Inside George Bush's Head

Kanye West - a rapper, I believe - went a little bit off script at a recent telethon for Hurricane Relief. As comedian Mike Meyers stood by solemnly, Kanye started talking about how tardy the relief efforts had been and how scant the resources had been, to which Mike Meyers nodded in agreement, and then Kanye stated: "George Bush doesn't care about black people!" And Mike Meyers stopped nodding. The show suddenly cut away from the Rap star to somebody else - I think this guy was a relief official - who wasn't really prepared for his close-up and was still fixing himself up for his upcoming segment. It made me think. While I'm more than happy to ascribe all sorts of villainy to our current president, I just don't think he actually is a racist. His cabinet, for example, is the most culturally diverse of any administration and has included two Secretaries of State of African ancestry. It would be pretty hard to say that one of the most important cabinet posts is just a 'token' job to him. Does George Bush care about working Americans? That question might be closer to the mark, because what on Earth does this guy really know about being a working American? He never was one. He never had to have a job to put food on the table or to drive a big car or to raise his family or any of that. From time to time he had an occupation, like the Air National Guard, sort of. He did things in life but it was more from the perspective of a tourist who could leave the situation whenever he felt like it. The understanding of what it's really like to have to budget your money to pay the bills, to have employment as an absolute requirement to live - he never knew that. I think the guy really does care about others. I do think that all of the tears I see him shedding on TV are real ones. But the true empathy that comes from walking a mile in someone else's shoes, well, he'll never know that. And that is why we see administration policies that destroy the lives of working Americans, not because he is plotting to throw most of us into twenty first century serfdom, but rather he has no idea that this is precisely what he's doing.