You’ve probably heard by now how Ms. Shirley Sherrod was rail-roaded out of her position as Director of Rural Development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture by an Obama administration that is gradually abandoning all pretense of working for “change”. In case you have not heard, let’s quickly recap.
On Monday, BigGovernment.com, a website run by conservative activist Andrew Breitbart ran a hack job of a story taking snippets of a speech Ms. Sherrod gave in March at an NAACP event lamenting how she did not do enough to help a Caucasian farmer when she worked for a non-profit. Fox news quickly picked up on it and started brandishing words like “video evidence of racism coming from a federal appointee”, “The federal government cannot have skin color deciding any assistance” etc. The channel even ran a headline of the story that screamed “”Racism Caught on Tape.”Not to be outdone, the big buffon, Hannity, even went as far as saying “”This was at an NAACP dinner, and this was racist”. Laura Ingraham pitched in an gave a monumental speech of her own about “people who have burrowed their way into the Obama administration with radical outlooks, a radical agenda and, in this case, a racist sentiment” and wondered about “how many more like Ms. Sherrod exist in the Obama administration who weren’t so stupid as she was to actually explicitly state her views on the issue of race?”
Coming from the Fox News Channel, there was really nothing strange in all this. After all, anything that has to do with Obama have the folks there frothing at the mouth.
What is deeply shocking and most disappointing is the haste with which the Obama administration strung Ms. Sherrod up on the tree of conservative rumor mongering and slander, like a slave who had outlived her usefulness. Without investigating the story or gathering more information, the administration immediately asked Ms. Sherrod to “resign”. Talk about lynching at the public square. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? Would taking a day or two to check the facts have made things any worse?
Now that the full tape of the purported “racist” speech has emerged which actually shows that Ms. Sherrod was discussing the lesson she learnt about the importance of helping all those in need, regardless of race, an idiotic-looking Robert Gibbs had to yet again go before TV cameras and try to lie his way out of a terrible hack job!
Of all the head-scratching decisions Mr. Obama and his team have made so far, this is the most egregious. Why was a “post-racial” president’s team so hasty to pass judgement? He cannot blame this on his Secretary of Agriculture, unless he has no control over his administration and what his employees do. It is shameful, to say the least that it was after a video of her full speech was posted online by the NAACP, that the White House called the Agriculture Department and agreed that her ouster should be reviewed. Excuse me?
What if this was a case of the firing squad, which it is politically for Shirley Sherrod? How many reviews would remove the blow on her personal integrity and family name? Why is the administration being led by the nose by the conservative media? In case they’ve forgotten, these are the same folks who go to Church every Sunday praying for the administration to fail and they are half way there. Why could the folks at the Department of Agriculture not wait for a day or two before sending Ms. Sherrod’s head to the chopping block? She was humiliated and dragged through the public square for not doing anything wrong, all because Mr. Obama’s White House could not act fast enough to appease the conservative media.
This is a shameful act, Mr. President! And the buck stops with you. When your Press Secretary has to go before the American people and admit that “the government, media and interest groups on all sides made quick determinations without knowing all the facts involved”, that is a sad day in America.
Mr. Gibbs put the disturbing nature of this incident best when he said:
“One of the great lessons you take away from this is to ask all the questions first and come to a full understanding,”
Aren’t we a little late to the party on that one Herr Gibbs? Yes, the president is Black, but that does not mean the administration should lose its sense of justice and fair-play whenever any issue involving race rears its ugly head. We’ve circled the wagons on the Race Question for almost two hundred years and the political class that has something to gain by raising the fearful specter of race is not about to stop now. The Obama administration ought to know that by now and should have plans on how to deal with it instead of taking knee-jerk and ad-hoc actions that only hurt the innocent.
Above all, rotten eggs on the face of the NAACP! This was supposed to be a speech at one of their events and you’d think they should be the first to hit the archives to verify the purported “racist” remarks before condemning Shirley Sherrod and calling the statement “shameful”. It is no surprise then to see the pathetic attempt at diverting attention away from this gross negligence by claiming to have been “snookered” by Fox News. Man up and admit that you screwed up big time and hide your head in shame for caving in so quickly to hype and conservative pressures. Your forebears would not have given up so quickly in a vain attempt to “look good”.
Where the **ck is the backbone that built that organization? It is not just enough to hang a badge around your neck that says you are the NAACP. The men and women who built that organization gave up blood, sweat and sometimes their lives to stand up for something they believed in. Of all the groups who would jump to a conclusion before checking the facts, we would expect the NAACP to be the last of them. Alas, we would have lost the shirts on our backs if we had wagered on their behalf. Ben Jealous and the NAACP sold out for a measly cup of conservative recognition – a damn shame indeed. Even Judas could have done better.
