. . . to the whole Shirley Sherrod business just makes me sick.
(A few months ago Sherrod, USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development, gave a speech at an NAACP dinner. She told a story about not helping a white farmer as much as she should have 24 years ago — and went on to tell how she realized quickly that was wrong. She did help, so much so that Sherrod and the farmer even became friends, confirmed by the farmer’s wife who told CNN, “She helped us save our farm by getting in there and doing everything she could do.” The point of Sherrod’s story at the dinner had been that people needed to look beyond race. That was what she had learned 24 years ago.
But a right-wing zealot edited the video of Sherrod’s speech, eliminating the whole point of her story. There was an outcry that she was a racist. The White House reacted to the outcry by forcing her out of her job.)
UPDATE: Apparently USDA Secretary Vilsack is taking credit for firing Sherrod. The White House should tell him to correct the decision. They aren’t reacting to the event, which was positive. They are reacting to the shameful, lying, agenda-driven, right wing, out-of context depiction of the event.
React, react, react. I was hoping an Obama administration might act, might lead instead of reacting to whatever is on the news. So far, I am disappointed. For instance, it is beyond me why anyone thinks a massive oil spill needs the President’s personal attention. Should he have donned a wetsuit and dived down to plug it himself? But, opinion polls pushed him to react, react, react. It is very disheartening.
As Nate Silver wrote, “[I]t nevertheless seems that the only reason not to re-hire is that it would involve admitting you’d screwed up in the first place.”
Andrew Breitbart is a dirty, lying SOB, and he’s done it again; Putting together a fraudulent piece of propaganda with the purpose of doing damage. Remember ACORN? That doesn’t excuse USDA Sec “Nutsack” for being stupid, but Breitbart needs to be punished so severely that he or his POS cohorts at Fux News won’t be tempted to do it again.
We;;, maybe it was wrong and stupid for the WH to act as they did, but I’m not sure about ‘gutless’. Anyways, they seem to have retracted their firing of Ms. Sherrod ( and apologized), and in today political climate that took ‘GUTS’, at least IMHO.
I guess so, but it’s pretty sad if it takes guts to correct your own mistake.
Under any circumstances Ms. Sherrod deserved due process and to be heard before she was forced out.
The only silver lining about this whole situation would be the resignation of Vilsack from Ag.