By now, we’ve all seen KO’s special comment and heard the usual professionally depressed progressive bloggers chime in on the Sherrod affair, and not surprisingly, the received view is this is Obama’s fault. And I’m not sure what KO’s problem with calling this an injustice really is.
Am I just being naive that I don’t think he had anything to do with the decision to fire her, and after it was clear something wrong had taken place, made sure the right thing (Vilsack’s apology, Gibbs from the podium apologizing) was done? Christ- it wasn’t too long ago the same damned people were telling us what a mistake it was for Obama and the WH to confront Limbaugh and these asshats. Anyone else remember the vapors when Obama went after Fox?
I found Vilsack’s presser to be pretty compelling- given the history of the USDA and what he has been dealing with for 18 months, it looked to him like there was a clear instance of racism, and he acted. That makes sense. He was wrong, but I found his discussion frank and honest, and didn’t think he was just throwing himself on the sword for Obama. Can someone tell me what evidence there is that the cowardly and right-wing loving Rahmbama was behind the firing? Anyone?
And yes, I know this makes me just a dirty former Republican OBOT, but christ on a motor bike- I’m so tired of this fratricide. Fox and Breitbart and their cohorts in the media and throughout the wingnut blogosphere are to blame, not the WH.
Brien Jackson
So wait, Hamsher wants to complain that no one is standing up to Breitbart by…blaming Rahmbama?
I’d say the shark has been jumped, but that happened a long time ago.
TR
I didn’t see Olbermann, but Maddow fucking kicked Fox News in the balls repeatedly, showing the ways in which they fanned the flames on one day and claimed to be innocent the next.
Hunter Gathers
But kicking Obama at any given opportunity is the most surefire way of getting your Progressive Activist Merit Badge.
Nick
No one does circular firing squads better than liberals.
I can possibly imagine why the administration of the first black President of a country that in his lifetime were still hanging people like him from trees for shits and giggles, would be sensitive to allegations of reverse racism.
And, well, why didn’t they think the media wouldn’t expose Breitbart as a liar. It’s almost as if when it comes to race (and pretty much every other issue), they thinks the media is just going to toe the right wing narrative. Whatever could have given them that idea?
and I mean they should also have known that white American can deal with a race issue rationally. Whatever would make them thing they couldn’t?
Chad S
Here here JC.
The simple fact is that after the NAACP criticized Sherrod’s comments and distanced themselves, she was going to be fired. If the NAACP released the full tape and presented the context, she wouldn’t have been fired and this wouldn’t have blown up(and for the record, I really don’t know how much this story is tracking outside of the beltway).
I’d rather have Obama focusing on passing major legislation…like what he’s done over the last 18 months..rather than playing the news cycle game with nitwits like Breitbart and Hamshear.
TCG
Amen to this post.
Nick
@Brien Jackson: Apparently Obama is supposed to stand up to Breitbart by himself while we sit back and parse his words to make sure they’re sufficiently progressive.
No, No, Barack, you go ahead, once you start, we got your back…really.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
Keith Olbermann is an asshole. He thinks that the most important thing we need to know about any story is what he thinks about it.
This is true of most of the heads on tv nowadays, but for a few, like Olbermann and Joe Scarborough, it’s in your face true.
I don’t listen to him any more.
lamh32
@TR:
I agree about Rachel. Rachel’s segment was an honor to watch, Jon Stewart would be proud.
In fact Rachel’s whole show was great. Also it looks like tonight people who I have no love for are really bringing it with their commentary on the Shirley Sherrod firing, first Keith Olbermann commentary I thought was good, when he started in on the prez I do think he went overboard, then Rachel Madow, now Anderson “I found a luva in ole N’walins, now I can’t stop visiting the city” Cooper is calling out Breibart BY NAME! If ya’ll can get that clip, it was a good one.
(I kid, I kid about Anderson Cooper, my aunt luvs her some Anderson, when she found out he might be gay, she was heartbroken…lol)
Lolis
Seriously. A lot of people already believed that Obama gives preference to blacks. I am not saying it was right, but I can see why people in the administration were sensitive about this, especially with all the brouhaha with the NAACP and Tea Party. The NAACP was the first to condemn Sherrod, for some inexplicable reason. The White House did not do right, but they owned up to it and took their lumps. They did the right thing and deserve credit for it.
Joe Lisboa
I could not agree more, M. Cole. Tried to make exactly these points over at Metafilter.com tonight. Serenity, ow!
demo woman
Breitbart lost and he knows it. He’ll continue ranting but without his bogus stories reported by FOX News as breaking security threats, he’s done. He only has bogus stories. Fox’s reputation took a nose dive also. They might continue having the NBP thugs on but no one is going to cover it. MSM got burned and they are not happy.
Joe Buck
You say “slow down”, and that would have been good advice for the administration. They repeatedly harrassed Ms. Sherrod and demanded her immediate resignation, calling her repeatedly while she was driving, and insisting that she pull over to the side of the road and do it right now. She says that they were screaming about the story about to appear on Glenn Beck that evening. The higher-ups in a Dem administration were freaked out about what Glenn Beck was going to do.
The anger at the Obama administration is that they need to grow a pair. They’ve repeatedly tossed people under the bus because the right attacked. I want to see a counter-attack.
Ms. Sherrod has forgiven Vilsack, so I will too. The next move should be an investigation of Breitbart. Let him spend his time dealing with subpeonas and lawyers. Make him radioactive. Get damage awards against him so large as to shut down his operation.
El Cid
I was surprised and impressed at the reversal, and if I had to guess the source, well, it’s the source who could make Vilsack rethink and then reverse his earlier firmly stated position and send Gibbs out there too to apologize to the wronged Sherrod — Obama.
No, I wasn’t optimistic it would happen. I doubted something like that would. I figured it would be another ‘forward not backward’ moment. But given all the obvious screwing this civil rights hero got, it seemed more and more likely over time that something better might happen. And so I give more credit to, I’m assuming, Obama, then I was assuming in advance.
Given how we know the Executive branch, or any big bureaucracy, to work, I think a lot of appreciation needs to be given — even if the ‘firing’ was really wrong in the first place, and it was — for the Administration for sacking up and reversing a bad decision. (And for that matter, the NAACP leadership.)
I’m still not thinking that this will convince the billion dollar media not to be patsies for Breitbart et al’s next fraudulent hack fest.
Anton Sirius
@TR:
Anderson Cooper started his show tonight by taking a two-by-four upside Breitbart’s head, all but outright calling him a liar and a race baiter.
By CNN’s wet noodle standards. it was a Joseph Welch moment.
And Another Thing...
So John…what the hell does this mean?
“And I’m not sure what KO’s problem with calling this an injustice really is.”
You Don't Say
I highly doubt Obama had anything to do with it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone at the White House was involved. And I wouldn’t be surprised if no one from the White House is involved.
I heard or read somewhere that a WH liaison to the ag department was in the room when the ag dept called Sherrod. Who knows.
I don’t think anyone remotely involved in this whole thing looks good EXCEPT for Mrs. Sherrod who has been incredibly honorable and admirable throughout. And the Spooners who quickly and wholeheartedly came to her defense.
BR
@TR:
This is why Maddow has eclipsed Olbermann for me, to the point that I haven’t seen a KO segment in many months, whereas I watch Maddow once or twice a week.
OT: If you haven’t seen it, check out Rachel Maddow’s commencement address (at Smith College a couple of months ago).
Martin
So far, everyone has proven impotent against the RWNM, including KO in spite of his best efforts. Obama is in the position of power here and everyone wants him to win this thing on their behalf.
Yeah, the left is going to keep blaming him until Glenn Beck goes on his workplace shooting spree and wipes the place out.
gwangung
@Chad S:
Agreed.
And no matter what, there’d still be 27% of the country muttering about how those “damned black racists are getting away with murder.”
Sheila
I can’t argue with anything you wrote, John, or with the subsequent comments. Perhaps the following quote from Eric Hoffer will shed some light on the frustrati and their persistent rage:
What surprises one, when listening to the frustrated as they decry the present and all its works, is the enormous joy they derive from doing so. Such delight cannot come from the mere venting of a grievance. There must be something more — and there is. By expatiating upon the incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated soften their feeling of failure and isolation. It is as if they said: “Not only our blemished selves, but the lives of all our contemporaries, even the most happy and successful, are worthless and wasted.” Thus by deprecating the present they acquire a vague sense of equality.
Sentient Puddle
I tried watching the Countdown repeat after hearing about the special comment, but I had to give up not too far in. I’m just too sick of this “Blame the White House!” knee-jerk reflex that so bloody many on our side have. Jane wants to know how many Democrats it takes to stand up to Breitbart? I don’t know…maybe it could start with HER?
I say again, more shitting on Breitbart, please. He’s the one who deserves it.
BR
@You Don’t Say:
I remember reading that Messina (DCoS) was in on the decision or at least was aware of it, but it’s not clear it was any higher than him at the WH.
Joseph Nobles
When you’re right, you’re right.
I was upset at the White House leaning on the USDA. Turns out it could just have been the hyper undersecretary stretching the truth with a WH liason officer in the room, as Greg Sargent posited. And Gibbs couldn’t have been more clear at the press briefing today.
I was upset at Vilsack. Turns out he only read a transcript of the edited video and he’s really upset with himself about that as well.
I’ve been seeing a lot of what I wanted to see from everyone in the administration. Meanwhile, Breitbart has been busy feeling sorry for what the media did to Sherrod in this situation, kind of like what they did to him in this situation. Yep. Breitbart’s been standing next to the real victim here and playing the victim as well.
Shoot the right damned people, indeed.
kwAwk
I agree on this one too, that it is over the top to blame Obama. In theory a President or any leader is responsible for everything that happens in his administration, but I’ve not seen anything that would place Obama at the center of this.
If the lady hadn’t been offered her job back, it would have been different.
J.W. Hamner
I think the administration initially responded in a pretty abysmal way… and since the buck stops with Obama, he deserves some blame… but the part I feel most progressives ignore is that so did the NAACP. Is it really so crazy that a department with some pretty bad racial baggage responded with a ill advised hair trigger when the NAACP condemned her?
Hal
I don’t disagree with KO’s criticism. He was as harsh on the media and Fox and Breitbart as he was on Obama. I think the issue with the Obama WH as many have pointed out, is that they seemed to go so far out of their way to appease them and got bitten on the ass in the process.
