Forty-eight hours ago the story was another bad apple found on Obama’s cart. By yesterday morning it was another black eye for Obama and Tom Vilsack for rushing to dump a blameless woman on no good evidence and cravenly or cowardly or pusillanimously running for cover because Breitbart, Roger Ailes and whatever other gods of The Crazy said boo! For progressives mad at their president, at some level, that’s understandable. They have no relationship with and expect only the worst from the Breitbarts and Fox Newses of the world. But with Obama they expect more. And it’s personal.
Still, you just have to back up from that and realize that as disappointing as Tom Vilsack’s first crack at this was, the idea that he or Obama is the bad guy in this story is not only preposterous but verging on obscene. It’s like the NYPD as the bad guy in the Son of Sam saga because they didn’t catch David Berkowitz fast enough. Or perhaps that the real moral of the story is that the woman with the stalker should have been more focused on personal data security. Not for some time has something so captured the essential corruption of a big chunk of what passes as ‘right wing media’ (not all, by any means, but a sizable chunk along the Breitbart/Fox/Hannity continuum) and the corruption of the mainstream media itself as this episode.
Can a brother get an AMEN?
schrodinger's cat
Amen.
Now can we get a picture of the presiding deity of Balloon Juice, of course I mean the one and only, Tunch.
madmatt
Obama and VilSACK are scum because they take a proven liars assertions as true with no attempt to verify facts…they act like ignorant assholes they should be treated like it.
SiubhanDuinne
Preach it!
JMC_in_the_ATL
AMEN!
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Amen.
cleek
disagree.
1. Breitbart is an evil asshole.
2. Fox News is deplorable.
3. Vilsack (and whoever advises him) fucked up, horribly.
there can be more than one “bad guy” in a story.
Obama was (thankfully) not involved. and Vilsack has redeemed himself, but was looking pretty fucking bad yesterday AM. the other two remain “bad guys”, obvs.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@madmatt: Scum? Please.
Fuckups, yeah, I’ll agree. But scum? You must be mistaking the President for that fat-headed piece of shit racist fuck, Andrew Breitbart.
slag
Yeah. I’ll buy this argument.
Sentient Puddle
Preach on, brutha!
Now to leave this thread before it hits 400 replies due to the Blame Obama First crowd showing up…
The Moar You Know
I was impressed, listening to the newscaster on the Los Angeles 24/7 news station (KNX) this morning – who also happens to be their “senior political correspondent” and who obviously is a full metal wingnut.
He refused to identify Breitbart by name, calling him a “conservative blogger”. He refused to refer to Fox by name, calling them only “a network”. He did admit that the video had been altered, although you could tell it was like yanking one of his own testicles off for him to do so. He wanted that story to go away and go away fast.
SiubhanDuinne
By the way, as an Atlantan, it was refreshing to see this
in Josh’s piece, and even more refreshing to be able to agree with it. Doesn’t happen often.
Kryptik
All I ask for is a group of leaders that don’t simply enable the Breitbarts and the Foxes of the world. The crazies are ludicrously effective enough at mainstreaming their crazy without our guys jumping spooked and appeasing them.
PaulW
Amen.
Breitbart Delendus Est.
Elizabelle
Why has Vilsack proposed that Sherrod go to a new job at Agriculture and not to the one she had pre-Breitbart smear?
I don’t get it.
WereBear
I can completely believe the “fire first, ask questions later” thing originated from the White House as a kind of policy decision, a template for action… and, don’t forget, the NAACP had denounced her by that time too.
Which is a most amazing thing; of all organizations on the face of the Earth, who is presumed to know more about this person… who got their own award and spoke at their own dinner?
I’m thinking it’s the NAACP.
What totally demarcates the difference between sane and insane is the way the NAACP, Vilsack, Gibbs, and by extension, the White House itself, sucked up their ‘nads and said, “Yes, we made a mistake.”
You’ll never see the right wing doing that.
And the real villain here is Breitbart, who didn’t make a mistake.
He did what he did on purpose.
Corner Stone
This is the classic strawman, AFAIAC.
Obama isn’t the “bad guy”, and neither is Vilsack. Someone made a mistake, whether independently or after some discussion with low level staff (Messina as far as can be determined at this time).
People can criticize the WH or the admin as an org for actions/mistakes without saying Obama is a “bad guy” for how this went down.
Marshall is trying classic deflection and you’re biting into it.
Dave C
This is why, after 7+ years, I still continue to read TPM. When Marshall brings it, he really brings it.
Cat
Seriously???
This is the real world, there can be villians on both sides of the story.
Fox/Brietbart are just as responsible as Vilsack for the injustice that happened.
This is a black eye for the WH, you appoint someone who screws up this badly it reflects poorly on you as it should.
Your post sounds like you are excusing the WH from bearing any responsibility in this fiasco which is wrong.
danimal
Amen. Co-sign. This.
Davis X. Machina
Don’t do that.
My Dean/Grayson/Weiner/Finegold/Kucinich/Clinton 2012 bumpersticker isn’t dry yet.
flavortext
That’s a terrible analogy. The NYPD had no control over how many people Berkowitz murdered other than their police skill. He was not their employee. Sherrod was an employee of the USDA, and Vilsack had complete control over whether or not she was canned.
Or is Marshall trying to say that Vilsack’s hands were tied? That he had no choice but to can her? I hope not.
FOX News and Breitbart and the RW noise machine are evil, but is hoping that the government won’t fire employees based on right-wing BS really too much to ask?
MattF
Yes, also, and note– from LGF, Breitbart is not a bit sorry.
General Stuck
It goes to show that even the high orders of government gets vapor locked sometimes with the no win relentless drone of the RW Wurlitzer. You confront it and get accused of paying homage to fools, you ignore it and get accused of the puzzyness, you relent and get made even a bigger fool.
It is the wingnuts silver bullet, the Red Pill, and they know it. It is also the crusty fillings at the bottom of the trough of political discourse. It’s always heads we win, tails you lose. There is always a low road of escape by blaming the mark when your con goes bad. And until the media says no more of this shit and daily feeds these malevolent jackasses copious amounts of crow and humble pie, it will continue on. I’m not holding my breath. But this one did jump jaws in a way, it is so ugly and repulsive that even the MSM hasn’t been jumping on the turd polishing from assholes like Rheil et all.
beltane
Gawd, what a bunch of pathetic trained monkeys our media is. They dance on cue every time Limabugh or Breitbart farts and belches. No matter what Obama did, they were determined to say he did the wrong thing. Thank goodness the white farmer couple spoke up. If they hadn’t we’d be treated to endless headlines about Obama’s Black Power administration.
Alan in SF
They fired her because of an Andrew Breitbart hoax. They didn’t investigate. They didn’t talk to her. Right Wing puke funnel barks, Obama administration jumps.
Does the fact that Fox News and Andrew Breitbart are worse than the Obama administration make the Obama administration immune to criticism? Is this like that Israel-Palestine thing, where you can’t criticize anything Israel does because Palestine is supposedly worse?
gwangung
Appropriate response for approprate actions.
Yes, Vilsack screwed up. Whack him with a wooden paddle. It should hurt.
Breitbart is a vile dirtbag. Rusty pitchforks all the way. Make it REALLY hurt.
frankdawg
NO! There is plenty of villainy to go around.
Yes, Dimbart and tools are the real villain but they would not have been successful villains if not for the stupid, incompetent, gutless, spineless shitty behavior of some group of people in office because of Obama (there, I didn’t blame him since we don’t know that he was involved we do know his staff was according to -Nosack- Vilsack).
