I'm amazed that Richard Cohen could write the column (Washington Post, 9/20/05)  "Incompetence, not Racism" about George Bush's response to Katrina. In depicting Bush as unfairly smeared by the charge of racism and as one who genuinely cares for the poor, he has simply replaced one stereotype with another, while missing the real story. For the sake of argument, let's accept as true the proposition that Bush is not a racist in the normal sense of that term. I submit that he is still a blindly prejudiced individual whose prejudiced and blinkered view determined his incredibly lackluster response to the suffering in New Orleans.

What George W. Bush plainly is, is a spoiled, sheltered little rich kid who truly has no idea about what it is like to be poor and powerless in America. His born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth existence is the source of his biased, bigoted, prejudiced, blind view of the rest of humanity, especially poor minorities. The evidence that Richard Cohen presented to prove Bush's lack of racism actually proves the point of his inbred spoiled little rich kid ethos. What the evidence shows is that Bush can at most muster the condescending view of poor people as helpless and hopeless denizens toward whom good rich Christians now and then throw a few dollops of charity. "The poor are always with us," I betcha, is the prism through which George Bush views the citizens of New Orleans. As long as those poor are getting those few crumbs of charity, what on earth do they have to complain about? 

This is the natural outlook of someone who himself has never had to worry about where the next meal is coming from; whether his family would have a roof over their heads; whether they would have adequate medical care. Who never even had to worry about whether the bankruptcy of his business would leave him and his family penniless. Who himself has never in his entire life been held accountable for any mistake he ever committed. Who therefore is genuinely baffled as to why he should demand accountability and responsibility for the mistakes of his subordinates. Who has no moral qualms about appointing his incompetent political cronies to critical federal agencies with life-and-death authority over the lives of Americans. Whose only test for his subordinates is whether they are loyal to him. Whose only criteria is to say to his lackeys, "As long as you are willing to lick my boots, you will have a place in my administration, no matter what horrors you are responsible for."

But what gets me about Cohen's column is his failure to zero in on a recent event that revealed the true soul of George W. Bush. The event that I had thought would trigger a Richard Cohen column headlined, "The Apple Doesn't Fall Very Far from the Tree," instead of one finding lame excuses for the boob. That event was Barbara Bush's visit to the Astrodome, where she saw displaced flood victims:

"Overwhelmed with the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working [she chuckles here] very well for them."

Shame on you, Richard. As a fan, I expected better from you.