Gee, those maps are curious.