Its more like the NYPD just went out and arrested a bunch of people because FAUX news said one of the was Son of Sam. But of course none of them were.
Redshirt
I STILL WANT MY PONY!
El Cid
From the very first I blamed Vilsack and even more his underlings at the USDA — but that didn’t mean I didn’t want Obama to correct the problems, via his own employees.
This was a situation that was wrong, and like any normal, sane person, I was focusing on the problem at hand, rather than doing what some people continually seem to think and focus on how this is spun about Obama and how Obama looks at this, etc., etc.
It is okay for citizens to actually think about things as they are and situations as they arise without focusing on others’ spin and without continually imagine themselves as junior PR agents for government officials.
gwangung
@Alan in SF:
Are folks really pushing that? Or are they pushing that the Administration should be punished less? And who in the Administration should get the crap?
yam
How many times are they going to get burned before they figure it out? The fact that no one stepped up and expressed any skepticism about this report from a know operative and past fraud really makes me wonder.
The working assumption about the right wing media should be: they’re lying. Don’t believe a word said, printed, blogged or uttered in any other manner. Call them out and
shame(not possible) expose them, but do not under any circumstances act on any information from them. That seems simple enough…cyntax
Not co-signed. While you can’t control the actions of others, you can control your reaction to them.
Of course everything Marshall has pointed out about the right wing media is true and relevant but that doesn’t mean the adminstration shouldn’t be criticized for playing Charlie Brown again to Breitbart’s Lucy. Getting played for a second time by Breitbart is not good leadership. Whether it really was the WH who pushed for Sherrod’s outster or not isn’t the issue for me, but I do expect better from this adminstration.
eemom
a brother can get an amen, but as a brother can see, that plus $.05 will get him a nickel and a repeat of the last 75 threads.
General Stuck
@gwangung: Dudes like Alan of SF, are about as dishonest as the Breitbarts of the world. They are his straight man for the routine. Eagerly pointing out we mustn’t ignore the crimes of Obama, not because they exist, or not, but because they want them to exist.
geemoney
Apologizing is an implicit expression that you did a bad thing (it can be explicit, if the wording is right). Apologizing is what differentiates a person from being a bad person and having done a bad thing. There’s a world of difference there and, in my mind, speaks volumes about what the administration is made of. The absence of anything like this from Breitbart or Fox tells you everything you need to know about what they are, and what motivates them. Even if you were to take Breitbart at his word (and why would you?), his refusal to apologize for the part he played in harming this woman is sociopathic.
Nimm
Vilsack / Obama may not be “the” bad guy in this story, because there is room for more than one (as others have already pointed out).
I am probably an Obama apologist, but I can’t give the administration a pass on this. Everyone involved screwed up, to different degrees. The worst wrongdoers are are of course Breitbart, for his intentional, active dishonesty and general scumminess, closely followed by Fox.
But Vilsack and, to a slightly lesser degree, the White House, also screwed up badly. And they are the ones that should have known better. Not only that, but by screwing this up the way they did, they add some real legitimate ammunition to the otherwise lame critiques of the firebagger types, because this really was indefensible.
Nobody can argue that the most culpable parties here were Breitbart and Fox. But that doesn’t excuse the administration.
It’s like having two kids. One is a perpetual screwup, and the other is mature and responsible. When they both get detention for cheating on a test, you’re of course going to be more disappointed that the one who should have known better, sunk to that level.
Davis X. Machina
It’s our own private “Who Promoted Peress” — and only 55 years late.
Maybe we can have rallies in Madison Square Garden?
angler
The axis of Ham-wald strikes again, %$^&*# firebaggers!! I knew it would lead back to them. Obama and Vilsack catch hell from their base for firing Sherrod on the word of Breitbart. TPM blames its readership for said hell in the form of insufficient anti-Bretibartism. BJ uses charge to rev up another of its patented (and fun!) intramural food fight threads.
If clearly sighted enemies and things to do in your own spare time are what we want, start here:
http://foxnewsboycott.com/fox-news-sponsors/glenn-beck-sponsors/
But that’s boring. Food fight!
FlipYrWhig
@Elizabelle:
What he was talking about sounded like a promotion to me: she knows all about the intersection of race and agricultural policy, and he’d like to offer her a position that allows her to capitalize on her unique experiences. Maybe they’ve been impressed with her, or maybe they’re trying to make it up to her for getting her all jacked up for a day, by giving her a better job.
Guster
It’s kinda more like a cyber-security guy falling prey to a 419 scam.
The scammers are the real baddies, but you still gotta marvel at the incompetence.
Mr Furious
To further Josh’s “police” analogy, expecting the media to pursue truth and justice in this instance is akin to expecting cops to break the thin blue line and rat each other out.
Not. Gonna. Fucking. Happen.
That’s why it’s incumbent on Obama and his administration to set a higher standard than the media sets for itself.
“Zero tolerance” or “no drama” policies are nice goals, but not a protocol. A responsible newspaper would want corroborating sources for a story like Breitbart’s, and the fact that some media outlets treat that as obsolete or optional doesn’t excuse even worse and more extreme behavior from an individual’s employer.
Back to the cops: an officer involved in an incident is NOT summarily fired—they might be suspended or removed from duty until an investigation determines the truth. Sherrod deserved nothing less from Vilsack and, ultimately, Obama.
The just outcome, imho, would be for Vilsack to lose his job.
Mr Furious
@FlipYrWhig:
Give her Vilsack’s job. I never liked him for it to start…
schrodinger's cat
@Mr Furious: Sack, Vilsack!
Guster
@cyntax: That’s much smarter than my response. Should read _every_ comment before posting.
And fucking Jane Hamsher. She’s at the bottom of this somehow.
Corner Stone
Just read the entire TPM piece and it’s really not a very good effort by Marshall. It’s whole purpose is to spread a little whitewash.
And if you take his premise to be true, which is the source of the video/story are known malefactors, then actions/mistakes that were made become even more egregious.
ETA – now that I reflect on it, it’s a very good effort by Marshall. He’s deflecting and it’s getting traction.
schrodinger's cat
I am bored with this topic, can we have an open thread please?
flukebucket
Without her resignation this entire thing collapses on Breitbart. Vilsack played right into his hands and deserves to be kicked in the balls with cowboy boots.
Ash Can
@MattF: Jeez, this guy doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain, does he? What will be most interesting is how the various news outlets respond to this, or whether they respond at all. After all, this was how the whole Sherrod imbroglio started, with Breitbart posting a rigged video on his site. If the newsies give this one the fisheye, or blow it off altogether, that will say something (and make me happy).
gwangung
@Nimm:
Let me throw something out there.
The Administration shouldn’t be given a pass. They screwed up, they should get criticized for it.
However, if we give as much attention to them as we do Breitbart (or even more), doesn’t that inadvertantly play into the false equivalency problem? If we strip context from our criticism, do we not inadvertantly minimize the problem of liars like Breitbart?
cyntax
@Guster:
That’s a given.
=)
Comrade Mary
Chris Cillizza is talking to Mrs. Greenspan on MSNBC. He’s saying that the administration has had a TERRIBLE week, because FinReg was signed but all you saw on the media was a blip of the ceremony, then the media turned back to Sherrod. And they continued to talk about Sherrod for another few minutes.
