Romney’s Sap Rejected At NAACP

He is a brave man, this Romney who faced the NAACP to tell them that African Americans are at the bottom of the economic totem pole. This, coming from a quarter billionaire, had to be awe-inspiring.

Of course he had observed earlier that the gap in education achievement in the black community versus the rest of the nation was “civil rights issue of our time”. And coming from a privileged preppie whose academic achievement are rooted in boarding school, he has to know what the disparity in learning environment, teacher motivation, teacher incentive, and building comfort must mean, when he compares his institutions of learning to the walls of the public schools that are so common to the demographic he addressed at the NAACP convention today.

Though he may have appeared brave, his appearance as a pandering politician whose selfish ambition to have his resume say POTUS greatly overshadowed this relative bravery. The thought that standing before as group of people who remain at the lower rungs of the social ladder and broad brushing the issues that affect them most, would give him the ’04 Bush numbers in Black votes was a smug and arrogant stance.

Yes, blacks are suffering a 14% unemployment rate in their communities but hasn’t this been a historical fact long before President Obama took office? And aren’t the reasons equally, if not more deeply, rooted in social malaise than in political provision? That is what Mr. Romney needed to address, very specifically, if he intended to garnish the attention and ultimately the support of the Black community.

And why would he say Obama Care? Clearly, Team Romney remains out of touch or they would have realized that the health care plan Mr. Romney pejoratively refers to as Obama Care, will offer the demographic he is trying to woo, the dignity of being offered adequate health care in this nation that offers health care gratis around the world. Mr. Romney has said openly that he likes to fire people who provide him poor service. Maybe he could give us a practical demonstration by giving his team their walking papers. Small wonder that the response from the crowd was a cacophony of well deserved boo’s.

 Mr. Romney hopes to sell a culture of exclusion to a people whose history is marred by exclusion, whose opportunities were always fewer, if existent  rewards lesser, if available. These limits to opportunities are unknown to Mr. Romney who has known nothing less than the lap of luxury and the boundless opportunities that money can buy.

So he did what he has mastered over the course of a career practicing the politics of convenience. He gave us another foppish dislay of obliviating idiocy, showing manufactured emotion for music he doesn’t understand, fidgeting nervously, every time the organ played a church note to punctuated his speech, not sure if he was having a Show Time at the Apollo’s elimination moment. He tried his best to make his Vaudeville Act one that was believable, quoting Frederick Douglas but not explaining why, amongst his employees at Bain, there was not one black hire. He smirked and recited and parlayed and politicked and ended up by telling the Convention that he is a rich American, who will not apologize for his success and who knows how to create  and grow jobs by cutting what he deems as non essential services, like Obama Care and teachers and firefighters and other budget-sapping services.

Mr. Romney still seems not realize that all people are asking him to apologize for is gutting American industry and castrating American job opportunity.

In the end, Mitt left the podium taking with him the ignominious reputation of being the first guest to be booed at an NAACP convention and what was left of his Vaudeville act of trying to woo a demographic he is out of touch with.