The Shirley Sherrod story gets more and more interesting:
First we have this from Jake Tapper:
A former Department of Agriculture official said her termination was an unfair casualty of a larger political spat on race between the Tea Party movement and the NAACP, but Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack Tuesday afternoon stood by his decision to seek her termination based on a controversial anecdote she told earlier this year.
Her story sounds plausible particularly since the farmer in question seems to be backing her up. The fact that her resignation came so quickly counted against her but Big Government suggest that they couldn’t wait to throw her under the bus:
Sherrod told CNN that she was forced to resign because ”you’re going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.” While she was driving home from work last night Sherrod told CNN that Cheryl Cook, the deputy undersecretary for Rural Development, called her three times on “harassing” her with warnings about the attention she was going to receive after the video surfaced. On the final call Cook demand that she pull over to the side of the road and resign electronically then and there.
That’s pretty cold, Dunetz continues:
If this story is true, and there is no reason to doubt her, it shows the extent that Breitbart, Fox,and the Tea Party have gotten under the skin of the White House. Rather then to think it through they overreacted and forced Sherrod to pull over on the side of the road and resign without telling her side of the story.
It is also hard to understand why the NAACP would instantly condemn Ms Sherrod, if the speech was indeed as she said, why wouldn’t they respond by releasing the entire speech? One explanation may be that she is lying, but if you listen closely to the end of the clip she does seem to be pivoting toward saying it was about income not race (and then seems to change her mind again).
Another explanation for the White House and the NAACP not releasing the entire tape is the possibility that Shirley Sherrod is their sacrificial lamb. Possibly they do not care about the truth. Perhaps they realized their resolution attacking the Tea Party as racist was such a political loser, especially coming right after disclosure of DOJ Black Panther scandal, they see the condemnation of Sherrod as a way out of theses crises and seem racially balanced.
The Anchoress is where she was yesterday:
In my post yesterday, I was pretty clear that the Breitbart tape wasn’t sitting well with me. Ms. Sherrod–still not a great speaker–clearly was on her way to relate a tale that indicted her own understanding, when that tape ended.
You know what’s not singing to me, now? The argument that “the tape wasn’t about nailing Sherrod, it was about demonstrating the racism of the NAACP audience; it was a response to their wicked attempt to paint the Tea Party as racist.”
As I said yesterday, there was certainly a stones/glass houses note to it all, but Shirley Sherrod had a story to tell, and as far as I’m concerned, that story needed telling in full – that was the only way to be fair to Sherrod. After it was told, then, if you wanted to make the point about the audience’s reaction to her own tale–which is apparently one that indicts her own racist past–you could do that. Otherwise, all you’ve done is destroyed Sherrod in the same way that Trent Lott was ruined: by taking her remarks out of context.
Context matters. If the right, quite correctly, doesn’t like to see pols on their side tarnished with this despicable label sans context, they they can’t be happy to see what happened to Sherrod.
And then she asked the NAACP question:
NAACP says it was snookered by Breitbart and Fox. They said they have “reviewed the tape.” Well, good. Why didn’t they do that, first thing? And when can we see it?
Yeah they were kinda fast assuming they had the tape, could there be more there there? Particularly since the government stands behind their dumping of her. The Washington Examiner may have that answer:
Here are just a few questions about Ms. Sherrod that deserve answers:
* Was Ms. Sherrod’s USDA appointment an unspoken condition of her organization’s settlement?
* How much “debt forgiveness” is involved in USDA’s settlement with New Communities?
* Why were the Sherrods so deserving of a combined $300,000 in “pain and suffering” payments — amounts that far exceed the average payout thus far to everyone else? ($1.15 billion divided by 16,000 is about $72,000)?
* Given that New Communities wound down its operations so long ago (it appears that this occurred sometime during the late 1980s), what is really being done with that $13 million in settlement money?
The Anchoress tweets that CNN got the whole tape in the mail.
So here are the questions:
Is the source for the full tape the same as Breitbart’s source for the partial tape?
Did the NAACP provide the full tape, they said they “reviewed the tape” that implies they provided it to CNN? If so why make the initial statement and why claim to be fooled by their own tape?
What else does Breitbart have?
How is this going to end? I have absolutely no idea, but it won’t be boring.
Update: Full tape up on NAACP site, they apparently had the whole thing all along. Am I the only person who finds it odd that NAACP jumped on this before, if they had this tape in their possession? I’m wondering if somebody played Breitbart?
CNN is going after the NAACP’s Shelton: Campbell Brown “You allowed yourselves to be snookered”
memeorandum thread up
Update 3: Irony of Ironies Glenn Beck was ahead of the curve on this. Isn’t he a big tea party guy? Biggest lesson, the Anchoress has the best gut instincts out there.
Update 4: Just listed to the tape, this woman was jobbed.
Update 5: Hotair has more
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