Gosh, how powerless the media is to pick and choose what the media should cover. I weep for them.
eemom
hey, here ya go, firebaggers! A fresh piece of meat: The Seven Minute Phone Call!
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/07/the_president_calls_shirley_sherrod.php?ref=fpblg
Too little, too late, and only SEVEN freakin’ minutes long! Fuck’s sake, I might as well have voted for McCain.
Brooklyn Johnny
Breitbart is the villain in the story. But Visack has absolutely earned co-villain status. He justified firing Ms. Sherrod by claiming, “The controversy surrounding her comments would create situations where her decisions, rightly or wrongly, would be called into question making it difficult for her to bring jobs to Georgia.” That “rightly or wrongly” bit implies that he understood that Ms. Sherrod might not be guilty as charged. But because there was a “controversy,” Ms. Sherrod had to go. Repulsively unjust and utterly craven.
eemom
@Comrade Mary:
smarmy little prick, that Cillizza.
TimmyB
Actually, its as if the NYPD shot an innocent person who they wrongly believed was the Son of Sam because they were fed false information from known liars, but did no other investigation.
Corner Stone
O/T but I’m tired of this topic too:
Holy Shit! Send another 100K troops back into Iraq!
Iraqi minister says 4 al-Qaida inmates escape jail
We’ve got to do everything in our power to get these guys! They can not be allowed to make their way to Afghanistan and thereby double the number of AQ in Afghanistan!
cleek
@Corner Stone:
yup.
Brooklyn Johnny
@TimmyB: Exactly.
rickstersherpa
Before indugling in my moral superiority over the White House staff and Secretary Vilsack, who manned up and publicly admitted that had f##k pooch on this matter, I thought it would be nice to think why these guys reacted as if they were tasered when Breitbbart’s little hit job hit the media on Monday afternoon. I came across this on Pollster.com.
According to the CNN/Time poll, Obama is down to 37% approval among white voters. http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/07/22/rel10a9b.pdf. Of course, part of that is certainly the economy, but the right wing meme that has been played on its media, and then echoed on the right that “Obama is agains white people,” is certainly having some effect. I expect it was anxiety about how to stop this meme that made Vilsack and WH so reflexive in responding to the Sherrod story. It also explains the unwillingness to defend ACORN last year after the fiasco of the Gates statement in the press conference.
Finally, from the comments made by Hannity and O’Reilly on Monday night and the talking points the wingnuts are still sticking with admirable discipline and stubborness (and echoed by Vanderhei of Politico), I suspect this was to be an opening shot of a campaign against the NAACP, to do it what was done to ACORN, and in the process hopefully reduce the base Democratic vote in November.
Finally, no matter how frustrated you are with Obama and the Democrats, as weak reeds as they may be, they are only tool we have as patriots to prevent truly evil and vicious people like Palin and Gingrich reach the executive authority of the United States. Nader, and Jane Hamsher, have taught me that the perfect is not only the enemy of the good, but is sometimes the ally of evil.
Michael
@eemom:
Obviously, there’s no difference between Obama and David Duke. We may as well vote for Republicans…..
ChicagoTom
e. It’s like the NYPD as the bad guy in the Son of Sam saga because they didn’t catch David Berkowitz fast enough
Actually, no. Not even close.
It would be much more apt to say:
It’s like the NYPD as the bad guy in the Son of Sam saga because they arrested someone based on nothing more the accusations of a local liar. And then decided to do an investigation to see if they had the right guy.
In both cases the problem is the rush to judgment and the punishment of an innocent without first getting all the facts and verifying the “facts” that were being presented by questionable sources.
Yes the Breitbarts and the Drudges and Fox are psychotic and pathological liars. It’s what we expect from them. It’s why rational intelligent people are supposed to be skeptical of their claims.
But when supposedly sane rational people start taking their word for it without being skeptical up front and verifying their claims independently, BEFORE TAKING ANY ACTION — the sane people then become the bigger problem. You aren’t going to mute/eliminate the crazy — all you can do is treat it as crazy and marginalize it rather than give it any credence and credibility.
I’m glad the WH and Vilsack quickly did the right thing. Im pissed they had to do the right thing in the first place. There was no reason to act so swiftly based on the assertions of known liars and political hit men.
I thought the grown up and smart people were supposed to be in charge now. Why are they acting like a bunch of rubes and being taken in by two bit con-men?
And it’s quite naive to trot out the “Obama probably didn’t know” — Shirley Sherrod, who has much more credibility than Robert Gibbs (are we supposed to believe what press secretaries say now? Like Ari Fleischer and Dana Perino and Scott McClellan?) , said she got calls from WH officials demanding her resignation. I don’t for a second believe that upper levels of Obama’s staff weren’t aware or didn’t have a hand in making the decision to remove her, even if Obama himself wasn’t directly involved.
Sentient Puddle
ETA: Actually, this post was moronic. I’m deleting it.
wilfred
I disagree with Josh.
Why is everyone so dismayed at the behavior of Fox news and its sources? It’s too bad, but it’s not as if this kind of biased reporting is new or unexpected. Fox News is part of a long history in this country of a partisan (ie, “yellow” ) press. It just happens to be on TV instead of on broadsheets.
To act responsibly, all Obama & Co had to do was put the employee on administrative leave until they checked the facts.
How much courage would that have taken?
ruemara
Wow. it didn’t even take 50 responses for this to be about “not criticizing Obama” and “they are just as responsible”. Oi. Whatever. I will point out that Sherrod is a regional head in Georgia, which may not be ultra red but may explain why her bosses were all fired up about it being on Beck, which I have no doubt that if the farmers in question hadn’t debunked the supposed story, it would have been. I don’t have the story here, but it seems she had also been receiving threats because she had no idea the videotape had been posted. Maybe, just maybe, although the national outcry was not present yet, the state outcry may have been harsh enough that Vilsack felt firing was an option. I still disagree with it because I wouldn’t believe the sky was blue if it was reported on Fox but that’s just me. I have no comity problems.
eemom
any one of y’all heard the story about the Arab man who was convicted of rape by an Israeli court because he told an Israeli woman he was Jewish in order to get her to have sex with him?
http://jonathanturley.org/2010/07/21/israeli-arab-man-convicted-of-rape-for-assuring-lover-he-is-jewish/
THAT is how desperate I am for a change of subject.
Michael
The better poll questions to ask are:
1. If you voted for obama, do you plan to vote to replace your congressman so that Obama cn’t get his agenda done?
2. If you voted for Obama in 2008, do you plan on voting GOP or 3rd party on the Presidential ticket in 2012?
Assuming that you’d get honest answers (particularly from wingnuts – lying is how they roll), I think you’d gain a much more accurate statistical picture.
IM
I will go in my search for enlightment to the superhero world: With great power comes great responsibility. Peter Parker did not murder his uncle, that was the murderer. But he does share some responsibility for this event.
If you want to lead – yes to lead – the department of agriculture, you have to have some qualities. Enough wisdom to know that beating the news-cycle is not everything. Enough stamina or patience to endure negative press for 24 or 48 hours until you see clear. Enough loyality for your employees and sense for fairness to let the accused speak for herself. Enough self-respect to not let you push around by some middle rank white house staffer.
If you can’t do that much, you may still be a better man than me. But you are not fit to lead a department of the US government.
There is the better part of valour and there is blind panic. Monday did witness the latter.
Eric U.
there should be some serious soul-searching at the WH after this.
