2%

That’s the percentage of black Americans who support President Bush according to recent polling. So he hardly has anywhere to go but up, and yet I think he may have managed to cut that number in half, during yet another disastrous photo op:

It was Soul Food Thursday at Howard University last week, and many students were looking forward to their favorite meal: fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, collard greens and cornbread. At lunchtime, however, students discovered that much of the campus had been locked down and that the school's cafeteria was off limits.

Apparently, many of them did not know that President Bush and first lady Laura Bush had arrived for a "youth summit" at the Blackburn Center, where the dining hall is located. Stomachs began to growl, tempers flared, and, eventually, a student protest ensued.

[…]

What might have been a public relations coup for Bush -- a visit to a historically black college to show concern for at-risk youths -- ended up as another Katrina-like moment, with the president appearing spaced-out, waving and smiling for television cameras while students were trying to break through campus security to get to the cordoned-off cafeteria.

[…]

All he had to do was drop in on Soul Food Thursday, be seen sharing a wing and some collard greens with students -- and score one for the GOP.

But the visit went from bad to worse. On a day when the U.S. Senate passed a resolution paying tribute to civil rights icon Rosa Parks, who died last week, campus security guards were telling students that if they wanted to eat they'd have to come back when the president and first lady were gone, then go to a service door at the rear of the dining hall and ask for a chicken plate to go. Never mind that a student meal plan at Howard can cost as much as $2,500 a semester.

Howard is not some hotbed of political activism… To set off a student protest at this school, you'd have to be politically tone-deaf in the extreme, out of touch and flying blind. And yet, Bush did it.

(Hat tip to Shaker Oddjob, who pointed to this Kos diary.)

The protest ended up with students locking arms around a flagpole in the Quadrangle and refusing to move as long as they were denied access to parts of their own university, even in the face of threats from the Secret Service, who warned them that snipers were at the ready on rooftops. Unbelievable.

The irony is that Bush and the first lady were appearing as part of the White House Conference on Helping America’s Youth that was being held at Howard. Yep, that sounds about right—exactly the kind of help most black Americans have no doubt come to expect from the Bush administration.

Here’s a Reuters (Larry Downing) photo of the event:


He looks very comfortable, don’t you think? And no, I didn’t just pick the worst one. You can see more here, and they’re all just as bad. Well done inconveniencing a bunch of American youths to prove how helpful you are to America’s Youth. And you didn’t even end up with a decent photo. Wanker.