Still, what drives me insane about Liberals in this case is the fact that, once again, they will spend more time criticizing Obama than they will the right wing, which just makes the right wing stronger. The same accusation they lob against the Obama admin.
Beyond that, I find their to be some large scale hypocrisy in some on the left. When Obama had something to say about the Gates controversy, plenty of white Liberals said Obama should not have gotten involved.
It just seems to me that on issues of race, some how, black people are always dependent on the will of the majority. It gets kind of annoying after a while. And now, white Liberals are telling the black President how wrong he was, and thinking they are going to school him in racism? GTFO.
thomas Levenson
\\@TCG:
Amen?A-f*ckin’men.
Fixed.
The Admin screwed up in their response to a vicious, racist smear job. That, and not the response, is where we should be aiming our (f)ire.
Breitbart is someone a civilized society would shun, in the full Amish sense of the world. Those that don’t (Fox, et al.) are complicit. Hold on to that, and work with those who, much more than most of the time, are working towards your/our ends.
You Don't Say
@BR: I heard that he said something about reacting quickly as if it were a good thing. The quote was from an anonymous source and implied someone is throwing Messina under the bus.
El Cid
A related view on legal moves which Sherrod might have available re Breitbart et al, from the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which has been providing quite thorough coverage:
Lev
I’ll spare you the scorpion and the fox parable and just suffice it to say that after the past few decades, most liberals have just fallen into the habit of being cynical and disappointed. It sort of is their nature at this point. Had Obama been able to get a public option into HCR, Hamsher would have been angry because he didn’t get single-payer. Had Obama closed down Gitmo (or, more accurately, had the Senate let Obama close down Gitmo), Olbermann would have just been angrier about Obama’s Afghanistan surge. Not that those positions are necessarily wrong, but the shit-colored lens that these people view life through doesn’t really change when there’s a “D” after the president’s name. No sense of proportion, no knowledge of politics, no real understanding of history, and an unswerving belief that every political fight is somehow about them. That’s your liberal elite, when you get down to it. I would say that progressives pick bad people to trust when it comes to politics, like HuffPo and the MSNBC contingent, but when you compare it to the right and FOX and I guess we should be thankful that it’s not worse?
These people are used to losing, and they make it that way in their brain no matter what happens. Why they even bother to keep working I don’t know–perhaps that’s linked to the narcissism.
Slocum
The frustration is with the way Democrats, Obama among them, are so susceptible to the chain-yanking of peckerheads like Breitbart. This right-wing bullshit gets ginned up by a media interested in sensation and hippie-punching, while Democrats stay on the defensive. Part of changing that is to go on the offensive more, to ignore or ridicule these kinds of things. But the whole situation is self-reinforcing and changing it is going to take time.
Blaming the White House for anything more than jumping the gun is pointless; if there’ve been apologies and some attempt to make things right by Sherrod, then that’s more than anything that would have been gotten out of a Republican.
gwangung
Yup. And I think the appropriate punishment is a whack with a wooden paddle.
Breitbart? Rusty pitchforks all the way. Slowly.
Appropriate response for the appropriate sin.
merrinc
@El Cid:
That’s exactly how I see it.
BTW, El Cid: I’ve appreciated your posts on this issue. You brought a lot of passion *and* solid information to the rather um, energetic discussions we’ve had since the story broke.
As for Keith O, he’s been shrill for quite awhile.
Violet
Well said. I watched Vilsak’s speech and he seemed honest and genuine in his emotions and statements. Gibbs’ apology was good too.
The administration made a mistake. They apologized and have made efforts to rectify the situation. There’s not much more they can do about what happened. We can hope they’ve learned from it for next time. Because there will be a next time.
Allan
Vilsack violated Obama’s No Drama rule. This does not bode well for his long-term career prospects.
Splitting Image
It’s not inconceivable that Obama is partly responsible for the firing. If you think back to the 2008 campaign, they were pretty consistent in divesting themselves quickly of people who made poorly-thought out remarks on teevee. (Calling Hillary Clinton a “monster”, for example). The policy Vilsack appears to have followed may in fact have come directly from Obama, so in that sense he can be said to bear responsibility.
Having said that, it’s unlikely given the speed the whole thing unfolded that Obama himself had even heard about it. If Vilsack spoke to anyone else about a staffing situation, one would think it must have been a couple of rungs below the President.
I would also have supported the firing if the Breitbart video were at all accurate. The entire problem here is that not too many people really stopped to ask themselves if a video from Breitbart was likely to be accurate. Maybe some of them will learn the lesson this time.
beltane
The same progressives who bemoan the administration’s weakness in the face of the Right Wing Noise Machine also happen to be the ones who always fall for the right-wings framing of every issue. If Glenn Beck blames Obama, then they also blame Obama. Who is it, exactly, that is showing weakness here?
Jane “Let’s form an alliance with Grover Norquist” Hamsher is very brave about attacking Democrats, but is rarely to be seen fighting Republicans. If that’s the best we have in the activist department, we are very, very screwed.
Anton Sirius
@Hal:
It’s completely, utterly ridiculous that KO would be as harsh on Obama as he was on Breitbart.
On the relative culpability scale, if you shoved Obama’s responsibility up the ass of Breitbart’s responsibility it would look like a BB in a box car.
gwangung
@El Cid: Sue, Shirley, SUE!
Nick
@Joe Buck:
you know, I’m sorry, maybe it’s because of where I live, but liberals underestimate the power of Beck and Limbaugh and other right wing blowhards at their peril.
Especially in this economy.
Nick
@Joe Buck:
you know, I’m sorry, maybe it’s because of where I live, but liberals underestimate the power of Beck and Limbaugh and other right wing blowhards at their peril.
Especially in this economy.
cat48
Race is an impossible fight for Obama as he loses every minute the media spends covering it. Friend or foe, I feel uncomfortable the way the media always handles the shitstorm that ensues when race is involved. I don’t blame Obama for anything in this case except for his “being black while presidentin.” My husband agrees, except we score him a partial victory for the Wright incident.
Also,too he has had a busy week w/Cameron, etc. He hasn’t had a lot of time to be involved in anything. Obie & the left have their own narrative which is often nonsensical to me. The special comment is very funny because he’s appearing to imply campaign Obama would have handled this differently. I disagree.
shortstop
Maybe a little? As of late yesterday afternoon, when Vilsack was doubling down, the WH was saying they weren’t involved in the firing decision at all but still supported Vilsack’s decision. So they did the right thing by reversing with full, unhalfhearted apologies, and a whole lot faster than I thought they would, but maybe defended Vilsack a little longer than they needed to. At this point I doubt Obama was directly involved in that silly defense of Vilsack — but by late yesterday afternoon, honestly, there should have been no “we stand by Vilsack” crap coming out of the WH at all.
I think you’re probably right about that. And I’m glad for it.
You Don't Say
One reason I don’t think Obama was directly involved was that this was clearly done in terrible haste. And that’s just not his style.
El Cid
@merrinc: Thank you. Glad I could provide some useful information. When it happened and I could meet some of the people involved, the victory of the black farmers over the USDA just seemed like a much more historic event than it really was widely perceived as.
The shame is that so much of this information was as easily available to me as it was the billion dollar media which instead chose to run with the Breitbart fantabulism as though it were shit through a giardia-infected goose.
Of course, that’s always the case, just as it was with the nonsense about ‘aluminum tubes’ or ‘yellowcake from Niger’, or any other propaganda rush easily dispelled with a few minutes’ worth of focused Googling.
gwangung
@cat48:
Of course he would. Campaign Obama had far fewer things on his plate, far fewer dollars and far fewer responsibilities.
BR
@beltane:
It’s not. The best we have is folks like Tim F. here and Al Giordano and kid oakland at dkos and many others. But none of them are full-time looking-to-get paid professional activistas like Hamsherco.
I’ve often wished that Cole and Tim and Al Giordano and Booman and Jed and a few others would get together weekly (online, of course) and chart a sane-progressives strategy, beating Norquist at his own game.
Davis X. Machina
There are five pages in the Plum Book of people who, on the other end of the phone, could plausibly claim to be ‘The White House’.
George
Obama made to play the fool once again.
I’m guessing if you have a disposition that tells you to without mercy cut off at the knees any friend,acquaintance, ally, or employee whenever you get the least idea that they may becoming a liability and that you further think that this might additionally score you some rare points with those that by nature don’t particularly care for you— that maybe your enemies may smartly choose to use this weakness(major character flaw?) against you from time to time.
shortstop
Well, this and the fact that having to watch KO’s smug self-congratulation and insistence on interviewing himself instead of guests (while smirking at his own supposed wit) is less enjoyable than a colonoscopy. The guy’s just insufferable.
beltane
@BR: Tim got me to call my Rep several times. Jane wanted me to support a primary challenge to my excellent senator. That is the difference.
BR
@shortstop:
It’s too bad, too. Sometime last year I sat down and watched some of his old special comments, from his early years at Countdown. Try it sometime. The difference is amazing – he really is trying to be a real journalist (which of course channeling his anger). His tone is different. He was more like Rachel Maddow is today – methodical and journalistic (in the good sense of the word). He lost that somewhere along the way…
Ron
I’m not a firebagger by any stretch of the imagination, but I still think Vilsack deserves some of the blame here. Yes, the video was edited to look damning, but doesn’t someone accused of something like that at least have the right to explain their side of the story before being kicked to the curb? That being said, I think the administration did eventually do the right thing.
MikeJ
Black Jimmy Carter is the best tag this blog has. Too many people don’t remember that Jimmy Carter got fucked by the so called liberals that should have had his back.
El Cid
Willie Nelson, weighing in with his longstanding work with and admiration for Sherrod.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Allan:
most interesting Obama-related comment I’ve seen wrt to this.
I’m listening to Olbermann now, and I’m of two minds on KO’s screeching at Obama. I do agree that Obama should get out there and talk about this, he should get out in front of these kinds of stories. And it was, I think, amply clear by this time last night that Vilsack had made a huge and stupide mistake. I would have liked, for a lot of reasons, to see the White House come barrelling out in support of Shirley SHerrod and against FoxNews first thing this morning, not late this afternoon.