The administration are the bad guys in this story because they didn’t laugh it off. They apparently never found out the ACORN story was bullshit. That sort of lapse is pretty important, it could lead to serious problems politically down the road.
After all the fact-free attacks on the Obama administration they still worry that some story is going to be on Beck????? I listen to Beck, he’s nuts. He sounds nuts to anyone that hasn’t studied the class notes. He comes up with insane attacks on the Obama administration daily. It’s one thing if the right-wingers attack someone that can quit and get a multi-million dollar sinecure. They need to protect the little people in the administration from baseless attacks like this. This is what the Republicans did to the Clinton administration; they made it potentially life-ruining to work there for the lower level Clintonites. The WH should have a plan to help these people out.
Comrade Mary
NO. SHE. DIDN’T.
What transcripts rather than piss-poor excuses for journalism show is that the USDA staffer phoning her said that she (the staffer) had been getting calls from the White House. The nature of these calls (if they existed) and who these WH staffers were (not shown yet) may, at worst, point to a climate in the WH that was over-reactive. I doubt that on a day that Obama was busy with Cameron that he was brought in to make a direct decision on this matter and that he signed off on it.
The claim that Sherrod said that she was called by the WH is not true. She has never said that.
General Stuck
@Nimm: I don’t see many people giving the Obama administration a pass. My first comment on this fuckup was directed to Vilsack and Obama as dumbly falling for this without checking the facts first, as well as the NAACP, and unbelievably so, considering the source of the tape. I suspect Obama trusted the details to Vilsack and went along with his Judgment, but Obama doesn’t get a pass because he knows full well the issue of race and how it’s handled is like political kryptonite to his presidency. For that reason alone, he should have gotten more involved with learning the facts and taking some charge of the situation. Though I suspect he is a fairly busy person.
The wingnuts know race is potentially an explosive issue for the first black presnit, in a country of skeptics a black man can do the job, along with the too many outright racists we have. It is why they are pounding it daily, it seems. But it is also a high risk game they play, and can just as easily get turned around on them in a big way. And it has.
It is an almost impossible position to be in for Obama. If he hesitates the least little bit in a true incedent of black racism in his government, or even a black preference situation, the wingers will pounce like the rabid jackals they are, and the press will back them up. Whatever damage was done by jumping the gun, would not be as bad as that, or delaying, or giving the impression of ” a black presnit” looking out for his own. Provided they make a full and heartfelt mea culpa to the maligned, and they have.
It is total bullshit that this has to be a concern, but that is our country as it stands, a white country full of nervous idiots fearful of black vengeance, that doesn’t really exist, except as a demon in the white conscience from generations of white injustice on black folk.
flavortext
@Mr Furious:
That would be even worse, and only embolden Breitbart even more. The just outcome would be a policy of fully investigating complaints or misconduct before firing people. Like any sane organization should have.
Stooleo
Where can I donate money to this cause.
IM
By the way, nobody has blamed Rahm Emmanuel yet, right?
First!
I demand the immediate, I said immediate resignation of the chicago machine appeasement zionist!
And you know why.
David Brooks
I fear another FOX pivot, now the timeline is out there.
“NAACP says jump, and Vilsack asks ‘how high?’. A few hours later NAACP says ‘No, our mistake, jump the other direction’, and Gibbs says ‘ho-kay’. See? See?”
They can push this timeline squarely as part of the adminstration-in-thrall-to-black-extremists meme.
Hal
White male dominated media controls the flow of information out there. White male dominated media manufactures stories of black racism, and; once their lies are exposed, they decide the worst possible culprits are the NAACP and Barack Obama? Are you kidding me with this? The person who comes out looking the worst in all of this should not be the President or the NAACP. It should be Andrew Breitbart and Fox News, for blatantly lying and propagating that lie, all because the NAACP didn’t stay in their place and dared to criticize the Tea Part.
Liberal bloggers are horrified that the President fell for Fox New’s propaganda, and can’t believe he would do this to Shirley Sherrod, especially since she is black and so is he. They can see the truth, so why can’t Obama? And that is the real kicker. You know more about racism and how to appropriately react to it than the black man who happens to be President?
But I forgot, he isn’t just a black man. Not just the first Black President. No, he’s the black Abe Lincoln, or FDR, or JFK. Successor to MLK.
Until he messes up. Then he’s just Barack Obama. Black man. And you need to school this naïve empty suit who you now can’t believe you voted for, and my, aren’t you betrayed and so disappointed.
Maybe when everyone is willing to let Obama be Obama, warts and all, and not expecting the black re-incarnation of whatever historical figure whose memory you happen to cherish, we can have a true dialog about race.
Be angry, be disappointed, and be pissed off. Hold Obama accountable. But don’t forget who the real enemy is in all of this. Hint: it’s not the guy in the White House.
eemom
@flavortext:
Please. This is a blog. We don’t DO common sense.
Elie
@General Stuck:
I also believe a defamation law suit by Ms Sherrod might tighten some sphincters — at least temporarily.. I know that it wont solve this issue, but it would be at least emotionally satisfying for a time
dan
Marshall feels no frustration towards the Obama administration, so he can poo-poo it, as many people participating in this thread are. But that’s what drives the “obscene” reaction. Its not just that some of us think Obama has not pushed hard enough for real change, it is also that the liberal blog echo-chamber — not FDL — rallies to Obama’s support to a fault and shuts down any criticism as hystericism. I’ve seen it over and over on this blog, which has really become a collection of rabid defenders of the status quo, and the limited opportunities it provides Obama to make change.
So this reaction is not just against Obama, but its against TPM and tons of people here who believe that the Obama administration represents the absolute limit of what is politically possible. This view relegates those who want more — real financial reform, for example — to the insane asylum.
And, in fact, it is not insane or obscene to have a visceral negative reaction to the firing, on grounds of racism, of a black woman who’s father was killed and who’s family was harassed by the Klan and who has been a civil rights advocate.
LT
Do not agree.
Is the idea of “the buck stops here” just words? Vilsack is on Obama’s Cabinet. He cannot be blamed alone. It is simply illogical, as well as wrong. Do Cabinet members have bosses or not? Are hey responsible to the president or not? None of us would have given Bush a pass if one of his Cabinet members did something asinine like this. It would have been “the Bush administration” who was at fault, and rightly so.
P.S. Pointing out that the Obama administration screwed up here does not take away from the fact that this was all caused by the lying asshole Breitbart. Not even of 100,000 people on DKos and more on TPm say so.
Rhoda
So, I’m going to just say IMO the White House didn’t screw up at all. They see video, they hear the NAACP renounce her (and these are the folks that gave the dinner), they react to what they see at that point is the racial story that FOX tried to turn the black panther story into.
This was a political decision and given what we know they knew at that time; it was the right one.
Then the facts come in and Gibbs apologizes unequivocally, Sec. Vilsack apologizes, the President has called her and she can get her job back.
Nothing can change the hell she’s gone through in 48 hours; but the White House didn’t tell this lie the media did. NOTE: Gibbs was getting requests for WH reaction to this story and that’s before the MSM research this story. So the WH had to react. They reacted quickly because in the past, when they’ve given these things a chance (and Van Jones got a chance), it’s blown up in their face and the MSM takes the rightwing frame every damn time. Progressives do not have the communication infrastructure of the right and DC is not yet wired for them; that won’t happen IMO unless Obama gets two terms.
