Attend the tale of Shirley Sherrod.
Before this week Ms. Sherrod was one of 105,000 nameless, faceless bureaucrats who toil away unnoticed in the gargantuan machine of government. Her role was director of Rural Development in Georgia. (Why anyone would want to develop rural Georgia is a topic for another day.) Shirley Sherrod might have worked in Georgia for another three or four years (she is currently 62) and drifted happily into retirement. But nooooooo!
Ms. Sherrod accepted an invitation to address a March meeting of the Georgia NAACP. She had a tale to tell. It was a story about race perception and race reality. It involved a time when she was working for the Southern Cooperative/Land Assistance Fund, a non-profit organization in Georgia helping black farmers. When a white farmer, Roger Spooner, came to her for help, she was initially inclined to "send him to his own people". Ms. Sherrod is a Georgia native. When she was seventeen her father was shot in the back by a white man. No charges were filed. However, Ms. Sherrod overcame these original feelings and ultimately helped Mr. Spooner keep his farm. "If it hadn't been for her, we wouldn't have known who to see or what to do" says Mr. Spooner. So the happy ending to the story is that Shirley Sherrod was able to see past her moment of petty racism and the Spooners and Ms. Sherrod are now great friends. Ah...not so fast...
A low-life teabagger tool named Andrew Breitbart "discovered" Ms. Sharrod's taped speech apparently while searching for communist liberals under his bed. It being a slow news day, Mr. Breitbart decided to edit the tape to appear as if Ms. Sherrod ignored Mr. Spooner's cry for help because he was white. Clearly the act of a black racist. Mr. Breitbart, attempting to justify his despicable treachery, claims that because the NAACP accused elements of the tea party of racism (heaven forfend!) he wanted to show that racism also existed in the ranks of the NAACP. So he edited a tape and had it posted to prove his point. Nice!
Breitbart is an asshat and should be treated as such. The real villains of the piece don't arise until after the offending tape goes viral. News departments all over America decide to run with the story. No one: not ABC, CBS, ABC, Fox, CNN or the Golf Channel ever checked the story or asked to see the entire speech. American news organizations, desperate to appear "fair and balanced" ignored every journalistic rule (mostly the second part of "get it fast but get it right") and rushed into the 24 hour news cycle with garbage. This disgraceful exhibition of knee-jerk journalism was in response to editors fears that Glenn Beck would aggressively scoop them the way he did on Van Jones.
Apparently Beckophobia also runs rampant in the Department of Agriculture and the White House. Tom Vilsack, weak-kneed Secretary of Agriculture, checked no part of the story before demanding Ms. Sherrod's decapitation. (She was actually ordered off a highway so she could tender her resignation by Blackberry.) The White House, doubling down on cowardice, is denying they ordered the firing. Worst of all, the NAACP renounced Ms. Sherrod also without ever bothering to determine the veracity of the accusation. So far the only person to man-up has been Vilsack. His apology at least had the appearance of sincerity.
What has become of our integrity? In what bizarro universe does the Leader of the Free World quake at the feet of a carnival showman like Glenn Beck? Is the compassionate left so fearful of it's positions on race that it searches for any opportunity to vilify, however unjustly, any black person for any perceived transgression? Is the NAACP so unsure of its charter that they would resort to the methods of the lynch mob and condemn without trial? When did formerly respected news organizations get so defensive over accusations of liberal bias that they would decide to air an unverified story about a black women simply because verification looks like liberal bias? Still smarting from the Dan Rather disaster?
And, by the way, so what if a black woman 24 years ago showed a little race bias in Georgia? Black people endured 400 years of slavery and another 130 years of Jim Crow so excuse them if, on occasion, they allow that oppression to cloud their attitudes. What exactly is the white man's excuse for the klan, lynchings and the obvious racism of the tea party? Black people have a reason to hate. What's whitey's story?
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