Demagogue

The interactive "Ask the White House" feature on WhiteHouse.gov rarely produces interesting or challenging questions, which is probably why the Bush administration is rather fond of it. Yesterday's "Ask the White House" would have been particularly annoying to Eugene, our resident eye on Africa. It featured Cindy Courville, who is the White House's Senior Director for African Affairs.

There were one or two meaningful questions, but the rest were rather bland or so vague that Courville was left to simply recite a (no doubt) predetermined list of talking points. The discussion included these gems:

* Jurgen from Holland felt compelled to intrude on the discussion to ask Courville to "give my congratulations to President Bush, [it] is his birthday today." Jurgen, if you want to wish the prez a happy birthday, send him a frickin' card through snail-mail instead of hijacking an online forum. (Arnold: Is there actually a person in the Netherlands who gives a shit about Bush's birthday?)

* At one point, Courville provided a mini-travel log of her trips to various African nations, including Angola "where I experienced the best lobsters in the world" and "Cape Town, with Table Mountain, and the fine wines of South Africa." Within a few days, she added, "I will go to Darfur and see first hand the horrors of genocide." Ah, yes ... Africa: land of tasty lobster, fine wines, and horrific genocide.

* Michael from Long Beach offered Courville a softball set-up, stating that even though the U.S. "is often criticized for not giving enough" to deal with AIDS and famine in Africa, "I seem to remember in many speeches that the President states that quite a bit of aid and funding" is going to these causes. Naturally, Courville wrote enthusiastically about the Bushies' $15 billion anti-AIDS fund for Africa. Perhaps Courville didn't read this recent Washington Post article:

... officials from President Bush's $15 billion anti-AIDS program issued a news release (in January) citing their accomplishments. Nowhere were the numbers more impressive than in Botswana, where 32,839 AIDS patients were receiving life-extending treatment with the help of the U.S. government, they said.

But thousands of miles away in Botswana, the Bush administration's claim provoked frustration and anger among public and private partners that had built Africa's most far-reaching AIDS treatment program ...

Although the Bush program had promised millions of dollars of support, no money had yet arrived .... The operations manager of Botswana's treatment program, Segolame Ramotlhwa, called the U.S. figures "a gross misrepresentation of the facts." His boss, Patson Mazonde ... called the Bush claim "false" but suggested it was merely a mistake.

They agreed on the number of patients in Botswana who had been put on treatment because of the Bush program: zero.