It’s a bad situation but this whole fucked up thing happened because of Breitbart and FOX and the MSM automatically taking the right wing view. IMO the fact that CNN is based in Atlanta and folks there probably knew of her and the Atlanta Journal Constitution jumped on this is what saved this woman; the truth came out b/c of CNN pushing it forward as a scoop they got b/c this is in their backyard.
If she’d been in MI IMO it would have taken a couple of days for this to all come out; even with her telling her side.
LT
@Corner Stone:
Can I get an Amen?
El Tiburon
Sorry, ain’t buying it one bit.
Bottom line: Vilsack (and by extension Obama) fired Mrs. Sherrod.
Breitbart did not. Fox News did not.
Vilsack. Fired. Her. Period.
You can walk around it and prance around it all the fuck you want, but Vilsack/Obama did this. They let Fox News and Glenn Beck for fucks sake win this battle. AGAIN. AGAIN. AGAIN.
I think this incident clearly illustrates the how the Obama administration operates. It was cowardly and it was spineless. They are cowards. Paging Dawn Johnson.
LT
@Rhoda: “So, I’m going to just say IMO the White House didn’t screw up at all.”
Is it possible for them to screw up at all if this isn’t a screwup?
Keith G
Sorry Cole, no amens from me.
Obama is not evil, dumb or chicken, but he and his did make bad choices at several choke points.
I expect better.
Cleek has some good points.
@cleek:
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@madmatt:
A week earlier FOX was spinning a 2-year old story that took place during the Bush administration and spun it into “Crazy Black Panther Gonna Kill Your White Daughter and Obama Will Cheer Him On” all week and the “legitimate” news organizations did little to swat it down despite having a record of the original story in their archives.
After the weekend FOX spins another benign story into “Crazy Black Racist Hates White Farmers Just Like Obama” story and instead of being naive and thinking the legitimate news organizations will access their archives or actually do an investigation they go all pear-shaped and do the thing they were accused of not doing the week before.
This campaign of race baiting by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, et al, has been successful. The bigots on the right have been emboldened and the folks on the left have been rattled.
General Stuck
@LT: Who do you not agree with? Not Marshall, he clearly states Obama screwed up. Unless you are insisting we focus on Obama fail as being primary with this situation. Whatever sins Obama and Vilsack have visited on Mr. Sherrod and the country, they have admitted and offered amends to the victim here. Breitbart hasn’t. So what is your point?
matoko_chan
Cole, what you have to realize……is that….they are not the same as us.
Fifty years ago they were…..but a half century of memetic selection for citizens who can be scammed into voting against their economic self interest, are too undereducated to get ToE and basic meiosis, who despise education, science, academe and intellectuals and “elites”, and who are highly xenophobic and highly religious has resulted in two divergent sub-species of homo sapiens americanus.
They value “commonsense” over intelligence, and winning over honor and honesty. And they think this is fair because of White Jesus and the demographic timer.
Plus, they self-select.
Conservatism is social levelling for IQ and education.
This is the meme–
We are not the same.
Leonard Stiltskin
Replace Vilsack with Sherrod. Force Republicans to try to filibuster her nomination based on the Breitbart smear.
Sit back and watch wingnut heads explode.
August J. Pollak
Huh. So, basically the position on Vilsack and the administration now is that jumping to immediate conclusions and vilifying someone who doesn’t deserve it with unfounded and baseless accusations is a horrible thing to do.
Really, now.
Davis X. Machina
@Comrade Mary:
There are five pages in the Plum Book of people who can call you, say “This is the White House — the White House wants X” where X is not pizza, and not be lying.
To be fair, Obama’s one of them. So’s Rahm.
Omnes Omnibus
Football analogy time: The Obama administration fumbled the ball here. However, they seem to have recovered the fumble and are in a position to move the ball forward. Hopefully, they learned a little about ball security and won’t let his happen so easily in the future. The downside is that the other side, having done it once, is bound to try again. Let’s not overreact.
chopper
this is the same media that has been running all manner of bits about whether or not mel gibson’s baby-momma ‘provoked him’.
Mike B
I usually agree with you on this stuff, but not on this one.
I personally never had any illusions that Obama was going to be some progressive messiah. And your criticisms of the unhinged attacks on Obama from the left are usually right on target. But I don’t see how anyone can say the Obama administration is blameless, here.
This isn’t about Obama being “the bad guy”. That’s a ridiculous caricature of the criticism of how this administration handled this. Obviously, the race-baiting tactics of Breitbart and Fox — and the MSM’s fealty to this — are odious, and Rachel Maddow’s clear exposition of what is going on was right on target.
But I have to say, I am pretty disgusted at the fact that this administration’s first reflex every time the racist right-wing media lynch mob demand’s a scalp is to throw someone under the bus. Every time! When did Bush ever do that? He stood behind his people, and he stood up for them — even though they usually didn’t deserve it.
Can anyone name a single instance where Obama has gone to bat for members of his administration when they’ve come under attack like this? I can’t think of a single one.
So how can you say that he is blameless?
LT
@General Stuck: What is this “primary focus”? Who’s measuring stick are you going to use to determine if I’m being significantly outraged to the proper kilogram? It’s just silly.
August J. Pollak
Blanche Lincoln?
someguy
A safe approach, and one that would be entirely reasonable, is that nobody to the right of Harry Reid should be allowed to use the public airwaves or a publicly supported medium like the intarwebs to spread their propaganda. I don’t think there’d be too much of a legal problem with this, since there is literally nothing anybody on the right says that is not fraud, and fraudulent speech is not protected speech.
Corner Stone
You know, the buck stops here; the boss is the boss; someone has to be in charge; etc etc etc
IMO, I don’t want a micromanager President, or for a boss far as that goes. I don’t want Obama to tell his people he must sign off on hiring/firing some state position in one of his cabinet orgs. Doesn’t make any sense.
But, IMO, some individual should write on the big whiteboard used for morning messaging with a boldfaced “DO NOT ERASE” under it:
“First: Do no harm! First(a): Do not believe anything until you do your due diligence!”
Sarcastro
@gwangung: However, if we give as much attention to them as we do Breitbart (or even more), doesn’t that inadvertantly play into the false equivalency problem?
No. Your argument is akin to asking why we demand more from our government than we do from, say, Saudi Arabia’s government (remember that RW meme?). Well, because it is OUR government. Obama is OUR president. WE elected him to represent US and when he does a shitty job of it it then becomes incumbent upon US to demand better from him. Just as when OUR government tortures people it is, at the very least, as important for US to denounce it than when some other government does it.
Breitbart is just a scumbag. We should expect this from him. And that’s the very basis of the complaint against the administration. They were fooled by a fucking moron. AGAIN!
JMY
@Rhoda:
That pretty much sums it up. But I guess I’m going to have to listen to how Obama is so weak all day.
LT
@Omnes Omnibus:
Football analogy time: The Obama administration fumbled the ball here. However, Andrew Breitbart created the football from one of his bowel movements—with the aid of Voldemort. Can we please stop blaming Obama for playing with it?
Elie
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
And some of the folks on the left, (El Tiburon above and others) and the right wing tea baggers are both using this misinformation to attack the administration.
Hmmm — very interesting.
General Stuck
@LT: No, You said “Do not agree” and I just asked , Do not agree with whom? Neither Cole nor Marshall gave Obama a pass. So who do you disagree with?
Elie
@Corner Stone:
Agree. Completely.
Corner Stone
@August J. Pollak: Oooo – ouch. That’s going to leave a mark.