That said… Olberman criticized FoxNews and the White House. There are a whole lot of people in between who made the former so powerful and the latter so scared. Why doesn’t Olbermann direct his fire at that half-witted Broderist middle that makes Roger Ailes so powerful. You wanna name names? Name Dick Cheney’s most useful idiot, the de facto apologist for torture and the Iraq War. Call out Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd. Go after Politico and First Read. These are the people who keep shifting the middle, that Obama is castigated for seeking, to the Right.
I know he has done this before, I know he alluded to them when he talked about the people who have mocked him over the years, but put them in the context of this story, where they squarely belong. After Tom Vilsack (and leaving out the whackjobs at Fox) no one has more to answer for in this particular mess than Andrew Alexander. Does anyone think his next column will address the connection between his black panther apology and this mess? I don’t
And Another Thing...
@Lev: From Lev’s post:
“…most liberals have just fallen into the habit of being cynical and disappointed…”
What a load of BS. That is as stupid and shallow as saying “most conservatives.” Your post is larded with “these people” references, classic bigot rhetoric.”Most blacks, women, Hispanics, white men, etc etc” pick your groups of choice. And “these people” references.
Pound on Jane H or John Cole or me or anybody else that’s shot off their mouth, enough with the effing bigotry of assigning people to a group & and then generalizing some aptitude or characteristic to them and then smacking them around.
joe from Lowell
The obsessive need to blame the White House, so much that Vilsack was basically ignored, cannot be explained by anything but a commitment to pin anything that goes wrong on Obama.
What’s this bullshit about “the Obama administration,” except a conscious effort to knowingly shift blame from the Dept. of Agriculture?
Some people are more interested in dealing a political blow to the center-left than in standing up to racism, and that’s just sick. These people have completely lost all perspective, and they can’t even tell who the enemy is anymore.
BR
@beltane:
Same here. That’s why it’d be awesome if there could be a bit of inter-blog sane-progressive organizing between Tim and Cole here and Booman and Al Giordano and Jed, etc. That’d make it pack a much bigger punch to have a targeted under-the-radar effort each week really hitting something home.
John Cole
@MikeJ: Word. Can’t wait until some pious fuck like Feingold primaries Obama in 2012.
Lyrebird
@El Cid: if you’re still reading this thread — do you have any keywords or anything I could search on re: public/private partnerships that brought jobs to the inner city? (relevant to a project I’m proposing) THANKS for any suggestions.
PS: THANKS to JC for saying the truth!
El Cid
@BR: I think it was easier when there really was a bad, evil, malevolent, and incompetent force ruling the country and dissent on TV was all but nonexistent, much less powerful and passionate commentaries. KO shined then and even if I watch him less now I’ll forgive him a lot.
Hoya
I’m just so worn out by the left-right partisan bullshit that has swallowed the political discourse so totally and completely that I am close to the conclusion that this country is losing its ability to effectively deal with its problems.
The rise of conservative media beginning with talk radio in the 80’s, cable news in the 90s and expanding to the net after 9/11 has contributed to a troubling mentality amongst much of the American right, i.e the belief that the American left is somehow an enemy within and should be treated as such.
Maybe I’m naive, but this saddens me to no end. I’ve always felt that when push comes to shove, we’re all Americans and that should count more than stupid fucking political disagreements.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
I don’t think so. That’s exactly how it looks to me as well.
.
Hal
I just don’t imagine the President having direct oversight over the USDA, or being part of every decision made in every branch of government he would oversee. Does Vilsack himself see the President that often, as opposed to say, the SOS?
Also, I wonder if this would have happened with a black Secretary of Agriculture? Perhaps Vilsack thought he was saving Obama from controversy and acted in a way that he thought would epitomize the color blind society we don’t actually live in, but that is idealized in the minds of some by virtue of the fact that an black President was elected.
Martin
@El Cid:
I’m not surprised. Looking at it most cynically – it’s a political win for the WH, and another notch to put moderates against the right. They’d have been fools to not have handled the reversal this way – and they did a rather proper job of it, no less.
I don’t think it was a cynical move, but there’s really nothing for them to lose by doing the right thing here.
handy
I just commented about this in the open thread, but I’ll repeat here that I thought KO was right on. He didn’t go knives out on Obama; his ire was appropriately reserved for Murdoch, Ailes, and Breitbart! He was just asking BO to understand his enemy, and stop being so damned milquetoast and media-safe.
It’s real easy to say, “Hey these things happen, people slander you, in this political climate that can mean your job. Too bad, keep walking.” Of course I’m guessing that hasn’t happened to anyone here, so there you go.
And yes, I think Vilsack was sufficiently apologetic today, but the administration and the NAACP got schooled on this one.
BR
@El Cid:
Maybe it was easier, but he somehow started sliding during the election. He reached for the low-hanging fruit of being a “voice for the left” around then and dropped any pretense of trying to just deliver the news straight, and that’s when I feel his show sort of went off the rails. I am grateful though for his work during the middle Bush years and for helping Maddow get her start.
El Tiburon
KO did an outstanding job on calling out the administration, as he should. Calling out Breitbart and Fox is beside the point.
The administration needs to stop folding like a cheap tent: Van Jones, ACORN, the black professor incident, etc. Every time the right wing sneezes.
The buck stops with Obama and he screwed the pooch yet again. He really is turning out to be a wet noodle. He needs to get the word out to ALL of his underlings that this type of behavior when the right wing puls this crap will not be tolerated.
As KO asked: when will Obama realize we are at war with these people and to stand up door the American people.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@cat48:
I totally disagree with you. I think race is an issue that is right in Obama’s wheelhouse. He has the high ground, and knows how to stand the high ground.
Don’t mistake the nonsense you see on tv for the real effect of Obama’s dealings with race. The real effects are those that apply to real people, not to the blatherocracy.
Studly Pantload
@TR:
Yeah, Maddow was breathing righteous fire, tonight. As a long time follower of hers from back when she started her Air America radio show, it was very interesting to see her spend most of her show going after Fox News. Back when she first got into the broadcasting business, she barely conceded others were broadcasting alternate opinions, going out of her way to state she wasn’t one to comment on other radio hosts’ shows, and that she didn’t have a TV machine (in fact, that she was such a natural for broadcasting was made clear by how well she did the job – both on radio and TV – despite her unfamiliarity with it). But the more she’s been immersed in the bizz, the less she’s been able to ignore the bullshit filling the airwaves and cable machines, and the more she’s shown an appetite for lobbing straight for their junk — with both blunt force and laser precision.
I still think KO’s entertaining, even though I’ve years since recognized he tends to go over the top. But Maddow’s definitely transformed from an innately good and smart broadcaster to something else on a whole other level. I so wanted her first three segments on tonight’s show to be required viewing for any- and everyone who’s as much as watched a bit of Fox here and there without realizing what was going on behind the curtain.
joe from Lowell
Firebagger Hamsher managed to write a post titled “How Many Democrats Does It Take to Stand Up to Breitbart?”
But she didn’t write any posts actually…you know…standing up to Breitbart.
Typical.
handy
@handy:
And as I said in the open thread. Yes, KO is still a pompous ass whose “Special Comment” notwithstanding this evening is worthy of parody, and is insufficiently inspired to think of his own tagline, instead makes Murrow spin in his grave co-opting his signature sign-off. So, no, I’m not what you would generally call a “fan.”
freelancer
@BR:
KO gets on my fucking nerves nowadays. Maddow is amazing and grounded. Her opening segment of tonight’s show is already up on Youtube. (I think that’s a record)
demimondian
One thing which I found very unpleasant has not been mentioned: yes, Vilsack offered her a job, but *it was not the job she had*. They are creating a “unique” position for her.
That’s very depressing to me. Federal promotions are kind of like military promotions, and if you move out of the career ladder, you’re hosed.
burnspbesq
OT, but interesting: Marty Lederman’s name has been restored to the masthead at Balkinization. No new posts yet.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@MikeJ:
Comparisons of Obama to Carter are inapt for a simple and obvious reason:
Obama is not Carter, in any way, shape or form. Obama is stronger in his little finger than Carter was in his whole body. And with respect to people, smarter to that same degree.
Carter was an angry little man with a big phony smile. Obama is a well balanced big man with a confident smile.
Shelton Lankford
Olbermann pointed out the pattern set by this adminstration of jumping through their ass every time some administration figure or progressive group is targeted by the assassins on Fox and their paid choir. He gave four examples. He pointed out that the bully pulpit has largely remained above the fray while the manufactured case is trotted out with much tub-thumping and faux Fox outrage. Van Jones – out. Two-person black panther horde – WTF? ACORN – Framed. Shirley Sherrod pilloried and slandered. The unseemly alacrity of her being tossed under the bus while enroute home without so much as “what can you tell us about this? smacks of bureaucrats whose first concern is to cover their own ass.
Keith expressed the viewpoint of those of us who are sick of seeing the allegedly Democratic Senate pushed around by a posturing minority while the majority dither away their opportunity to do anything constructive that has not been watered down to nothing. He named the guy at the head of the administration as being part of the problem by his apparent detachment.
He probably suspects, as do I, that Obama IS being Obama.
Nick
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
you don’t live around white people do you?
gwangung
@demimondian: Sherrod is not a civil service employee. She’s a political appointee. I would think a career ladder is the last thing she’s thinking about.
Ron Beasley
My problem with all of this is that Vilsack (The Obama Administration) and the NCAAP empowered Breitbart. It’s not unlike all of those who empowered McCarthy in the 50’s. Humans are hard wired to be tribal and people like McCarthy and Breibart use fear of the “other” tribe to gain power and should not be empowered.
El Cid
@Lyrebird: I found some links a couple of times some years ago, but it took a while of searching. Offhand I don’t know what the best would be. It started with me remembering an article I read from who knows what source.
Montysano
@El Cid:
This is what I’m choosing to take away from this: Shirley Sherrod is a fine human being and a wonderful public servant. Watching that good ‘ol boy from Georgia speak of her with such affection and respect was incredibly moving. We still have a long way to go, but this country has moved forward in tangible ways. It was a good day to be an American.
The rest is just noise.
KG
Will Rogers said it best… I am not a member of any organized party, I’m a Democrat.
priscianusjr
@Lev:
Thank you, Lev, that’s one of the truest and best-written explanations of the constant malaise of the Left blogosphere (most of it) that I’ve come across. I’m going to print it out and put it on my bulletin board.
