In 2003, Bush marked the holiday by announcing his opposition to affirmative action.
WASHINGTON -- President Bush plans to challenge a University of Michigan program that gives preference to minority students, telling the Supreme Court there are better ways to promote diversity, administration officials say.
[...] Fleischer outlined Bush's philosophy moments after announcing the president's plans to commemorate Martin Luther King's birthday and increase aid to Africa.
Nice.
4 comments:
Well, yeah, I suppose there's something ironic about commemorating King by advocating that people be judged by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin.
I'm just having trouble figuring out what it is...
I gotta give you credit...that's a good comeback.
Bush has a perverse streak. He seems to go out of his way to do things such as the ones you noted.
In "Bushwhacked," Molly Ivins writes about how, early in his first term, Bush visited a federally funded job training center in Oregon. He shook hands, got people's names, praised the place, the job it was doing and everyone involved.
A few months later, Bush slashed funding for job training centers. The one in Oregon was de-funded out of business, as best I can recall. Ivins claims he has a pattern of doing just this kind of thing.
The point isn't to have a debate about affirmative action—you can agree or disagree on that if you want, Brett—it's that Bush and the Republicans have a habit of making these kinds of "announcements" and there is a reason.
Starting your campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi (Reagan), visiting Bob Jones University (the whole lot of 'em), and deliberately releasing news not in the interest of blacks on MLK Day are designed to be coded messages to racists—"never mind that stuff the President he has to say in front of the the cameras about MLK, he's got his priorities straight when it comes to those negroes."
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