Remember a year ago when, before he had the facts, President Obama said that "the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home" following the arrest of his friend Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge police sergeant James Crowley? Well it has happened again. This time the president was not the only one who got his mental exercise by jumping to conclusions. He was joined by the Secretary of Agriculture and the NAACP.
It all started with a malicious posting on Andrew Breitbart’s conservative website, BigGovernment.com, that deliberately took a statement out of context that was made during a speech Shirley Sherrod gave in March to a local NAACP meeting in Georgia. The statement was cherry-picked from a video he posted of Sherrod telling the meeting about her initial reluctance 24 years ago to help a poor white farmer seeking government assistance.
On the face of it that sounded racist. However had Breitbart posted the video of her complete statement it would have been quite clear that Sherrod was merely pointing out how she managed to overcome her own racial biases as she advocated racial reconciliation. Breitbart claimed he was only trying to show that the NAACP was itself racist after the national chapter had accused the Tea Party of being racist.
Breitbart’s malicious posting took hold like a house on fire. The NAACP released a statement condemning Sherrod. She was forced to resign as the USDA’s Georgia director of rural development. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack went before the TV cameras to condemn her, as did White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.
After the full video clip of her statement was released, Vilsack, Gibbs, Obama himself and the NAACP apologized profusely. Vilsadk offered Sherrod a better job overseeing civil rights in the USDA's Office of Outreach.
Vilsack has said repeatedly the decision to fire her was his own and his alone. After the White House denied any involvement in her firing, Sherrod told TV interviewers that several USDA officials told her that the White House had demanded her resignation.
In an excerpt of an ABC News interview broadcast Thursday, Obama said Vilsack was too quick to seek Sherrod's dismissal. "He jumped the gun, partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles," Obama said. This from the man who, in a rush to judgement, vilified the Cambridge police department and Sgt. Crowley before he knew the actual facts in the arrest of Professor Gates.
Breitbart extracted a 2.5 minute clip from a 45 minute videotape of Sherrod's appearance before the Georgia NAACP group. His deliberate malicious distortion of Sherrod’s remarks is an example of the poisonous garbage that keeps churning around the internet minute by minute. Any asshole can create havoc with a malicious and fabricated posting.
Sherrod is considering filing a lawsuit against Breitbart. I hope she sues the shit out of that dirtbag! By fabricating Sherrod’s ‘racism,’ Breitbart nearly destroyed the life of a good woman.
2 comments:
Not so fast Howie.
May I suggest that...even now...we still don't have all the info.
Subsequent statements by her still put her "racial objectivity" shall we say...in doubt.
Additionally, she allready HAS "sued the crap" out of another governmental offical a decade or so ago wich resulted in a settlement of 350k and, most probably, appointment to her present position.
She accused Glenn Beck of racisism when he in fact defended her. I saw the show. She has accused FOX News of wanting to go back to the days when Blacks kept their eyes downcast and were afraid to look white people in the face when FOX News only aired what the NAACP released to them (an out of context snippet), after NAACP had themselves vilified her. (FOX news issued an appology the following day).
As one FOX commentator put it...."she's not a radical racist...but she's probably no mother Teressa either."
She added "My guess is that she...like the rest of us...falls somewhere in between."
I read a lot of negativity about how FOX News reports. I don't always agree with Beck and O'Riley, but hear this: Most of the criticism I see about those two guys is tainted by misquotes and outright fabrication. I watch their shows and I read the crap that is said and written about them and most of it is false.
FOX is the only media outlet that isn't in the tank for the current administration and as such, has become quite a target.
Centurion, I agree with your comments about Fox. But that doesn't alter the fact that Breitbart's intent was to embarrass the NAAP and the Obama administration, and he did so by cherry picking a 2.5 minute piece out of a 45 minute video tape that made Shirley Sherrod, in this instance, look like a racist when in fact she was explaining how she got over her racial biases and was now advocating racial reconciliation.
Kudos to Fox! Shame on Breitbart!
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