Nick
@El Tiburon:
this is getting fucking ridiculous, we shouldn’t be AT WAR with these people. This is not a fucking civil war! If it is, then let’s stop playing word games and just pick up fucking guns and kill them. If this is a war, then we should be bombing their headquarters, taking their men prisoner, not having endless rhetorical fights.
I’m sick and tired of politics having to be a sports game.
Beej
Amen John Cole! Could we all just remember that Faux and Breitbart are the bad guys here? Vilsack and the rest of the Obama administration were duped, acted rashly, and should have taken time to research this whole thing, but they didn’t lie, cheat, and obfuscate. I sincerely hope that from here on in, every time Obama or a spokesperson is asked to comment on some report instigated by Breitbart or Faux, the answer will run something like: Since this comes from Faux (and/or Breitbart) we will have to check the factual background of the report. We are all aware that Faux’s fact-checking and sources are suspect.
Rick Taylor
To some degree, fair or not, the President is going to get flak for whatever happens on his watch. The buck stops at his desk after all. But yes, once the administration did the right thing, I think it was time to move on.
Ailuridae
John, I am not sure that it has to be an either/or situation in terms of assigning blame.
Yes, what Breitbart did was loathsome and the cable programs running with it was incredibly irresponsible. (I give KO a lot of credit here for at least twice pointing out that Breitbart was welcomed onto MSNBC and lied through his teeth). But I don’t see how that is true means that the Obama administration, if not the President himself acted incredibly unfairly and deserves some very real blame for the issue.
I don’t care for Vilsack but I found his explanation and apology compelling. The President should follow suit in short order. There is nothing wrong with the President or his cabinet chiefs getting a decision wrong. And there should be no problem for any progressive to admit as such. That’s a fundamental difference between a reality based progressive and an authoritarian conservative – the ability to admit your leader got something wrong, to be disappointed he or she did and instead of morphing your views around their mistake demanding accountability from them.
I’m pretty loyal to the President and broadly very loyal to the party. My comments here reflect that (I think). But there is nothing unfair about pointing out the President’s really egregious mistakes whether it be here or say with off-shore drilling, when he makes them.
KG
@Nick: yeah, most definitely not a civil war. and really, never going to get there.
Bullsmith
To reiterate, because it’s worth repeating: Maddow absolutely kicked ass tonight, and Anderson Cooper to his credit did some downright straight-on assigning of accountability.
All in all a good night in jounimalism in the U.S. of A.
shortstop
@El Cid: It’s not that we have so many strong voices that I think we can do without him even now. It’s just that I can’t stand watching him myself.
Davis X. Machina
@gwangung: She could not have been fired otherwise… leastways, not remotely that fast.
Part of the problem BTW with dislodging the BushCo stay-behind squads in places like Interior and Justice is civil-service protection. They didn’t spend the last year of Junta Boy’s second term moving bods from the political list to career civil-service positions as fast as possible for fun.
General Stuck
Yes, it is the media and the wingnuts to blame for this. But the WH and Vilsack panicked when they should have considered the source. I thought Gibbs and Vilsack were splendid in their contrition but right now the media, in particular, should be raked over the coals for becoming shallow asshats turning the fourth estate into a 3 ring circus. But they are the media of course, so who will cover them because they will not cover themselves in any serious and sustained way. Corporations run us, and that is a problem accross the board, turning this republic into a laughing stock. Jefferson once said he would rather have a strong media than a strong military, or something like that.
KG
@Rick Taylor:
This is one of the things that I really dislike about the Imperial Presidency. The buck really shouldn’t stop with the president, at least not entirely, there’s two other supposedly co-equal branches. Even within the executive, the entire operation has gotten so large that it would be like blaming a ship’s captain because the ship’s cook didn’t properly cook the chicken for dinner. But obviously, we really want a term limited king, I think, so whatever…
And Another Thing...
@demimondian: That’s an excellent observation but I would add this caveat, She’s in her early 60’s, 62 I think, and probably has about 6 years of time to serve in the Obama administration.
If she were 50, it would be much more of a problem for her career.
She really is an impressive person. The full speech is well worth listening to, and she’s handled herself really well in the fracas.
Vilsack handled himself very well today IMHO.
KG
@Bullsmith: even Tweety went after Fox News on this
Nick
@General Stuck:
like I said, the source is irrelevant, it’s reasonable to believe the media would endorse right winger lies without challenging them if it fits their narrative and this did. They have a history of doing this.
joe from Lowell
I know what mistake Vilsack made. What mistake do you think Obama made?
When the buck got to his desk – when it got to the White House, actually – they called on Vilsack to apologize and reinstate her.
joe from Lowell
I know what mistake Vilsack made. What mistake do you think Obama made?
When the buck got to his desk – when it got to the White House, actually – they called on Vilsack to apologize and reinstate her.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@KG:
and went after them pretty hard, too, didn’t he? Credit where it’s due. I don’t much like him, but he was sincerely offended by this one.
sherifffruitfly
Because most of our blogosphere is anti-Obama (he’s just a bush-like corporatist shill dontchaknow), there’s no pressure on the media to do anything but blame Obama as well. So Olbermann’s zomgobamaissuchacoward thing isn’t surprising.
What’s surprising is that after Olbermann, Maddow actually got the basics right, with her historical/conceptual overview about how it’s all about keeping white folks together as one block, voting republican.
She failed to draw the obvious conclusion, unfortunately: the structure Maddow detailed, designed by white folks, for white folks, can only be made to fail by white folks – simply by refusing to go along with it. It’s a free choice each of us white folks gets to make individually. Bitching about a black guy not telling the race-baiters to fuck off is beyond laughable – for a black guy to do so is to do precisely what the race-baiters want.
Black folks can’t force white folks to stop being bigots. Only white folks can.
Ailuridae
@KG:
More importantly the buck was never passed. Vilsack fired the women (which is completely within his power even if he was wrong) and the Administration backed his decision. Nobody in this episode has been playing a game of “I am not responsible for this”. Vilsack made the decision, the WH backed either the decision itself or Vilsack’s autonomy to do so and both turned out to be very wrong.
But nobody here is skirting responsibility so the buck passing bit isn’t relevant.
Llelldorin
@And Another Thing…:
If any good may come of this mess, it might be the raising of her profile. From the sounds of things she’s a spectacularly impressive person, and if she winds up flipped into a position with more responsibility it might rebound to our collective benefit.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Nick: That’s not it and you know it. We are pissed because whomever was responsible for the firing didn’t question the source of the accusation. Did they even ask that? Were they really scared of Glenn Beck? Didn’t anyone ask any questions before they fired Shirley Sherrod?
El Cid
@Lyrebird: I think this review captures the overview of the Clinton administration efforts to focus on inner-city employment (the “New Markets” initiative).
An overview from one of the programs.
demimondian
@gwangung: She’s a Deputy Administrator. That’s an ES post, not a political post.
angler
Hamsher, Greenwald, Feingold, they again have a lot to answer for. Firebaggers!! go git ’em!
lawnorder
2 things:
a) John do you work for the government ?
When Cheney outed Plame, was a disgrace for several reasons but one of the biggest problems is it showed the WH was willing to use federal employees as disposable.
In this charged political climate we have had there will ALWAYS be people like Breitbart. He is a success story. He brought down ACORN and is working very hard now to bring down NAACP.
What does Obama do ? Treats Breitbart as a serious person, AFTER the ACORN PIMP videos and other forgeries.
The same WH that has been saying Fox News aren’t news, goes ahead and destroys someone’s career based on a Fox News hit piece. If they at the WH take Fox seriously why wouldn’t anyone else do ?
b) By jumping when the Right Wing says jump, they are making all democrats a target for right wing smears.
If lying about you can bring Obama down a peg, Breitbart and others will not hesitate to go after you or me – this we already knew.
Obama will be safe with his secret service and his powerful friends.
What we didn’t know is that the WH will not defend you and will side with your attacker. Until – if you are lucky – you can prove your innocence but you are basically guilty till proven innocent. You, me and all of us who support Obama are big targets. You on a big blog, a bigger target than me as a humble commenter.
He won’t lift a finger to help and worse, will lift a finger to push you down, without verifying the facts.
So do I blame a scorpion for being poisonous ? Yes. Breitbart certainly is nasty. But I’m spitting mad at the doctor that didn’t want to get rid of the scorpions around us and then almost cut my feet to get rid of the poison.
BobbyK
Ok, the reason this was WRONG was because he acted before he got the entire story. Ms. Sherrod herself said people in the administration were telling her to resign because-GOD FORBID-she was going to be on Glenn Beck the next day-horrors! Bunch of chicken shits in this administration. Though most democrats are.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@General Stuck: I don’t often agree with you, but you are 100% right on this. Gibbs should have called them out yesterday for their bullshit sourcing.
Lyrebird
@El Cid: Muchas Gracias! spot on. appreciated.
tomvox1
Yup, John. Said just about the same earlier today. But misremix’s “Bummer” post and all the rest of the blogoshpere’s deep, deep disappointment with the Big O has already been relegated to the “Older Posts” links. So who can remember all those epically disappointed sentiments once the right thing that everyone was clamoring for is surprisingly done…again. Amazing what one short news cycle and a bona fide accountable administration can bring.
El Tiburon
@Nick:
Pull your head out of your a-hole. These fucktards on the right are not playing games. They want to literally destroy the left in this country. Not figuratively, but literally destroy the left.
I suggest you pick up David Brockss ” Blinded by the right” to get a sense of what we are up against. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and will spend more to regain power. They will lie, cheat and steal to do this. Must we continue to bring a pillow to a gun fight?
What will it take for you to realize this?
Ailuridae
@joe from Lowell:
It would have been an excellent time for the President, assuming he was appraised of the situation (which is a safe assumption as it was on Morning Joe that day) to tell Vilsack to not act without having the full tape or transcript.
Less directly, Tom Vilsack shouldn’t be in his administration.
KG
I’m watching the Maddow replay (actually flipping between it and the Dodger game) and seeing the story about Michael Steele trying to hide the RNC’s multi-million dollar debt and the potential consequences for doing so, I am really beginning to think that Steele is a deep cover sleeper agent for the Dems.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@Nick:
Uh, lolwhut?
I come from a long line of very white people. I am so white you have to look at me through a pinhole so as not to hurt your retina.
