Kanye, Bush and Katrina (from TheGrio)

"George Bush doesn't care about black people!"

In a media environment that had already generated hundreds of thousands of words about Hurricane Katrina, its aftermath and the response of the Bush administration, those seven words spoken by Grammy-winning rapper-producer Kanye West, at a concert fundraiser for Katrina victims on Sept. 2, 2005, distilled what many Americans believed about the 43rd president's efforts on behalf on the flood-ravaged region.

West was caught up in the moment of what was even then, three days after the floodwaters inundated the Crescent City, a still-evolving national event.

In the nearly five years since, with benefit of hindsight, it's possible to put West's outburst in a broader perspective — one that, with some research, yields facts more charitable to the Bush #43 legacy than one might expect.

Read the rest at theGrio