Bush's NAACP Speech a Nonsensical Mess

The president finally deigned to address the NAACP on Thursday, delivering one of the most patronizing and misleading addresses on domestic policy ever to slither its way out of the Neocon catastrophe. Reviewed politely by both the Times and the Post, the speech took just thirty-three minutes to deny the existence of institutionalized racism; lie about the supposed benefits to the Black community of an important goal of Bush's economic agenda; tout his enthusiasm for the Voting Rights Act while ignoring his own party's attempt to kill the law; acknowledge the existence of antipathy between African-Americans and the GOP while simultaneously denying responsibility for it; and in opposition to all fact, posit the competence of federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

The most egregious failure of Darryl Fears' (WaPo) and Sheryl Gay Stolberg's (Times) coverage of the speech was to highlight the audience's cheers for Bush's support for the Voting Rights Act but to leave out the fact that it was members of his own party in the House who loudly and angrily tried to halt the bill's renewal, in what the entire punditocracy agreed was a crushing embarrassment for the president, his party, and the South. In a story framed around the Republican Party's attempt to "reconcile" with African-Americans, to omit the fact that a significant proportion of the GOP have declined to hop on the president's make-nice train is just bad journalism.

Other aspects of the speech either ignored or mischaracterized by the Times and the Post include:

• The audience's loudest cheer came in affirmation to Bush's statement that the "GOP has ignored you." It was not an expression of support, as characterized by the Post (and as reported on by Media Matters).
• Contrary to Bush's assertion that eliminating the estate tax is critical to creating an "ownership economy," repealing the tax would benefit an estimated 59 Black individuals in this country. Not 59 percent, mind you, but 59 people.
• Many lines of the speech obviously written as applause-getters were met with silence.
  
• For a president supposedly dedicated to personal responsibility, his statement that "[h]istory has prevented us [the GOP and Black Americans] from working together" is the worst kind of cop out. I wonder now if the way is clear for me to tell the IRS that "history prevented me from paying my taxes."