Like I said, Obama has, and knows how to stand, the high ground in race matters. People respect him for that, and by people, I mean, you know, people. Not black people. Just people.
You don’t know many people who aren’t on tv, I take it.
tomvox1
@lawnorder:
Maybe this president simply had more pressing matters on his plate in the past 48 hours than devoting his full attention to the Sherrod media tempest, like signing Wall Street reform and getting unemployment relief flowing again. Sheesh. You do know he’s not God or Santa, don’t you?
shortstop
In the early hours of today, yes, they did that.
Late yesterday afternoon, many hours after it was clear that the whole story hadn’t been told, the WH was saying it had no role in firing Sherrod but was standing by Vilsack’s decision, even as Vilsack was telling CNN that even if Sherrod didn’t do what she was accused of doing, she couldn’t work at Agriculture because people wouldn’t trust her in the wake of such an accusation. (I think Vilsack did very well today, and I’m glad, but I still can’t fucking believe he said that.)
I am not blaming Obama directly for this cockup. I am saying that WH-Ag coordination was bloody awful many hours after it was crystal clear that this thing had blown up to the level that the WH needed to be involved.
KG
@tomvox1: I thought he was God, Santa, and the baby Jeebus riding a magic unicorn pony.
joe from Lowell
@Nick:
Uh, lolwhut?
Yeah, seriously.
Nick, have you completely forgotten this.
White people loved that shit. Obama can turn this on any time he wants.
I think it’s grossly unfair to imagine Obama involvement in the firing, but Olbermann’s got a point about standing up and providing some leadership.
Mary G
@Montysano: This times ten.
El Tiburon
@KG:
Define ‘civil war’.
You have an entire industry: fox news, numerous right wing publications and blogs, a multitude of highly funded think tanks with one goal: to push out right wing propaganda and destroy the left. Period. This is a civil war. These people do not care abbot dialogue and debate; they care about one thing: defeating their enemy at any cost.
So please tell me what that is?
60th Street
I definitely agree that this is a travesty and everyone needs to be sucking it up and seriously kissing Sherrod’s ass right now.
That said, the bottom line for me is that the Breitbarts of the world need to pay and pay hard. There needs to be a concerted effort by the NAACP to back Sherrod and sue his weasely classless little hide into oblivion and to make him positively radioactive to the GOP. Then the Obama administration needs to pin him under the microscope, investigate this fiasco and maybe his past fiascoes, to boot, thoroughly and charge the bastard with whatever they can find that has a good chance of sticking.
Then maybe they won’t have to piss their pants everytime a white-wing douchebag jumps out from behind a door with a handycam. And maybe then these insipid hit jobs might become just a little less frequent.
I get that the White House has a zero tolerance policy for scandal and that lopping off any potential for gangrene seems to be the MO. It’s hard to blame them for being cautious and governing is hard enough right now without courting a repeat of the 90s. But, as a wise man once said on my teevee, “get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.” And unfortunately, livin’ means fightin’ until your dyin’ day.
Allan
I really would like to know in detail exactly how familiar Secy. Vilsack was with Shirley Sherrod before the out-of-context quotes were supplied to him, and whether he had already formed any negative opinions of her. Was he aware, and did he give any consideration to the appearances of abruptly firing an employee, albeit a political appointee, in such close proximity to her winning a large settlement against the USDA? As noted at the Rural Development Leadership Network website announcing Sherrod’s appointment, this tidbit:
The nexus of this settlement, her hiring, and the speed with which she was hurled under a bus at the first opportunity raises questions about what other aspects of her biography influenced Vilsack’s decision.
joe from Lowell
@shortstop:
You’ve got a point there. “We support the Secretary of Agriculture” is just boilerplate. It’s what a press secretary says when he has nothing to say. The conspiracy theories about the POTUS being involved in this firing are absurd.
But maybe that’s the problem; maybe they should have been more involved, instead of letting Vilsack have so much latitude.
Ailuridae
@Lyrebird:
Not that you asked me but Peter Hall (UK) started the idea and he’s an excellent and accessible writer. His wiki is a pretty good start.
Ailuridae
@shortstop:
You’re writing what I am thinking more clearly than I am explaining myself. Thanks!
D'Angelo
It’s ultimately time to kick chowderheaded fuckwits like these out of progressivism. Go pine for HRC.
gwangung
@joe from Lowell:
You’re supposed to allow a fair amount of authority to your subordinates.
However, you should be better informed on the issue. I bet the same person informing the upper reaches of the White House on the issue was the same person urging Sherrod to resign.
KG
@El Tiburon: that is politics, brutal nasty politics, but by no means civil war. Civil wars have people in the streets shooting at each other with guns in battles and such shit. We are no where near a civil war, we don’t have states talking succession in any serious manner, we don’t have threats of coups or regular assassination attempts, or anything that even remotely resembles civil war. You could call the Mexican Drug War a civil war, since there are organized groups actually shooting at government agents and private citizens. But this is not civil war, it’s not even close.
KS in MA
Personally, I’m very gratified that the White House got my email last night. Gibbs and Vilsack did exactly what I recommended.
FlipYrWhig
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Which day do you mean? Because he did do that today.
I liked the Maddow intro piece. I thought that Olbermann wrote up a scathing tirade expecting the official reaction to take longer, was caught off-guard when Gibbs and Vilsack issued apologies, and then decided to give the same tirade anyway.+
That’s what I don’t get about this. What’s the point of screaming and yelling that the administration is fucking things up when the administration has already admitted it fucked things up? What’s the point of screaming and yelling that they were too credulous when the administration has already admitted that it was too credulous? And what’s the point of wailing and gnashing our teeth that it took too long when the whole thing took essentially 24 hours from start to finish?
Again, the big fuck-up is that someone got way too spooked way too easily about the Breitbart tape. So in essence there were 12 hours of fucking up followed by 12 hours of cleaning up the mess. Having no fuck-up at all is of course the ideal, but as far as how to handle a fuck-up, that to me was pretty impressive.
+ Like John, I don’t understand why the words “disservice” and, especially, “injustice,” were supposed to be so milquetoast. “Injustice” to me is a rather powerful and significant word.
Nick
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
No, because they are in fact scared of Glenn Beck, and they should be, the media, all across the board, parrots what he says, truth be damned, and there isn’t anything anyone can do about it as long as their ratings are high and they’re profitable.
lawnorder
@60th Street
But that is just it. They aren’t made to pay and they are even getting rewarded. So they get bolder. And go after more people. And do worse things.
While Obama is just watching, or worse, rewarding them.
Obama is safe, the worse that can happen to him is lose in 2012.
Organizations and people are having their work of many years destroyed just for the crime of being black, or democrat, or liberal.
If they have zero tolerance for scandal, then AT LEAST stop coddling the scandal fabricators!
Church Lady
Here’s an experiment for everyone. Tomorrow, ask any five random people you know, that are not particularly interested in day-to-day politics, about this entire incident. If the five I asked tonight at my book club are any indication, you will be met with a blank look. Frankly, outside of the beltway, the blogosphere and cable news addicts, I don’t think anyone knows or cares.
FlipYrWhig
@joe from Lowell:
How long did Vilsack have “latitude”? The first updates I saw about how Vilsack would be reconsidering the course of action were IIRC around midnight last night.
shortstop
In this case and at the point in the day when they said it — after it was clear that the tape had been edited and Sherrod’s description of the real context had been widely circulated — it was quite a bit more than that. It was definitively coming down on the wrong side, although not, apparently, intentionally.
And generally speaking, that’s not only sound management practice for the cabinet but works out just fine. When you have a full-blown controversy dominating the news, however, the WH needs to be involved long before they were this time — particularly when a secretary is out there doubling down on stupid public statements. I imagine that is a mistake the WH won’t make again.
Leonard Stiltskin
The bottom line, whether anyone wants to acknowledge it right now amidst all the venting, is that the MSM has been shamed into fact-checking the right-wing noise machine. That’s the takeaway here. Everything Breitbart does going forward has to be questioned and qualified. Everything his pimp/intern does needs to be questioned. Every Fox News rageathon now gets taken with a grain of salt. That’s a win in my book, even though it may not look like it today.
Most people around the country don’t even know about this story. My wife, an intelligent, professional woman with a Master’s degree, wouldn’t even know who Shirley Sherrod is, but the network news she watches occasionally will now be filled with a little less right wing propaganda, and that’s a win in my book being replicated all across the land.
Allison W.
I doubt Obama had anything to do with the resignation. In any company or business, you do your best not to bring problems to the CEO. I think people really underestimate what the president has to do every day and you just don’t run up on him for things you can handle yourself. And yes, it was handled poorly. I am starting to think that someone took a day off yesterday. Someone more politically astute than Vilsack and everything just fell apart.
I don’t know exactly what happened. We are all making guesses really. I know enough of history to know that we will never know the whole story of any event.
Nick
@joe from Lowell:
no, no they really didn’t
and even if they did, what is he supposed to do? Give a speech on race everytime a racial issue comes up?
Shalimar
@Nick:
What power do Beck and Limbaugh have over anyone who would ever consider voting for a Democrat? I don’t see how they should be relevant at all. Their listeners are never going to be on our side, so they shouldn’t be part of the discussion about what to do and not do.
Nick
@lawnorder: you really think OBAMA can stop them?!?!?!
I mean what they want is a fight with him, because he can’t win.
They’ll be around long after he’s gone.
Allison W.
Exactly. It’s a whole other world once you leave the political sites or turn off the computer and go outside.
Nick
@Shalimar:
I know a lot of people who voted Democratic in the past and listen to him now. He’s changed minds before, he can do it again.
You won’t get anyone who listens to him to vote for Obama, but he can get people who voted for obama to listen to him.
Plus the other networks parrot his crap like it’s the truth, especially when it’s a juicy scandal
Anton Sirius
@sherifffruitfly:
That’s not her job, though. It’s her job to point out the pattern, not to break it.
Allison W.
@Shalimar:
Its the power they have over the conservative media and the conservatives power over the MSM who don’t hesitate to spread the same garbage to the average American.
Allan
I put out a tweet summarizing my views on this topic earlier today:
apocalipstick
@60th Street:
So you want the Obama administration to use the DoJ and, what, the FBI, the go after a political enemy? Gee, didn’t we get righteously outraged when Shrub and Turd Blossom did that with the US Attorneys?