Culture of Truth
I admit I haven’t read every blogger in the sphere, but are there people really saying the administration shouldn’t be criticized at all? What does it mean to refuse to give the administration a pass?
Of course they made a mistake, that’s self-evident from the reversal and apology. At least they acknowledged the error and acted with some honor.
David Brooks
@angler:
Um, no. They fired her on the word of the NAACP. Messaging-wise, that may be more damaging.
FlipYrWhig
Why are people still railing about the depth and breadth of the fuckup after it has been admitted and un-fucked, roughly 24 hours later? It’s ridiculous. Bad initial response, good recovery, and quickly, too.
cyntax
@August J. Pollak:
FTW
gwangung
@Sarcastro: That’s not what I’m arguing. And at no time do I say that we should not criticize the administration when they screw up (which they did).
What I’m arguing is that we keep the context. We should expect better of the Obama administration. We should expect better of EVERYONE. We do this as a supporter because we expect them to do better for us in the future.
What I’m saying is kick in the balls for the Administration; rusty pitchforks for Breitbart.
gwangung
@Corner Stone: Oh. Forgot. Agreed completely.
Corner Stone
@Mike B:
This is a sister meme to how Cole and others here attack any criticism of Obama or his administration. Hence, if you don’t agree then you “want your pony”.
It’s a way to frame any criticism as ridiculous and without merit. If A happens but you wanted to fight for A+1 and no one did and you say so, then obviously you’re saying the admin should’ve fought for A+1000.
It’s an old tactic that gets tiresome when it’s trotted out every time.
ETA – forgot to add ~ all the while you’re being told that of course criticism of Obama is welcome and acceptable. As long as you do it “this certain way”, which we’re pleased to show you.
Raenelle
So Obama gets a pass for the equivalent of punching a hippie because the right is so much worse?
I don’t think the progressive critics are deserting Obama. But, if this is a teachable moment, what’s the frickin’ lesson? This is it: Listening to Fox makes you look stupid and weak, so stop it.
So we should yell at Fox to learn that? That could be a definitional example of wasting your time. Now, Obama. He can learn . . . and he needs to.
Elie
But hey, for youze folks on the left who hate Obama, you have another great opportunity supplied dutifully by the right wing to keep your good hate thing going…wouldnt want to deprive you of one more good example of how Obama is worse than Bush and help you keep your collective behinds on the sofa next election. That will show him and really help all of us out, I am sure.
JMY
@FlipYrWhig:
Thank you. Two days later people are still bitching about it. The NAACP made a mistake, Vilsack made a mistake. They overreacted. They are human, it happens. But people pretend that they are not, so we should tar and feather them. How would any of us reacted to this situation? When there was evidence that this was one big hoax, they apologized, Vilsack apologized publicly, took full responsibility. You know why? Because that’s what people in his position should do when they make a mistake. They want to repay her by offering her a better job.
All I hear his, “Obama’s weak, yada yada yada.” When the WH how was fighting back against FOX, Rush, Glenn – people were saying they shouldn’t do it. So when they don’t, they’re weak?
slag
I fail to see why people are choosing to ignore this point. This point was part of Josh’s argument. Nobody is disputing the fact that liberal anger toward the admin was justified. But the larger point is that the main bad guy is rightwing and establishment media.
The administration screwed up. Yes. But they weren’t vindictive or evil. And they admitted to and tried to correct their mistake. What’s the value of continuing to be angry toward someone who has already tried to amend their behavior? If you’re going to be angry, be angry at those who are willful in their bad behavior and continue it to this day. Why is this so hard?
Tonal Crow
Once again:
1. You can’t believe anything wingers say;
2. Attempting to appease them encourages them to hit you again;
3. Fighting them (a ) is the right thing to do; (b ) dissuades further attacks; (c ) educates the public; and (d ) encourages the Democratic base and progressive voters generally.
Any questions, Democrats? Or are we going to be treated to yet more Bad Rhetoric ™ from the White House and congressional Democrats?
Sad_Dem
I remember reading years ago about real racism at the Department of Agriculture in which black farmers in the South were regularly denied help. Anyone remember that story?
Culture of Truth
Does the liberal blogosphere even issue passes? Where do you get one?
NR
No. But their first instinct is to cower before those who are vindictive and evil. This is a serious problem.
JMY
@Sad_Dem:
Which is why I think Vilsack responded they way he did.
NR
@Corner Stone: And don’t forget that any criticism of Obama means that you think he’s worse than Bush. That’s another popular meme around here (as evidenced by Elie, among others).
gwangung
@JMY:
Tar and feathering is OK, as long as we reserve the pitchforks for Breitbart. I mean, we still have use for Obama and crew….
(Seriously, go ahead and kick ’em around. They earned it. And they KNOW they earned it. But save some vitriol for Breitbart).
mario
it’s guys like Josh Marshall that allow the libs to have their asses handed to them EVERY FRICKING TIME the right says boo.
there’s your amen.
btw, if it was a lefty who had pulled what Breitbart just did, he’d be a greasespot by now.
Corner Stone
@Culture of Truth:
Yeah. Your kid spill his drink in the car? We’re good.
Your dog tinkle on your favorite rug? Ok, no biggie.
Your elected admin pisses themselves to jump through hoops for a proven malevolent lying operative? Hmmm…
Tonal Crow
@NR:
You bet it is. Cowering projects weakness (and not just to the wingers, but to the general public), encourages attacks, and discourages supporters. Fighting does the opposite. Why not fight?
gwangung
@NR:
Well, when some people say he’s as bad as Bush, hard not to jump on that meme. (I hope you aren’t denying that this has been said…).
Jill
Exactly. The deflection of blame and reframing of this has been brilliant. Breitbart and FOX have won this round.
Breitbart, with the help of FOX, set a house on fire. It explodes and wreaks havoc and destruction. Rather than take responsibility, having set the fire, they brilliantly focus the blame for its ensuing destruction on the fire department’s poor response putting it out. And everyone falls for it. No one holds them responsible. Breitbart and FOX get off scot free.
The front page story in the Times yesterday was all about Vilsack and Obama’s poor response. It isn’t until paragraph 12 they finally get around to mentioning Breitbart. And then only as the person who provided the video, not his role or connection to the misleading content, Vilsack and the WH responded to so poorly. And as background he is described as the person who provided the video that brought down ACORN, with no mention that that video was edited to willfully creative a totally false narrative.
Vilsack and Obama need to be held responsible for their actions, no question, but the heart of this story is Breitbart and FOX and their role in the daily manufacturing and instigating of smears and lies the media then spends their time spinning and obessessing over each day. They are the ones starting the fires the media rushes to stoke each day. Exposing their actions, motive and techniques for starting these fires should have been the major news of the Sherrod story.
slag
@NR:
I’m not sure that, if you take this administration’s actions as a whole, this assertion totally stands up. I think that in this case it did. But healthcare got passed. FinReg got passed. These are real accomplishments (somewhat flawed though they seem to be) that I cannot discount. And from all that I’ve seen of what goes on in Congress and in the media and in the rest of society, even, these accomplishments are signs to me that this administration doesn’t always instinctively cower before those who are vindictive and evil.
JMY
@gwangung:
That’s my point though. Criticize the WH/Vilsack for making a mistake. That’s fine. But also acknowledge that they apologized for it and are trying to correct it. The real bad guy in all of this is not only Breitbart and FOX, but our media in general.
matoko_chan
Cornerstone et all….
