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I’m loath to jump on anything pushed by professional bully Andrew Breitbart, but since he rules the world of the traditional media and, apparently, key agencies in the executive branch, it’s worth retelling this sad story.
Hoo boy. Conservatives apparently aren’t going to back down from ever more overt appeals to racial resentment this summer. BigGovernment.com “broke” a story yesterday about a speech given a few months ago by Shirley Sherrod, USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development, at an NAACP Freedom Fund dinner. In it, Sherrod tells a story from 24 years ago about not helping a white farmer as much as she could have because she was “struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farm land.”
The point of this story, told in a public venue, was that she quickly realized that she had done wrong. “That’s when it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those who have. It’s not so much about white…it is about white and black but it’s not, you know…it opened my eyes.”
What’s not in there was that this incident happened in 1986, needless to say well before Obama’s Nubian overlords returned Black America to triumph. But despite the context, selectively edited out of Biff from Back to the Future Breitbart’s post, and despite the fact that the “victim” in this case, the white farmer, called Sherrod a friend for life and said that the official kept the family out of bankruptcy, the USDA nevertheless forced Sherrod out:
Sherrod told CNN on Tuesday that she was told repeatedly to resign Monday afternoon after the clip surfaced.
“They harassed me,” she said. “I got three calls from the White House. At one point they asked me to pull over to the side of the road and do it because you are going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.”
Sherrod said the calls came from Cheryl Cook, USDA deputy undersecretary for rural development.
“The administration was not interested in hearing the truth. They didn’t want to hear the truth,” Sherrod said.
Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, took full responsibility for the Sherrod firing, saying the White House was not involved in the decision. Vilsack said that the dismissal was correct in light of the history of racism against black farmers at the USDA, and that Sherrod’s judgment has been called into question.
As Digby notes, the defensive, back-on-their-heels executive branch administrators have basically given over their hiring and firing decisions to professional outrage addicts on the right. They have lost the will to fight.
After ACORN and now this, I really have to wonder if the Democrats and Brietbart aren’t actually working together on a whole Sistah Soljah campaign. It’s a little bit hard to see why anyone over 10 years old would fall for the same ruse over and over again. (Hey, maybe their focus groups show that simply alienating liberals isn’t going to impress those swing voters so they need to alienate the black vote too…)
But I also have to wonder if they know what the optics of this are. If two-bit sociopathic wingnuts can scare them to this extent with obviously doctored videos, what happens when they see a real threat? Are they going to flap their arms like penguins and run around in circles screaming “they’re coming to get us, run for your lives!!?” At this point, that doesn’t seem entirely ridiculous.
TPM Muckraker has their own comprehensive look. Shirley Sherrod appears to have been railroaded by a combination of propagandists just looking to get back at the NAACP and put her in the crossfire, and frightened little children inside the Obama Administration who will bow down to whatever nonsensical story the other side can dream up. If these guys were around in the Clinton Administration, we’d be down to President Daniel Inouye, the other members of the line of succession having been impeached for accepting inappropriate gifts or calling Matt Drudge stupid or something.
UPDATE: Reading the twists and turns of how the firing went down, it seems to me that the White House is hiding behind it being “Vilsack’s call,” while they certainly exerted pressure to make this go away, even before knowing all the facts.
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This is a political world, and it makes no sense to relate that story in that way. There are too many recent events where the supporters of the President have not served him well.
Obama’s hopes for “no drama” are likely going to dissipate as Vilsack’s cowardly reinforcement of such a mistake by management are going to keep this thing alive across multiple news cycles. Seems to me Vilsack’s credibility takes a big hit, even though he was doing the White House’s dirty work. Will Vilsack be able to keep his job, I wonder.
Why do I think this firing was a from-the-hip call by Rahm? But more to the point, how could anyone ever react to a Breitbart video after it was so thoroughly proven what a charlatan he is after all of the made-up editing of the ACORN video? Is the White House run by morons?
There is a LOT of logic in this move – I voted FOR 0-sell-out, and now I won’t check off his name –
(unless he does a 180 on something real and something lasting – ha ha ha)
- I’ll write in “me” or … Barbara Feldon – whoever, just NOT 0-sell0ut or his fascist opponent of 2012.
There are many who checked off his name OR voted for him who are scared, and this is brilliant! NOT only do they gotta keep their mouths shut, cuz some righties are gonna f’king lie about you – like joe mccarthy did, BUT
your side is gonna give you the Shirley-Acorn knife in the back!
oh well, I ain’t gonna check off the sell outs name, anyway.
rmm.
So it is really that easy to oust an Obama admin troop? Hell, if that is all it takes, I say we take something Rahm and Summers says about, well, ANYTHING, no matter how bland and low-key and twist it into some big “thing”. Obama will drop them like hot rocks (and about time too!).
Let’s get cracking. We need some carefully edited youtube footage.
Meh. The President and ALL his advisors haven’t served him well (let alone the people that REALLY matter…we the people who they are supposed to SERVE).
Piss on Obama the cowardly weakling (his official title doesn’t even deserve upper-case letters).
To be redundant (posted previously), I find this whole situation beyond ridiculous and through the looking glass into absudity. To recap:
The NAACP calls out (rightfully, I feel) some elements of the Tea Party as racist.
Sarah Palin (a national figurehead, whether we like her or not) stands up for the Tea Party and calls the NAACP on what they said. Agree with Palin or not, she “stood up” for her “constituents.”
Known serial liar Breitbart clearly retaliates with an edited video meant to prove the “racism” of the NAACP, which ends up tainting Shirley Sherrod, who is pretty much an innocent victim of Breitbart’s slander. Sherrod never put herself out on the national stage in any way.
And what happens?
No one – repeat NO ONE – stands up for Sherrod. No. One.
The NAACP immediately knee-jerks in distancing itself from and dissing Sherrod, who is one of “their own.” WTF?
Sherrod’s boss, Vilsack, immediately knee-jerks and fires her. Doesn’t ask for Sherrod’s side of the story; doesn’t look at the full video. Just fires Sherrod on the spot.
And the POTUS? Well, Barack Hussein Obama can HIDE all he wants behind Vilsack, but the White House was certainly crowing and patting itself on the back for “taking care” of the situation by ensuring that Sherrod got fired immediately in response to what some rightwing known liar named Breitbart (a tool of Rove, some say) said.
Citizens take note: THIS is how the so-called “liberal/progressive” establishment takes care of it’s own. Do we have some national figure, like Sarah Palin, to come along and speak up on our behalf??? Most emphatically, we do NOT. No, rather we have own national figures – NAACP, BHO, the White House, Vilsack – come along and FIRE us in response to a blatant LIE crapped out by well-known lying crummy rightwing “journalism.”
Take note. WYSIWYG.
We can all sit around decrying the Breitbarts & the Murdoch’s of this world, and they are deserving of all scorn and derision for their amoral, unethical behavior. But their amoral unethicalness is WELL KNOWN and well documented.
So my question is: WTF was going on?? WHY was Sherrod summarily fired after an egregious stupidly edited video was dumped out by the likes of lying scum like Breitbart???
The so-called “left” – or the so-called “Democrats” – really need to LOOK IN THE MIRROR and figure this one out.