I do hope Sherrod sues his ass back to the Stone Age, and I believe that the ACORN fiasco may contain several actionable charges, but that will be up to various state governments, not the Feds (I think, I am not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV).
Corner Stone
@KS in MA: Thank you KS in MA.
Thank you for getting this straightened out quickly.
Lyrebird
@Ailuridae: Thanks for that as well! Turns out that having plausible job options around can also influence school engagement (shocking! kids respond to local realities!).
Corner Stone
@Nick: You know Nick, if you didn’t exist the rightwing would have to invent you.
You are without a doubt the best advocate they have for their ultimate power and our sheer powerlessness.
It’s almost as if your repeated message of futility has an endgoal.
KRK
@demimondian:
No, Sherrod was not a Deputy Administrator. She has NEVER been a USDA civil service employee. She was a State Director which is absolutely a political appointment. She was appointed by Vilsack last year.
Karen
@John Cole:
I’ll make you a bet I hope I’m not right about.
If Jane Hamsher and her pals find someone liberal enough to primary against Obama, she will be the first one to use the race dog whistle.
I say this because the other PUMAs used race in coded and not so coded ways against Obama during the primaries. I also believe that’s why the PUMAs formed in the first place.
Am I wrong?
apocalipstick
@Nick:
But their ratings aren’t high. It’s more likely that they’re (they being the broadcast networks and CNN) driven by fear and imitation. After all, Beck viewers seem to be the last people getting their information from TV.
It’s also worth noting that CNN and the broadcast networks are in an untenable position vis Faux Spews. After all, they have to make at least a lip service commitment to actual news. Faux is just committed to shoveling shit.
Anton Sirius
@lawnorder:
Your Obama Derangement Syndrome is showing. Seek help.
Corner Stone
@Karen: Please. For the love of God. Back away from the PUMA pipe.
This is ridiculous.
lawnorder
@tomvox1
Of course I’m not furious at Obama the man. I’m furious at Obama the organization. The WH chief of staff that was afraid of a Glenn Beck show. The Vilsack aide that wouldn’t let Sherrod finish driving and made her stop on a highway. Vilsack.
This isn’t personal. Obama might not even have known. But the people he put in charge knew. And reacted with very poor judgment. A poor judgment displayed before by Obama’s organization. They enable right wing haters. They coddle liars and double crosser. And they dump loyal supporters in the blink of an eye.
By letting character assassinations and violent rhetoric run loose, this WH is endangering democrats and government employees. Liberal organizations have a big target painted over them, for the crime of supporting Obama.
Yet Obama’s people first reaction is to appease the liars of the right. That makes the right wing bolder and more dangerous. And it wont be Obama or his WH staff that will bear the brunt of the consequences. It will be people like Sherrod. Whose father was killed by a white man, yet is such a decent human being that she bears no grudge. She helps blacks and whites alike.
I’m not furious at Breitbart or at Obama. Breitbart is being handsomely paid to do just what he is doing, very successfully. Obama is being paid by me and you, to, among other things, protect decent people from the Breitbarts. And he and his subordinates are doing a lousy job on it.
Nick
@Corner Stone: oh stop whining
El Tiburon
@KG:
You have governors and certain legislators most certainly talking about secession or otherwise how to avoid federal laws. Are you being serious? We don’t have threats of coups? Have you heard of Sharon angle? So many republicans and tea parters have hinted at armed insurrection. Again, I ask: are you being serious?
Look, just because citizens are not carrying muskets and wearing blue or red doesn’t not mean ther is not a war going on right now. The ordinance may not be bullets and bombs, but the result is the same: destroyed lives and a regime change by any means necessary.
Corner Stone
@Nick: Hmmm. You’re the one whining non-stop about how powerful they are and how nothing anyone does is going to change that.
If you’ve said it once you’ve said it 300 times this week.
What would you think if you came across a comment stream such as yours?
Karen
@Allan:
Isn’t that a clear example of a conflict of interest for Vilsack?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone: But she’s not wrong, because it hasn’t happened yet.
Anyway, she’s clearly hopeful Jane Hamsher is not, in fact, the racist she just painted her as. So there’s that.
I weep for Balloon Juice.
Nick
@lawnorder:
No, Obama can’t make them stronger or destroy them. He doesn’t have that power, only the people can. The people who watch Beck, listen to Rush, are glued to Fox.
If all three lost their entire audience tomorrow, there would be no Breitbart. They have power no matter what Obama does. They would’ve felt embolded by this whether he fought them or not, because it made the news and everyone forgot about FinReg and Unemployment Benefits
Nick
@Corner Stone:
Gee, you know, he’s right, we do need to declare war on the corporate right wing media. It’s a shame no one listens to him.
Nick
@El Tiburon:
actually that’s the very definition of a war.
But if you want a Civil War, then pick up your gun and kill teabaggers, otherwise, knock off the war talk. If this is a war, Obama’s tough words aren’t going to win it. Bullets and bombs are going to win it. If you think they’re a threat to America, then you need to act on it.
NickM
I’m going to close my eyes and imagine this was the most successful Dem ratfuck operation of all time. A boy can dream, can’t he?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick:
Didn’t that same asshat claim Jews controlled the media?
Bernard
lol. the right wins no matter what the left does. simply cause the left does nothing but respond to the right. never leads, ever! Bipartisanship must be preserved at all costs.
hey, what can i say. the last 40 years have been a blast for the party in power, R or D. it’s been very profitable. and they want more and to keep getting more.
blame the “other” and steal the money while you’re not looking that way.
Cacti
Again, I just can’t stop saying that Keith Olbermann is a smarmy douche. One more rich shit with a microphone who thinks he has something important to say. The epitome of a limousine liberal.
I’m sure he was really out in the trenches of liberal politics when he was reading football scores for ESPN with Dan Patrick.
Comrade Mary
@Joe Lisboa: Everyone needs a hug, especially Joe.
lawnorder
@Nick
Obama and the WH team can do a lot to make right wingers less bold. Stop cutting deals and sacrificing goals to get 1 republican to vote. Defend institutions from attacks. Would it have killed any budget to give ACORN a grant to make up for the revenue lost after the false video ?
Make attackers pay. What Breitbart did is illegal. Sue his ass, or at least support Sharrrod. Do not fire the next Van Jones. Do not discharge Lt Dan. Do not defend a bigoted legal opinion that is completely unnecessary.
Obama is not a delicate flower that has to be defended by us. He has the entire federal government working for him. And the law. He should be doing a lot more to get the right wing smears tamped down.
@Ano something
Look on Daily Kos. I’m not a PUMA. Was on Obama’s camp, not Hillary’s. Boy do I regret it now! I doubt Hillary would let people walk all over democrats like he is doing.
Allan
@Karen: I don’t think so. I mean, for starters, the lawsuit named Vilsack only because he’s the current Secretary, not because of anything that has happened on his watch.
I’m just amazed that Vilsack would act so precipitously with someone who is in such a uniquely precarious place as to be an appointee to an agency over which she recently triumphed via litigation. Did she develop some enemies inside the department who were itching to get back at her?
It makes me wonder if he was even properly briefed on who the hell she is. And whether that was part of the set-up of Sherrod.
Nick
@lawnorder:
oh no, it’s much better off if we just do nothing, let the country fall into pieces and blame Republicans. I’m sure the people will understand we’re making them suffer as to not “sacrificing our goals”
what would yo suggest tonto? shutting down television signals? killing news anchors? or just sending them to Gitmo? Unless you think they’re gonna be intimidated by tough sounding words they’ll never air.
Wa
nobody who supported Obama would say this, sorry. I don’t know anyone who supported Obama who thought Hillary would have been the defender of all things progressive.
Sloegin
Meh.
You can correctly nail KO for his wind-baggery, his pomposity, and his self righteousness which (imho) really has been getting in the way of his message for a while now…
But. Everything he said in his comments seemed dead on. Yeah, KO is turning into the video version of Somerby sometimes, but was anything he said wrong or objectionable? Or just how he said it? His point was basically everyone shouldn’t have freaked out immediately just because the RWM said “boo!”.
Jeebus. It was a Breitbart video people. Fool me twice, won’t get fooled again. It suckered the rest of the media, the Admin, the NAACP.
What the hell?
Mnemosyne
@lawnorder:
Oh noes! It took Obama the organization a whole 24 hours to realize they’d made a mistake and publicly rectify it! Those monsters!
I think you were the guy Louis CK was sitting next to on the plane.
Cacti
@lawnorder:
Okay. So you’re one of those who thinks the primary job of the POTUS is to be the political score-settler in chief.
I’m with ya. If Obama just shouted and pounded the podium more, all would be right with the world.
Cacti
What would the White House sue Breitbart for?
The cause of action for defamation rests with the person who was defamed.
Mnemosyne
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Good thing Hamsher never ran a picture of any of her political opponents Photoshopped in blackface, ’cause that might give people ideas about her being racist or something.
Mister Papercut
@BR:
For the love of FSM, just don’t let them do it on a listerv. (There be dragons, or so I’ve heard…)
lawnorder
@Nick
Like Sherrod, I have proof :)
How Hillary lost my vote- Fri May 30, 2008 Hillary’s aggressive tactics on the primary lost my vote. I liked Obama’s cool approach.
But there’s a difference between cool and inactive. And an even bigger difference between cool and active to cater to the whims of GOP liars and fire democrats.
If Obama has so little power against the millions who watch Fox, then pray tell, how on earth did he win on 2008 ?
No, I will not vote Palin/ Rush 2012. But I have the right to be furious at a candidate that doesn’t protect democrats and emboldens the character assassins of the right.
@Cacti
Ah but he is doing political score settling. AGAINST us liberals. If he did nothing it wouldn’t be so bad. The firings and backing of “bipartisanship” with people who lie everyday are making it a lot worse
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
yeah, I was thinking that too.
OTOH, I don’t think she really is racist. Just a purely opportunistic sociopath.
