The Shirley Sherrod incident (see yesterday's post) definitely qualifies of the weirdest stories of the year. Brief recap: NAACP's President Benjamin Todd Jealous smeared the Tea Party by demanding the movement purge the alleged racists and bigots in their group. Breitbart, a key conservative blogger who is allied with the Tea Party movement, with multiple big[something] websites, (e.g., bighollywood, biggovernment, etc.), decided to contrast Jealous' unsupported allegations with footage from a recent NAACP fundraising dinner. Shirley Sherrod, a black Obama Administration USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development, discussed in some length her dealings with a white farmer, whom had requested help in staving off foreclosure on his farm. She felt that the white farmer didn't show her the proper amount of respect and didn't seem to know or appreciate just what was in her power to do on his behalf, and so she initially gave him the bare minimum (I believe it was the phone number to a white lawer familiar with a relevant new Congressional law). The morally-superior NAACP audience voiced their approval for her putting this white farmer in his place. She also bitterly complained about white people having the audacity to ask for help when so many black farmers had gone under. She then mentioned helping the farmer's family out more later and then came to realize that she had chosen the wrong target for her discriminatory activities: it shouldn't be between white and black but class warfare (i.e., the well-to-do).
The NAACP quickly condemned Sherrod's filmed segment , and the White House dismissed her, reportedly afraid that Glenn Beck and others from Fox News would jump on the story. Now comes one of the more interesting twists on the kerfuffle: Fox News decided to play the story sympathetically to Ms. Sherrod, portraying the incident as dated and redemptive in nature, and describing the White House's dismissal as mainly political, incompetent, and unfair to Ms. Sherrod. The NAACP and White House clearly didn't anticipate the Fox News' swerve, not to mention the fact that the white farmer's wife responded by giving her moral support to Ms. Sherrod.
CNN, which has had sympathetic interviews with Ms. Sherrod, decided to make the story more about the White House making a hasty decision under pressure from the political right (and Fox News in particular). The NAACP, of course, went after Breitbart, accusing him of deceptive splicing and misrepresentation of Sherrod's speech, the White House made a public apology for the termination, and reportedly the Secretary of Agriculture has offered Ms. Sherrod another job. I have no doubt Breitbart, whom has broken several big stories, including the recent scandal featuring ACORN's assistance to an alleged pimp, is seething at suggestions that his journalistic integrity has become the issue, not the NAACP's blatant hypocrisy and the White House's politically-motivated and incompetent handling of the dispute. (I'm also sure that Breitbart must be mystified by Fox News' counterintuitive swerve on the story.)
Let me summarize this debacle with my own take on this kerfuffle, which is consistent with yesterday's opinion:
- Andrew Breitbart is the only party that I have found in this kerfuffle whom has acted with integrity--not Shirley Sherrod, the White House, NAACP, Fox News, CNN, etc. I did fault him yesterday for not making clear the excerpted event was 24 years old and predated Sherrod's employment with the White House; however, I think that the racism in the retelling of that story is morally unacceptable. I absolutely disagree that one or 2 statements at the end paying lip service to the idea that racial conflict is not as critical as the class struggle constitutes redemption or "racial transformation"; it's not a reasonable interpretation by any objective standard. The other parts of the speech were totally inconsistent with redemption. This lady made specific reference to sending a white farmer to "his own kind" lawyer, she was upset that farmland owned by blacks was being sold "for practically nothing" to wealthy white men, she took relish at having put one over on this white farmer in question to the enthusiastic reception of the crowd. And so what if she finally did right by the farmer over the next 2 years? Why are we praising her for eventually doing what she should have done from the start?
- Shirley Sherrod, if she has any moral integrity, should decline the White House offer. CNN claims that she was offered a civil rights position with the "post-racial" Obama White House. I wonder if the Obama White House would offer such a position to a white man whom promised to refer people to lawyers "of their own kind"... That speech in question, as The One might say, is "divisive" at multiple points.
- The NAACP has reached their highest point of hypocrisy and incompetence. No matter how you slice and dice it, how was it that the NAACP didn't even know what was said at one of their own dinners, which were on tape? Not only has Ben Jealous failed to provide compelling footage of alleged Tea Party racism, but now he has to explain how a member of the Obama Administration used inflammatory rhetoric, without rebuke, at one of the NAACP's own events! I guarantee if any white politician shared the same type of insights and language before coming to their post-racial Eureka moment, the NAACP would not be arguing the statements were being taken "out of context".
- The White House once again shows ineptitude. It's not just the case that the White House was so anxious to preempt what they expected would be negative coverage by Fox News that due process was ignored and Sherrod was thrown under the bus. But even during CNN's fawning interview with Sherrod, her rhetoric against the conservative press was inappropriate for a government employee. I'm not going to excuse Obama's own hypocrisy here, because he wasn't quite so forgiving when it came to Pickering and others.
- Fox News was not "fair and balanced". I just listened to Ann Coulter on Hannity wax enthusiasm over Sherrod's "full speech" and claimed Breitbart was duped into accepting a knowingly distorted section of the speech. No, as Breitbart points out, the original clip did include her cathartic insight may whites weren't the enemy so much as the upper class. If I'm the redeemed Ebenezer Scrooge, I don't slip in observations over how the poor don't deserve his hard-earned money. It seemed to me Fox News decided early on the real story was the Obama Administration's reaction.
The Moratorium on Gulf Deepwater Goes On While Others Move Forward
What is it that Norway, Angola, Brazil, Nigeria, Canada, Egypt, Congo, Libya and other countries know about deepwater drilling that the Obama Administration doesn't? Already rigs are going away to other regions of the world--and with them, the well-paying American jobs they provide. You mean they don't have TV or the Internet showing pictures of oil being spilled from the Deepwater Horizon? Obama, a third of our declining oil production comes from the Gulf. With millions of cars depending on gasoline on the road and a long transition ahead, when you are going to stop exporting American jobs to the natural resource industry abroad?
Political Cartoon
IBD cartoonist Michael Ramirez has perfected the translation of Obama spin-to-plain English. I was watching Mike Huckabee bring up a great analogy of Bush-bashing Obama fixating so much of a fading George W. Bush in his rear view mirror (on, in my own take, a tankful of gas on Sasha and Malia's credit cards), that he fails to notice what happening in front of the car (in my take, the warning signs of a long, winding road, thereby running the risk of driving off the cliff...) Yes, the Democrats are anxious to provide yet another renewal of unemployment, paid for by new debt for future generations, whom not only have to carry their own government burden but their parents' and grandparents'; they hope the American public doesn't understand that the need for it is a reminder of and poor consolation prize for the Democrats' failed economic recovery policies. The Democrats can once again be proud of their political courage in not living within their means.
Quote of the Day
The man who looks for easy work always goes to bed tired.
Jewish saying
Musical Interlude: Chart Hits of 2001
Faith Hill, "There'll You Be"
Dido, "Thank You"
U2, "Beautiful Day"
Destiny's Child, "Survivor"
