July 22, 2010--Turning A Molehill Into A Mountain
How is it that the Obama administration has once again managed to shoot itself in its own political foot? This time over the firing and then turnabout rehiring of an obscure bureaucrat in, of all places, the Georgia rural development office of the Department of Agriculture.
As all the hysterical media and now the more sober New York Times are reporting (linked below), the flap happened when a conservative blogger, Andrew Breithart, got his hands on a videotape of a talk given by Shirley Sherrod, an African-American woman, who described how how she discriminated against a white farmer who came to her for help and how she didn't, in her words, "give him the full force of what I could do."
Doesn't sound very good, does it? Well, this lack-of-full-force incident occurred 24 years ago when Ms. Sherrod was working, not for the government but for a non-profit. But even so, this sort of prejudice is not something to dismiss by saying "That was then and this is now."
In fact, when the head of the N.A.A.C.P., Benjamin Jealous, heard about this and saw the two-and-a-half-minute video clip--by then it had gone viral and was being shown on Fox News every half hour as evidence of racial prejudice in the Obama administration--he called for her ouster. In response, Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack , promptly asked her to resign.
She was outraged, claiming that what was circulating in right wing circles was taken out of context.
Where have we heard that before? Everywhere, whenever someone famous or in high office gets caught in a compromising situation--from Mel Gibson to the Reverend Jim Haggard to Senator Larry Craig--they always claim they were quoted out of context. And it almost always turns out, when the quoted comments are seen in full context, that what they had to say or did pretty much turns out to be as bad or worse than the selected quotes.
In Ms. Sherrod's case though, the context shows that after the seemingly-racist part about not giving the white farmer all the help she could, in her speech she went on to say that she learned from that experience that people, starting with her, need to do all they can to overcome prejudice. Pretty commendable.
When he subsequently saw a video of the entire speech, Mr. Jealous asked that she not be fired and claimed that the N.A.A.C.P, had been "snookered" into believing Ms. Sherrod had been "handicapped by bias." As a sidebar, I hope that Mr. jealous also learned something from this sad incident. Before leaping to conclusions about anything being trumpeted by conservatives out to embarrass and undermine the Obama administration, do a little homework. Have someone watch the entire tape before popping off in front of the TV cameras. Also, to be snookered means to have been taken advantage of. In this case, the N.A.A.C.P. brought this on themselves by going off half-cocked. Rather than blaming others taking a little responsibility is also not a bad thing.
But then, other than the bloggers and Fox News who knew exactly what they were doing, the Obama people also come away from this looking inept. They should know by now that the Right takes particular pleasure in playing the race card, citing mainly bogus incidents to show that Obama is a black militant and hates white people, with, of course, the possible exception of half his family.
Most recently they have been ranting that he and his Attorney General have been pandering to the likes of the New Black Panther Party; so when the Sherrod incident surfaced shouldn't Secretary Vilsack's antenna have been on high alert, considering the racially-charged subject matter and, more suspiciously, the source of all the outrage? Isn't there someone in his office who does homework for him? It seems not.
And then what about the White House itself? In addition to alerting his cabinet secretaries and all other political appointees to keep a close eye on this kind of Tea Party-style race baiting, Obama and his close-in people should be keeping eyes wide open for these kinds of scurrilous situations; and before overreacting, someone with a dedicated agenda to protect the president from incendiary racial attacks, should do all the background work necessary to make sure that anything they do that includes a racial component is extra-carefully considered and vetted.
Since the White House didn't do this in regard to the Shirley Sherrod incident, over-eager to demonstrate that they are not anti white, they tripped all over themselves in a public rush to get her to resign. But then, when someone on Obama's staff finally saw the text of her entire speech, they reversed course and are seeking to have her stay in her job.
It's bad enough that there are these racist forces at work to tear down Obama and his administration, it's another thing, through ineptness, to keep supplying them with ammunition.
As all the hysterical media and now the more sober New York Times are reporting (linked below), the flap happened when a conservative blogger, Andrew Breithart, got his hands on a videotape of a talk given by Shirley Sherrod, an African-American woman, who described how how she discriminated against a white farmer who came to her for help and how she didn't, in her words, "give him the full force of what I could do."
Doesn't sound very good, does it? Well, this lack-of-full-force incident occurred 24 years ago when Ms. Sherrod was working, not for the government but for a non-profit. But even so, this sort of prejudice is not something to dismiss by saying "That was then and this is now."
In fact, when the head of the N.A.A.C.P., Benjamin Jealous, heard about this and saw the two-and-a-half-minute video clip--by then it had gone viral and was being shown on Fox News every half hour as evidence of racial prejudice in the Obama administration--he called for her ouster. In response, Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack , promptly asked her to resign.
She was outraged, claiming that what was circulating in right wing circles was taken out of context.
Where have we heard that before? Everywhere, whenever someone famous or in high office gets caught in a compromising situation--from Mel Gibson to the Reverend Jim Haggard to Senator Larry Craig--they always claim they were quoted out of context. And it almost always turns out, when the quoted comments are seen in full context, that what they had to say or did pretty much turns out to be as bad or worse than the selected quotes.
In Ms. Sherrod's case though, the context shows that after the seemingly-racist part about not giving the white farmer all the help she could, in her speech she went on to say that she learned from that experience that people, starting with her, need to do all they can to overcome prejudice. Pretty commendable.
When he subsequently saw a video of the entire speech, Mr. Jealous asked that she not be fired and claimed that the N.A.A.C.P, had been "snookered" into believing Ms. Sherrod had been "handicapped by bias." As a sidebar, I hope that Mr. jealous also learned something from this sad incident. Before leaping to conclusions about anything being trumpeted by conservatives out to embarrass and undermine the Obama administration, do a little homework. Have someone watch the entire tape before popping off in front of the TV cameras. Also, to be snookered means to have been taken advantage of. In this case, the N.A.A.C.P. brought this on themselves by going off half-cocked. Rather than blaming others taking a little responsibility is also not a bad thing.
But then, other than the bloggers and Fox News who knew exactly what they were doing, the Obama people also come away from this looking inept. They should know by now that the Right takes particular pleasure in playing the race card, citing mainly bogus incidents to show that Obama is a black militant and hates white people, with, of course, the possible exception of half his family.
Most recently they have been ranting that he and his Attorney General have been pandering to the likes of the New Black Panther Party; so when the Sherrod incident surfaced shouldn't Secretary Vilsack's antenna have been on high alert, considering the racially-charged subject matter and, more suspiciously, the source of all the outrage? Isn't there someone in his office who does homework for him? It seems not.
And then what about the White House itself? In addition to alerting his cabinet secretaries and all other political appointees to keep a close eye on this kind of Tea Party-style race baiting, Obama and his close-in people should be keeping eyes wide open for these kinds of scurrilous situations; and before overreacting, someone with a dedicated agenda to protect the president from incendiary racial attacks, should do all the background work necessary to make sure that anything they do that includes a racial component is extra-carefully considered and vetted.
Since the White House didn't do this in regard to the Shirley Sherrod incident, over-eager to demonstrate that they are not anti white, they tripped all over themselves in a public rush to get her to resign. But then, when someone on Obama's staff finally saw the text of her entire speech, they reversed course and are seeking to have her stay in her job.
It's bad enough that there are these racist forces at work to tear down Obama and his administration, it's another thing, through ineptness, to keep supplying them with ammunition.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:09 AM
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