Bernard
wonder if i’ll hear any “shame’ from Obama White House/Democrats et al on Breitbart using a black woman to advance the “racist” meme, or maybe saying something. period..
some kind of “spoken” forward leading action that isn’t it itself just a lame response to those who are directing America in the “back to the Good ole Days” meme.
so far Obama just follows. never leads or dares the right to own up to anything. and some liberals get pissed at other liberals for wanting the President to stand up to the loonies. sometime somewhere down the line. it would be nice to have a president who actively leads us in the world, other than lead us in tax cuts for the rich, two wars for oil and domination, hopefully cutting Social Security/Cat food Commission, Gitmo, wiretapping and various other continuations of Bush policy. or sell out to Health Insurance companies, Banksters- Savvy Businessmen, BP media black out. hmm
but that is not a description of a Democrat. that is the definition of a Republican. and Obama is both, being bipartisan like Ronnie Reagan.
must think like Republican, think like Republican….
when am i getting my pony?????
Nick
@shortstop:
you know, and this here is the problem with our 24/7 news media.
On the day the President is meeting with a major international leader for the first time ever, getting ready to sign a major piece of legislation and receiving breifings about our struggling economy, war in Afghanistan, the aftermath of the oil spill, and keeping us safe from crazy people who want to blow us up, the President is supposed to stop everything because some lady got canned because the media got all hot and heavy over a tape that they couldn’t be bothered to authenticate because they wanted to be the first to break the Obama Presidency-ending race scandal.
If the media did it’s job, and could be trusted to do it’s job, the administration wouldn’t have been compelled to do what it did.
Davis X. Machina
@Allan: A parsimonious theory, and saves the phenomenon to boot….
eemom
OMG, that statement would probaby kill poor Somerby. Olbermann is the epitome of all that he hates.
I don’t think they are alike at all. Somerby may be a lunatic-savant, but at least he’s sincere.
Olbermann’s just an overpaid, arrogant hack. Sure, he’s “our” hack, I guess — but he’s still a hack.
Nick
@lawnorder:
are you schizo? You meant to tell me you turned on Hillary to vote for Obama because you didn’t like his “aggressive tactics” and liked Obama’s “cool approach” while you complain about his cool approach and want her aggressive tactics?
Anyway, you proved my point, that you weren’t a true blue Obama supporter since you supported everyone else first (including some dude named Kuchnick), and only came around to him after Hillary got all angry and aggressive three days before the primaries ended.
and yet here you are, two years later, complaining Obama isn’t angry and aggressive enough!
I think you’re the one who made the stupid move, you wanted a Hillary, yet you voted for Obama and now you wish you hadn’t criticized her aggressive approach. You admit to wanting his “cool, calm” approach, you knew what you were getting.
eemom
@Nick:
ITS: possessive form of IT.
IT’S: contraction of IT IS.
I can’t STAND it anymore.
Nick
@eemom: I have copywriters who worry about that stuff usually.
Mnemosyne
@lawnorder:
Because no independents or halfway sane Republicans wanted Sarah Palin to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
What, you really thought that there was a huge wave of liberal feeling in the country and we were really past all that nasty race stuff?
Yeah, right.
By the way, when we cry tears for poor Samantha Power being fired after a smear campaign, can we at least mention that she was hired back immediately after the election and has been working in the Obama administration ever since? Or does that ruin the martyr narrative that’s been built around her?
Ailuridae
@eemom:
Somerby’s also pretty plainly a racist with severe gender issues.
I suspect Somerby would be even worse at being on TV than he is at his current job (and he’s been horrendous at that for about six years). His criticisms of left TV stars demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of the medium.
There is also his repellent and repeated defense of Big Ten basketball and football (which, again, is just another indication he is a racist)
lawnorder
@Nick
Err… Are we debating the purity of my Obama conviction here ? Sure, it was a rebound romance, my fling with “some dude named Kuchnick” and Edwards were leading nowhere but I still committed to Obama. Made an honest man out of him.
If you read the diary you will see how appalled I was at Hillary attacking a fellow democrat. That is very important to me, and the fuel behind my anger at Obama’s WH.
Not only he and his staff are very inactive to protect democrats and foster liberal ideas, but he and his staff actually take the conservatives side in several instances. When reason and facts are with democrats.
So yeah, I regret picking the calm and classy instead of the aggressive and brash. Because right wingers are batshit crazy and we need a WH that helps us fight them, not hinder us and works against us in many cases like Obama.
JMY
It happened. It’s over. It’s being corrected. Move on. It’s easy to blame and point fingers at people in the administration and say what they should not have done b/c we aren’t in that position. I don’t buy the appeasing to the right argument. If I recall, there were people saying that the WH fighting back against FOX News, Rush, Beck, etc. wasn’t something that they should be doing, yet when they don’t, they are scared of the right?
FlipYrWhig
@Ailuridae: Wait — the Bob Somerby whose other unrelenting cause is inner-city education is a racist, and the Bob Somerby who has ripped Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann as “gender nuts” for their misogyny has issues with women? I have a hard time believing either one of those claims. Maybe I missed something when I went on hiatus from reading him discuss Naomi Wolf and “earth tones” for the umpteenth time.
The things that bother me about Somerby are that (1) He never takes yes for an answer: if a media figure takes his same position on something, he complains that it took too long; (2) Like my dad, he thinks that calling someone stupid or otherwise mocking their intelligence is a grievous, unforgivable act; (3) He really does seem to think that everyone should always be talking about nothing but the 2000 election. And I’m really surprised that he’s a comedian by trade, because his blog is unsparingly righteous, even priggish. It would be like finding out that Glenn Greenwald was funny.
Ailuridae
@FlipYrWhig:
Read him again starting with the 08 campaign (defending his gal Hillary).
He has a lot of race issues made plain by the Obama campaign. And his issues with Rachel basically amount to “Shut up Lesbian I don’t care about DADT or DOMA!” – those are gender issues and really ugly ones.
eemom
@Nick:
Yeah. No reason a hotshot professional media type like you should master something as mundane as a second grade spelling lesson when he has copywriter slaves to do it for him.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
John, your displeasure is ludicrous on a couple of counts:
1. The day the story broke, Sherrod’s boss insisted that Sherrod submit her resignation by Blackberry– pull to the side of the highway and text it– because Glenn Beck was about to go on the air and they wanted to say she resigned before the program began.
The following day, the Jim Messina, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff tells everyone at the 8:30 staff meeting that this is exactly how the White House wants these sorts of problems handled– kill it off before it consumes a full news cycle.
Let’s frame this in terms everyone can understand– a West Wing analogy. Messina holds the same job that Josh Lyman did. That is, there are only two people above him– Chief of Staff and the President.
Could one imagine an episode where Josh does something stupid without asking Leo McGarry– much less Jed Bartlet? Of course– that was a typical plot. Josh fouls up; Leo tries to endure it; Jed makes them do the right thing.
Would the dCoS hold it up as an example of how to do things at morning staff without the approval of at least the Chief of Staff? Nope– the COS owns the agenda. So now we’re at Rahm’s desk.
Yeah, I tend to agree that Obama didn’t know– but this would be the 5,217th case where Rahm Emanuel did something and the President didn’t know. At what point does that excuse cease to be credible?
2. As Maddow and other folks pointed out, Sherrod isn’t an isolated instance. If we just limit the issue to race, this is example number 3 or 4 (Van Jones, ACORN, arguably the New Black Panther Party) of the administration being cowed by low-rent, right-wing nutjobs.
If we look for the same pattern of behavior on other hot-button progressive issues– labor, civil liberties, womens issues, gay rights, defense/war– the number of comps gets a lot higher.
3. I don’t think you’re a “dirty former Republican”– although the second and third words are correct and– as a dog owner– you’re way more comfortable with many forms of filth than I am.
But I do think you cut Obama a lot more slack than people who have vivid memories of how the Republic Party behaves in these situations. If I remember correctly, Earl Butz lasted nearly two weeks after his remarks about race were reported accurately and in context. And I can’t remember how long it took Clarence Thomas to withdraw after accounts of his misbehavior broke.
4. My opinion of your attitude towards Keith Olbermann is identical to my assessment of Chris Mooney’s views about PZ Myers. You don’t get it– and that’s perfectly fine.
KO (or Alan Grayson, Dennis Kucinich, Glenn Greenwald or whomever the reader’s personal antichrist might be) is to progressives what Malcolm X or Stokely Carmichael or Huey Newton were to Civil Rights.
Causes need agent provacateurs— people out there pressing the envelope and not giving one inch to what the solid citizens feel is reasonable and doable. They enable someone else to look like the good cop that you can reason with.
It’s funny how Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall and A. Phillip Randolph. were considered dangerous radicals who could not be reasoned with and were the number one threats to the American Way of Life… until the lumpenproletariat got acquainted with H. Rap Brown.
Someone else made this point the other day– the reason people can get away with calling Obama a socialist is that the real articles– Eugene Debs or John L. Lewis– are no longer allowed into the discourse. So, of course, any attempt to triangulate is much, much farther to the right.
So yell and scream about Olbermann or John Aravosis all you like. You’re a necessary part of the progressive ecosystem, and it’s good that you have this blind spot about their value, because it makes what you say all the more useful
5. The “Black Jimmy Carter” thing amuses me because Carter tried to do exactly what Obama is trying to do. He sincerely believed that if you made a sincere effort to compromise, you could stake out a middle ground that would hold.
What neither understood is that it’s dangerous to be too reasonable in negotiations. The other party always assumes the first offer is far less than you’re actually willing to give. It’s why the police never give the kidnappers the precise amount they request right away– do that and they get angry, figuring they asked for too little.
Carter thought (to name one issue) that if he just conceded that public money would never be used to pay for abortions, eventually the fundies would calm down. What happens in the real world is that they take that and begin arguing that it shouldn’t be OK to use private money either.
FlipYrWhig
@Ailuridae: Hmm. My sense is that he’s super sensitive about charges of racism because he sees it as such a serious matter — so his reflex is to defend people who are called racists (everyone from Hillary Clinton to Tea Party rank-and-filers) because he believes there should be a very high bar to prove such a thing. That’s why he gets so infuriated so fast when race becomes a topic of discussion in the political media: not because it isn’t serious business, but because it’s too serious to be dealt with by a pack of buffoons who mostly care about scoring political points.
And my sense of why he doesn’t like Maddow is that he thinks she’s squandering her talent; to me his tone is that he’s disappointed in the way she isn’t as good as she could be, with perhaps an additional element that she isn’t as funny as she thinks she is. I don’t remember him taking exception to stories about gay civil rights, but, like I said, it’s possible I missed something when I took one of my regular breaks from reading him.
