Reading notes

Now, Bob Herbert, I actually would like to drink a beer with. Bob conveys a powerful image:

The country has put its faith in Mr. Bush many times before, and come up empty. It may be cynical, but my guess is that if we believe him again this time, we’re going to end up on our collective keisters, just like Charlie Brown, who could never stop himself from kicking mightily at empty space, which was all that was left each time Lucy snatched the ball away.

Bob assesses of Mr. Bush that in his “Maybe I accept responsibility” and “we must confront poverty with bold action” post-Katrina persona —

He [is] being Lucy again, enticing us with the football. But before we commence kicking the air, consider the facts.

This president has had zero interest in attacking poverty, and the result has been an increase in poverty in the U.S., the richest country in the world, in each of the last four years. Instead of attacking poverty, the Bush administration has attacked the safety net and has stubbornly refused to stop the decline in the value of the minimum wage on his watch.

You can believe that he’s suddenly worried about poor people if you want to. What is more likely is that his reference to racism and poverty was just another opportunistic Karl Rove moment, never to be acted upon.

If polls are a truthful indication, maybe we are indeed more than a nation of gullible bobbleheads: most of us have stopped being fooled by the same trick.

You got no cred left, Lucy. Mars, anyone?

Beyond the probable opportunism, though, it’s true we’ve got a lot of work ahead to detoxify our culture of subsurface racism and overcome our out-of-sight, out-of-mind epidemic of poverty.