Obama is WAI.
this is what he always does.
watch…..hes going to let Breitbart and FOXnews punch themselves in the face for a while, and then he will construct a teaching moment out of the salvage.
:)
Tonal Crow
@yam: This. This all the way.
LT
@JMY:
Is there something revealing in this comment? Do you really “have to listen” to this thing you hate?
Is this about too much intertubes?
Proper Gander
Back again with a quickness, pick it up, pick it up.
Master arithmeticness, light it up, light it up.
I got the heat in both feets, snake handler’s hands.
Come back with slickness and do it all again.
My subtle hustle, smooth as mother’s butter.
I let it ride on, I let it ride on.
Now I’m the media’s darling, pick it up, pick it up.
An international phenomenon, light it up, light it up.
I cause eclipses with a wave of the hand.
Let them hang in ellipses and do it all again.
My subtle hustle, smooth as mother’s butter.
I let it ride on, I let it ride on.
I got your number. I steal your thunder.
I got your mother’s maiden name tattooed on my arm.
I drive out daemons. Can I hear an Amen?
Now say my name.
Lay hands on screaming heathens. And do it all again.
My subtle hustle, smooth as mother’s butter.
I let it ride on, I let it ride on.
matoko_chan
@Tonal Crow:
Because Obama IS the Kwisatz Haderach. ;)
/giggles behind hand, but is partly serious
sgrAstar
@ChicagoTom: Normally I would not weigh in on such a rapidly degenerating thread, but I can not resist pointing out that Shirley Sherrod did NOT claim that the WH had contacted her directly. She said that she had been told by Ag people that the WH wanted her resignation. There is a difference. Gawd. And since I’m here, I might as well admit to agreeing with JM AND with Tunch’s caretaker. Nice post, JC.
ItAintEazy
@Mike B:
Well, to be fair, Obama didn’t wilt before the accusations from the right-wing howler monkeys that Sotamayor once said “wise Latina” during a motivational speech. Of course that’s the default position since withdrawing such a high profile Supreme Court nominaton would be the worse option.
Sly
Being duped does not make one a “bad guy,” is, I suppose, what Marshall is getting at. I agree. I would, however, like to see the administration (and Democrats generally) be duped less. Fool me once, and all that.
It shouldn’t be the focus, however. Just like the one or two Democratic Senators who obstruct a policy agenda shouldn’t be the focus, either. Yeah, they’re bad. But the forty Republicans who do it routinely are far worse.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Since we are having a bad analogy food fight, I’m going to go Godwin on all yur asses – this was Munich:
Breitbart = Hitler
Vilsack = Chamberlain
Obama = the 1930s British electorate
Stay tuned for next time, when I compare US tax policy to the Marco Polo Bridge incident…
LT
@General Stuck: I think they both did give him a pass – with the (properly named by cleek) straw man that:
slag
@ItAintEazy: Holy crap! I almost forgot about Sotomayor. Talk about an accomplishment! Probably the best thing that this administration has done so far is put her on the bench. And yet, it’s something we rarely hear about unless we’re reading Dahlia Lithwick all the time. I hate the fact that she’s at Slate.
nepat
@Hal:
My Amen is for this.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Might we be calling this a blessing in disguise six months from now? That another cheap stunt might be attempted and the Obama Admin, thanks to this experience, just swats it away? We can dream.
matoko_chan
or Noah Millman— he meant to do that
Kryptik
@matoko_chan:
Of course, this all assumes that Breitbart will actually be repudiated in the long term. Hell, I’d at least want to see some short term repudiation from anyone not on a blog or MSNBC.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@matoko_chan:
Next up: SSLIHOP or SSMIHOP ?
liberal
@Corner Stone:
But we’re leaving Iraq completely. The fact that we’ll have 50,000 troops remaining there doesn’t detract from that.
ruemara
@dan:
Lord, that is some funny satire. I mean, you’d have to not have read anything ever in GOS or HuffPo or FDL or Crooks & Liars, or Talkleft, ever. Hilarious! Wha-? This is serious? Mea culpa.
Corner Stone
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
Calling Nick to inform us all how it’s impossible to even bother challenging the media’s narrative so we shouldn’t even try and nothing they could do would matter and of course they HAVE to respond in blind panic and that’s all there is to it in…5…4..3..2..
liberal
@slag:
She’s a very good appointment, as long as you overlook the “chain-smoking diabetic” aspect.
liberal
@Corner Stone:
Nick’s too busy completing his grand opus, a study on how Japan was beset by high inflation after their real estate bubble collapsed.
Mnemosyne
I’ve realized why this whole thing is bugging me so much:
At what point did we decide that the Obama administration is not only never allowed to make a mistake, but that fixing any mistakes they do make within 48 hours is Not. Good. Enough.?
liberal
@LT:
It does take away from that fact for people who can’t hold the following two facts in their head simultaneously:
(1) Breitbart is a lying thug.
(2) Obama is a pussy.
Citizen Alan
@Omnes Omnibus: \\
Past performance suggests that Team Obama will probably elect to punt on second down.
cat48
Obama also did not wilt on Van Jones immediately. WND started writing about him in April last yr, Beck picked it up in July with his marxism story, the Repubs are assholes tape, etc. He would have made it thru if he hadn’t signed that ridiculous Truther petition. That’s what did him in in September and Van Jones is the only one to blame for that.
He also did not wilt on the gay guy at the Education Dept who was flogged by Fox about a supposed underage gay guy having sex and revealing it to him. Isn’t that guy still there? I don’t buy that he always folds everytime.
Also, too Fox flogged Cass Sunstein who is still there!
liberal
@Mnemosyne:
The point isn’t whether they made a mistake, but whether it’s part of a pattern—namely, reacting like wussies to rightists and crypto-rightists.
Citizen Alan
@Mike B:
This. Obama and Vilsack are not “bad guys.” They are not “villains.” But if I see a bully slap around some cringing nebbish who immediately rushes to grovel out of fear of being slapped again, the fact that the bully is obviously the villain doesn’t make the groveling nebbish into any kind of hero. The hero is the guy who stands up to the bully and, if necessary, bloodies his nose.
Obama refuses to stand up for himself or for any of us, and his cowardice has become institutional in nature.
TuiMel
@Kryptik:
I do feel that the MSM performed 180 degrees out from covering themselves in glory on this one. And it is distressing that there seems to be no accountability for the errors made and damage done to Ms. Sherrod. It is just on to the next lie and cocktail party.
That said, this comment expresses much of my dismay that the Dept of Ag and whoever was on point for this at the White House acted without giving this woman the benefit of the doubt – at least long enough to gather the facts. It seems they live in fear of the Beck clown show. How effing sad. However, I think we have to look further back to the NAACP. They booted this one but good, and they enabled the trashing of a person whom they ostensibly exist to defend.
Cacti
@liberal:
And the DFH’s wonder why they aren’t taken seriously.
Cat
@matoko_chan:
To ratchet up the level one deeper. Brietbart knew the whole tape would exonerate Sharrod but that she’d get fired before the truth came out, thus turning Obama into the villian.
They now they get two memes for the price of one.
First, A black person admitted she didn’t like white people which is something a lot of the Fox demo probably thinks. They will just ignore contradictory facts that she’s no longer like that becuase thats what closed minded people do.
Second, The Administration is incompetent as they fired an innocent person.
