Racism has been in the news lately. The NAACP came out and accused the nationwide Tea Party movement of tactically supporting racism at their rallies. The Tea Partiers and their Republican defenders promptly rose up to accuse the NAACP of "reverse-racism" (or Black-on-White) themselves... and then had to kick one of their "leaders" Mike Williams out for responding with a blatantly offensive "letter to Lincoln" that not even openly-proud racists could ignore.
Next thing we know, along comes Andrew Breitbart - responsible for hiring twentysomething idiots to pretend being pimps and prostitutes, videotaping ACORN employees, and then selectively edit said videos to make it look as though ACORN was helping pimps with their prostitution efforts - and he puts up a video on his website of a current USDA employee named Shirley Sherrod speaking at a meeting on racism. A Black woman, Sherrod discussed how after years of helping poor Black farmers she was once confronted with having to help her first White farmer, and she admitted that in the beginning she didn't help that White family as well as she had helped Black farmers.
AHA! So the saying goes, Breitbart has evidence at long last of reverse racism in action! This video quickly made its way to FOX News, who quickly pounced and broadcasted it nationally. The snowball became an avalanche, the NAACP jumping into making a statement denouncing Sherrod's racism against Whites. Somewhere along the chain of command from the USDA up to the Secretary of Agriculture (and maybe Obama's White House) someone came up with the yellow-belly idea of forcing Sherrod into resigning before the matter could be fully investigated.
Because when the matter WAS fully investigated, it turns out that Breitbart had - yet again - used a selectively edited video of Sherrod's speech. A full video shows Sherrod continuing her story about Her First White Farmer by pointing out she realized she needed to move beyond her own racist attitudes, and Sherrod HELPED that White Farmer find a lawyer, and made every effort to make sure that White Farmer kept his farm. Even more, the White family she helped came out and publicly supported Sherrod's efforts helping them, and they were grateful for her help and that "she treated us good." No one - not Breitbart, not FOX, not the Department of Agriculture or the NAACP or anyone else - made any effort to find out more information, to get more evidence and eyewitnesses, to do ANYTHING to see if Sherrod was just another target of Breitbart's selective editing.
This is what I posted on Ace of Spades website, where Ace was cheering Breitbart on for having punk'd the Obama administration into hastily firing innocent people:
I seem to recall Dan Rather making a hasty and poorly researched report into George W. Bush's service record with the Texas National Guard. When Rather's team got caught with various holes in their reporting, Rather got forced out the door in disgrace.
Breitbart creates a hasty and poorly researched report into a woman's internal conflict with her own racism THAT SHE OVERCOMES by the by. When Breitbart got caught pushing a selectively edited videotape, and failed to either hunt down the white farmers who DID get help from Sherrod or look for other witnesses to Sherrod's speech to verify if any other interesting statements were said by her... YOU (Ace) want to give Breitbart a MEDAL?!
I'm sorry, but Breitbart f-cked up here as badly as Vilsack did. There needs to be accountability in the media and for this Breitbart needs to go. Get kicked out the door just like Rather was.
Everyone EXCEPT Sherrod and those farmers she helped were in the wrong here. Whoever gave Breitbart that edited video... Breitbart for failing basic rules of reporting (get more than one source! verify! interview as many people as you can!)... FOX News for quickly jumping on Breitbart's story without doing THEIR own research... The NAACP for jumping too quickly themselves and attacking her, in an effort to position themselves after recently attacking the Tea Party for racism... Vilsack, the Obama Administration and probably Obama himself for jumping the gun and forcing an innocent woman out of her job...
SO far the NAACP is the only one to have openly apologized, I haven't seen anybody else who screwed up to do so. Obama needs to apologize directly to Sherrod and re-instate her. Vilsack needs to apologize and offer his resignation to Obama (Obama can refuse it with a harsh reminder to Vilsack to watch his steps... or accept it and find a replacement). FOX News and any other news outfit that jumped on this story need to apologize for their rush to judgment and take good-faith efforts to fact-check their stories and hold people accountable something they haven't been doing for years (like I keep saying, it looks like the last one who was held accountable was Rather, and that was 5-6 years ago).
And Breitbart needs to go. No f-cking awards for him.
I swear to God we have no honest journalism anymore. We have no sensible leadership that recognizes when we're getting bum-rushed by idiots with agendas re-enacting the whole "Boy Who Cried Wolf" crap, how many times you gonna believe Breitbart after the stunts he's pulled? And people are suffering because of it.
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