Karen
@Corner Stone:
PUMA is all over TPM and Daily Kos. Those are the people who shoot Obama down for everything.
If it’s not PUMA who for example calls Obama a liar, lazy, immoral then I don’t know who is.
Perhaps you have a different definition of PUMA than I do and I apologize for the confusion if that’s the case.
PUMA are the Jane Hamshers who are so angry Hilary didn’t win that they hate Obama as much as the Right Wing does and even get in bed with them. They don’t want “party unity” of course, they’re just determined to blame Obama for every little thing.
Yes this a big thing but it’s so bad that if Obama were to somehow kill cancer, Firebaggers would be infuriated that it took him too long to do it.
If they’re not PUMA then please tell me who they are.
Bobby Thomson
What El Cid said. In the end, the administration did the right thing, and more quickly than I expected. They get props for it. If Sherrod is willing to forgive, so am I,
But I don’t see where that makes it a bad thing to have said in real time that the administration acted badly, or even to say after the fact that Messina has been part of the problem on numerous occasions including this one. It’s called democracy.
Cacti
@Karen:
Disagree. It’s actually a relatively small thing that the MSM blew completely out proportion to its actual significance. In a nutshell: An alcoholic blogger made the (false) accusation that a mid-level USDA employee made racially incendiary remarks.
The accompanying hysteria managed to bump all of the following big things from the headlines: the first visit from the new Prime Minister of the UK, the signing of Finreg legislation, and the extension of unemployment benefits over republican obstruction.
The tail wagged the dog on this one. The media’s pavlovian response to Breitbart’s baseless smears should be a big story. But the MSM isn’t big on mea culpas and will try and stomp this one down the memory hole with all possible haste.
Bobby Thomson
@eemom:
This.
Why do people whose only required job skill is the use of standard English fail at it so often?
Keith G
Too bad this went up after my bed time.
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV: Among the most thought provoking and intriguing comments on this stupid rehash of a thread. It came late. I hope others find this.
From another commenter
@Hal:
I tend to agree with you. Two things 1) KO is a media personality who will neither sustain or harm the Obama Presidency. 2) The Obama Presidency is still a work very much in progress and we will not know if its trademark behaviors will end up being net benefits or net losses for some time.
For better or worse, humans seem to be hardwired for a certain level of tribal behavior. They like the champion, they appreciate the swagger. All other things being equal, they will follow forceful, assertive leadership even when it is wrong over following a more analytical and paced leader. The best thing is to be able to manifest both behaviors.
Nick
@eemom: what? you think the media hires people for their language skills? lol
Zach
Giving into this sort of inverted narrative on racism is a big problem. Vilsack wasn’t right to reflexively equate meager evidence of possible subtle discrimination against a single white farmer with the USDA’s history of institutionalized racism. Had a white USDA employee also been a civil rights activist 25 years ago, done the same thing, and recalled the same story in front of a white audience, he/she wouldn’t have been fired. My guess is that Sherrod has a pretty good discrimination suit on her hands if she wants to press it.
schrodinger's cat
Why is what Hamsher has to say of any importance? I don’t think most people even know who she is.
Corner Stone
@Karen:
The myth of PUMA. At the very height of the primary/election battles of 2008, I will hazard a guess to say their numbers may, “may”, have totaled a few hundred people across the blogosphere.
I don’t have any studies or polling to point to, but from my traversing back and forth across the tubes it couldn’t have been more than a handful of semi-prominent and/or third tier blogsites. And since PUMA only briefly existed online, and had zero ground game, I’m pretty comfortable saying their numbers were tiny.
At this stage, if someone chooses to self-identify as PUMA, then more power to them.
But, IMO, it’s ridiculous to point behind every tree or shrub and scream PUMA! And it makes the people saying it seem paranoid and silly. Calling someone you disagree with a PUMA is like admitting you have nothing to rebut their argument or viewpoint. It’s the schoolyard charge of “Fag!”.
People all across the spectrum have their own priorities, and are alternatively pleased, indifferent or disappointed at any given time.
Alice Blue
I can’t help but think that if the white farm couple had not come forward, there would have been no apologies and no offer to re-hire Ms. Sherrod. She would still be twisting in the wind.
lawnorder
@Karen, Nick and Anton
Is funny that here, on a “former republican” blog I see the same rhetoric used for Bush applied to Obama:
– “Bush Derangement Syndrome”
– “If Bush cured cancer you would still be against him”
– “Bush didn’t know, it was his staff..”
What I read in this kind of accusations is “you are not objective, your personal feelings for the person (Bush, Obama) make you see everything the WH does with contempt. You are incapable of seeing past your “anti-Christ” feelings for (Bush, Obama)“.
I will grant you the PUMAs were like that but they were very few. Most liberals don’t work like that. We usually don’t have idols to love and demons to hate, regardless of fact. We are raised to question authority and we bitch about our beloved leaders.
If the criticism makes us not “true blue” (Bush, Obama) supporters, so be it. It still makes our actions, FACTS and logical arguments easy to check and to agree / disagree.
In my personal and professional life, I have found that even people I hate may be right sometimes. Ignoring people because you question their motives, without double checking the facts on the matter is almost as bad as cowering to them. Ignore me and other critics at your own leisure. But didn’t work so well on the Bush years, did it ?
This measuring of how “true blue” of a fan of (Bush, Obama) is irrelevant. Purity tests are for people who eschew reality
Mnemosyne
@lawnorder:
Uh, posts like this are why people are saying you have Obama Derangement Syndrome:
You’re buying into the weird conspiracy theory that Obama had nothing better to do with his day than to insist that a low-level USDA employee be fired. In fact, you’re claiming that he PERSONALLY “pushed her down” and that he’s constantly plotting to hurt liberals.
ODS, dude. You has it.
Karen
@Corner Stone:
You think I got that out of the clear blue sky? The people on KOS and TPM were saying things like “PUMA forever.”
Perhaps you are right, PUMA isn’t accurate anymore. What term should I use? The “We hate Obama because he didn’t wait his turn and Hilary didn’t win” group? Those are the people I mean, Corner Stone.
The “You’re a terrible person for not tearing down the evil Obama” group?
I am no Obot. I know there are problems with his Presidency. But yelling “We hate Obama, let him burn” every minute does not make them more accurate. In fact, because they make it personal, they’re like the boy who cried wolf.
Karen
@lawnorder:
That’s odd that you say that about purity tests because I can swear that seems to be an issue with the Blue Dogs: they’re not TRUE Democrats to a lot on the far left. They’re the ones who demand purity.
4jkb4ia
Wait a minute, didn’t I miss the whole thing? I see a story in the NYT today that Vilsack apologized and offered her a job.
I would tell John not to mind what Jane says but he already knows that.
4jkb4ia
Well, memeorandum is still going strong about it so I obviously did not. Also I see two threads devoted to the Daily Caller and Journolist.
(At the Barnes and Noble yesterday I bought the new Gardner Dozois and saw that Cyndi Lauper has a new “Memphis Blues” CD.)
Joy
@shortstop: I couldn’t agree more. I don’t watch him anymore. And, is it me, or even when O’Donnell subs, do they seem to scream the story? I mean, really, it sounds like they are talking really, really, really, loud. I am so over it. I watch Rachel, but KO and Ed what’shisname – I don’t.
Howlin Wolfe
@El Cid: As I see it, the big hurdle for Sherrod would be the public figure defense. If she, by making a speech to a prominent organization like the NAACP, is deemed a public figure, then she would have to prove “actual malice” on the part of Breitbart, et al. That is a hard burden to overcome, generally speaking.
And Another Thing...
@Mnemosyne: That was a great clip, and how come I’ve never heard of the guy before? Almost daily I look at my iphone and think, wow, better than anything Capt. Kirk had. More importantly, what with The Google, there is absolutely NO reason to be ignorant or uninformed. Life is good.
And Another Thing...
@eemom: At this point, I’m pretty damned tired of the “but he/she isn’t a racist” defense/dodge. Who knows “who’s a racist.” But when someone does or says racist things they should be called out. And while we’re at it, let’s stop using the weasel word “insensitive.” When Hamsher photoshopped the blackface, it wasn’t “insensitive” it was racist. She’s not a kid, she should know better.
And Another Thing...
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV: Excellent post.
lawnorder
@Karen
I never said it. You seem to be putting me in the same boat with Firedoglake but I’m not. They crossed the line, attacking another democrat. Hell, I’ve been screaming at Obama for not DEFENDING democrats, how could I support someone who attacks democrats ?
@Mnemosyne
Whatever you want to diagnose me with, is your choice just don’t get mad if I look for a second opinion :p
I did not mean Obama the person, as a previous post of mine says, I’m blaming Obama the “brand”, the group of people he administers. Buck stops with him.
It gets tedious to write Obama the “brand”, the group of people he administers all the time so I shorten it to Obama, as many people shorten Apple’s entire organization to “Steve Jobs”. Is not an uncommon use of the English language.
But you guys are so eager to stifle and dismiss any criticism, that you immediately go for the diagnose at a distance and subsequent “auto ignore”.
That is what a lot of people, smart people, did during the Bush years. Any criticism of him was BDS, personal, deranged, and could not possibly be heard or read because…
Because you could not bear to examine your own convictions based on new facts that contradicted your previous ideas.
Just be careful with that tendency. I will repeat what I said above: I have found that even people I hate can teach me things Someone with intellectual honesty and an open mind can’t afford to be dismissive of facts and logic, just because it doesn’t say what you want to hear.
I may be wrong, or I may be right, so do you. But we can respect each others right to think what we do, without calling names or diagnosing at a distance.
Karen
@lawnorder:
You didn’t say this?
I’m not saying you’re part of FDL. What I’m saying is that it’s interesting that you bring up purity tests because the far left demands it and say that Blue Dogs aren’t true Democrats. I only said it was funny you mentioned that term as in, speaking of…
lawnorder
@Karen
Oh, nvm then. I don’t agree with the far left on this. Purity tests are stupid.
Corner Stone
@Karen:
I don’t read either KOS or TPM except for selected threads people link to, so I can’t speak to that either way.
But, IMO, someone is having a funny. I personally have not come across any poster who has said they were PUMA since Summer of 2008.
I just find it all a ridiculous concept, but that may be just me.