Michael Steele fails empathy at Howard University
The RNC chair brings "off the hook" politics to a premier black college and insults a woman who lost mom to cancer
By Mike Madden
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/feature/2009/09/02/steele_at_howard/WASHINGTON -- Back in January, Michael Steele promised the Republican National Committee that he'd bring the GOP brand into places it hadn't been seen in a while. On Tuesday night, the world finally learned what he meant.
"What's up, Howard? How's it goin'?" Steele asked, taking the podium at Howard University -- one of the nation's oldest, and most prestigious, historically black colleges -- for a stop on what the RNC is calling his "Freedom Tour."
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Steele paced the room, asking students to stand up and tell him what their post-college hopes and dreams were, and trying to encourage them to reach them. (The biggest round of applause all night came when one student told Steele she hoped to be a U.S. senator from Maryland, and he said that probably meant she'd be a Democrat.) "It's important to be here, to show you that from 8th Street NW to this moment, it happens," he said. "It can happen." Which was true enough. But since nearly everyone he called on said they wanted to go to law school -- the talk was, after all, co-sponsored by Howard's Political Science Society -- the message flirted with condescension.
Things got worse when a young white woman (whom the Washington Independent's Dave Weigel identified as Amanda Duzak, a Towson University graduate student) interrupted him to say her mother had recently died of cancer because she couldn't pay for her chemotherapy. The crowd cheered -- and another RNC official there quietly gestured to a nearby campus police officer, who began walking over toward Duzak. People all around the room started shouting at Steele about how everyone in the country should have healthcare, and applauding those who were interrupting him.
But just when it seemed like Steele might have to slink out of the hall, he recovered -- by blasting Duzak for heckling him. "You can shout, and I can ignore you," he told her. "It makes for great TV. You'll probably make it tonight. Enjoy it." It was a harsh putdown, but it silenced the crowd (not to mention Duzak, who by that point was being escorted out by the police). The video is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN2SM2ReJko