in this post. With one exception it’s pretty good, but lets take a look at the exception because it deals with the future of race in America.
DB hits Shirley Sherrod Maybe it’s just me, but if I had my father murdered in my teens by the Klan I might just have a chip on my shoulder for a bit. The fact that the chip is in any way off her shoulder is the amazing thing. Yeah her actual positions are wrong but I’m inclined to give her more of a pass.
More importantly it explains why in terms of race it will be another 60 years at least before conflicts concerning it are nipped in the bud. Consider:
To someone like me born in ’63 I look at this country and see us way past these things, but to those born just 10 years earlier who lived though a fight, this is not only something they experienced in their youth but their parents and grandparents told them about it and that will stick with them. That’s human nature, as long as the stuff of the 60’s and before is in living memory there will be people who carry it (and for some like Jackson, Sharpton and unfortunately the NAACP will make their living off of it) and let their opinions be shaped by them.
It will not be until the living memory of those times are gone that the next generation will be able to advance. The real danger here is that the race hustlers manage to keep the ball rolling or revive it in the same way that Griffith’s Birth of a nation did for the Klan.
Oh and if you want to understand how that can be done, read Roger Ebert’s review of the Birth of a Nation, it should be read by anyone who wants to understand film and history. (Ebert’s political views are nutty but he knows film)
After seeing the morning coverage and following all this stuff, it’s clear that the left which thought just last night it has control of the Shirley Sherrot story has not only lost it, but lost it totally.
The left wants a story about how evil Fox news is and how bad Andrew Breitbart is, the story however is that:
The White house is so weak that it fired one of their own supporters out of fear of Glenn Beck.
The NAACP backed the White House before reviewing the full tape which they had
The White House standing behind the firing, then at 2 a.m. backing off of it.
And even when the MSM gets Andrew Breitbart on TV figuring they can stick it to him what happens?
On CNN he stresses the double standard, and brings up Journolist
Well GMA is going to do better, after all they have Eric Boehlert on with him and George double teaming him so what will happen?
Breitbart makes it about the false NAACP tea party charges
Brings up 100k challenge, that I don’t remember ABC ever reporting on
Brings up 4 videos and Boehlert says he will take John Lewis over 4 videos
George asks Boehlert if it’s ok to show the videos and he says yes
Forget the White House not only does GMA fail to lay a glove on Breitbart but he manage to advance his NAACP argument, the tea party double standard. George’s last question is asking Boehlert if he should show Breitbart’s 4 Washington videos? Tell me how long has ABC been asking Media Matters impramarter to report news? Have they always done it or is this just the first time its been done on air?
How many people will they have to put up against Breitbart to have a shot?
And the news cycle will be about the White House until Sherrod is offered her job back, and now they have to worry: “What if she doesn’t take it?” Two days ago she was an obscure member of the government, now she is in the catbird seat and can get what she wants from the Administration, and the NAACP. Will she make them pay for having her pull to the side of the road? She controls the news cycle and every day the White House doesn’t pay her price is a day they lose on TV.
And this is the left’s victory? It’s Bunker Hill without the red coats. It’s the type of “victory” that breaks an army.
After Bunker Hill Gen Howe never tried another frontal assault again. How gun-shy will the left and the media be about taking on Breitbart after this?
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.
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?
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”
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