So its a win for Brietbart in his mind I’m sure.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Mnemosyne:
You’re missing the point. This is the Spanish Civil War, and even as we speak Matt Taibbi (as the obligatory Orwell stand-in) is writing a semi-autobiographical novel Homage to Catatonia. The movie version will be cast starring Hayden Christensen and Miley Cyrus, and will be directed by Michael Bay.
Cacti
@liberal:
We know.
If Obama just shouted and pounded his bully pulpit more often, all would be right with the world.
Cacti
What will the DFH’s bang their spoons on their high chairs about next week?
Citizen Alan
@gwangung:
On certain specific, narrow issues, where Obama has deliberately kept in place certain Bush policies which are anathema to liberals and progressives, it is not incorrect to say that Obama is as bad as Bush since such a statement is factually true. If Bush does A and I think A is bad and Obama continues to do A, then logically, it is still equally as bad unless I am a hypocrite who is willing to ignore sins when they are committed by my team.
On the whole, of course, Obama is no where near as bad as Bush since, to my knowledge, Obama has certainly done nothing which would justify him being tried and executed for war crimes and treason, which, IMO should be done with his predecessor.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Cacti:
Just like Teddy Roosevelt did in the Brownsville Incident.
Oh wait…
NR
@Cacti: You’re such a sensible liberal. You must be proud.
Angela
Yeah, Obama should just act out the right-wings angry black man scenario; then all would be right in this world.
K. Grant
Why do I get the sense that Obama routinely feels like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Airplane!
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne:
That’s been pissing me off too — and it wasn’t even 48 hours! It was like they fucked it up in the morning (firing Sherrod and feeling good about it), fucked it up differently in the afternoon (Vilsack digging in his heels), began un-fucking it by midnight (WH calls Vilsack and says they’d like him to reconsider), and continued un-fucking it the next morning (Gibbs apologizing). That’s _fast_, people. Yes, the initial issue is still maddening: when Fox drums up some nonsense, your instinct shouldn’t be to believe it. Gibbs said as much in the apology press conference: he admonished the admin and the media to inquire into why they acted before having the facts. They _already see it your way_, folks. This is like continuing to scream about how Jim Joyce blew the call that cost Armando Galarraga his perfect game after Joyce _said_ he blew the call and apologized to Galarraga. What good is that?
matoko_chan
@Cat: lawl, of course Breitbart lied about editing the tape…..you should read Noah’s post ^^
as usual, Obama is winning the long game.
Breitbart totally lost credibility.
Only FOX will flog his hack-jobs now.
Breitbart was furious because the NAACP caused Williams to out himself as racist leadership in the TPM. he wasn’t thinking that far ahead….he just didn’t give a shit.
He had some semi-street cred after the pimp videos, from Jon Stewart even…..ooo…..i wunner what stewart is going to say?
Mnemosyne
@Jill:
Or, what Jill said:
The problem is FIXED, people. Sherrod is getting a promotion. Why are people still moaning and sobbing about how awful the administration is and, yes, giving Breitbart a pass because we’re all much too smart to fall for his bullshit like a low-level functionary at the USDA did?
This isn’t even Monday morning quarterbacking. It’s halftime quarterbacking declaring the game is totally lost when it’s barely half over.
NR
@Angela: This is officially the most ridiculous Obama-related straw man argument I’ve ever seen. Great job!
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne:
Fixed that for accuracy.
slightly_peeved
Was it a serious problem with all the previous Democratic presidents who did it? ‘cos they did. If you don’t cower to the vindictive in the US, you’d never get elected.
Citizen Alan
@Mnemosyne:
I think the issue for most of us is that they keep making the same mistake over and over again. Does anyone really think the reaction will be any different if Breitbart shows back up six months from now with another heavily edited tape which purports to show racism on the part of someone in the administration?
Angela
@NR:
It just seemed to fit in with most of the comments here, so I thought I’d throw it out too.
Usually I love BJ because the comments are so great, but the ones on this post are fairly unbelievable.
Chuck
I couldn’t get past the bit about Josh’s “friend” Howie Kurtz.
FlipYrWhig
@Citizen Alan:
Um, the whole thing went from all jacked up to apology and reconciliation in ONE FUCKING DAY. Why is that “refusing to stand up”? Absurd. Yes, they flinched at first. Then they acted. Damn fast, too.
TuiMel
@K. Grant:
Yes.
Cacti
@NR:
So, who was the last candidate the “I heart screaming” crowd got elected to national office?
Take your time. If you’re not too busy fapping to the righteous truthifying of Tom Tomorrow.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
You mean like when he stood by Van Jones for months until the guy shot himself in the foot by supporting 9/11 Troofers?
Or when he refused to back down from the Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan nominations?
Or when he hired Samantha Power to work for the NSA after the election?
Yeah, what a wuss.
I think you’re suffering from a bit of selective memory here, to say the least.
Corner Stone
@Angela:
I agree with you. I think what everyone here has been arguing is that Obama should do his best Denzel in John Q. Public.
Mnemosyne
@Citizen Alan:
Yes, that’s why Sherrod has been re-hired and promoted: because Obama refuses to stand up for anyone.
FlipYrWhig
@Citizen Alan:
Yeah! Like when they fired Holder over the New Black Panthers and fired Anita Dunn over the Chairman Mao remark and fired Janet Napolitano for saying that “the system worked.” Every time.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: Whoa, you and I are scarily in synch. :D
Angela
@Corner Stone:
That is what I meant about the comments being unbelievable.
Mnemosyne
@Corner Stone:
Good to know I was completely accurate and you think the administration is never allowed to make a mistake, and any fixing of mistakes just makes you angrier about the fact that a mistake was made at all.
I sure hope you don’t have kids, because they’re probably 40 years old and still having to hear you bitch every Thanksgiving about how you know they’re totally irresponsible because they once broke a window in fourth grade.
Cacti
@FlipYrWhig:
Now why let facts get in the way of a good narrative?
Obama is just like Bush because he didn’t give us the socialist revolution he never promised!
Citizen Alan
@FlipYrWhig:
I’m sorry, but I cannot help but notice that the apology and reconciliation only came after (1) the full, unedited videotape surfaced, (2) the white farmer couple came forward to debunk the lies and talk loudly about how she helped save their farm, and (3) Fox and Breitbart himself had already pivoted from “white-hating Obama hired a racist” to “mean Obama fired a wonderful human being with an uplifting backstory without learning the true facts.”
Or does anyone really think that Sherrod would be getting an apology and a promotion right now if the tape had been lost and the white couple were both deceased?
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
I’m sure CS will accuse us of being sock puppets any minute now. ;-)
NR
@Angela: Okay, just let me make sure I’m up on all the rules about criticizing Obama:
Wanting Obama to keep his campaign promises to bring major change to Washington = Wanting a pony.
Criticizing Obama from the left = Thinking Obama is worse than Bush.
And now, wanting Obama to stand up to the right-wing noise machine = Wanting Obama to act like an angry black man.
Did I miss anything?
Cat
@matoko_chan:
Sorry if I’m misinterpreting what you wrote. I thought you were laughing at the implausibleness of the defense of the firing as 2nd level thinking.
I was trying to be funny and say, “Oh yeah! Breitbart was doing some 3rd level thinking!”
Of course the beauty of a properly executed +1 level strategy is you don’t realize it until its to late so maybe the WH did.
/shrug
Mnemosyne
@Citizen Alan:
You really think this story would be dead and Sherrod would be appearing on “The View” if that hadn’t happened? Shit, we’d still be at the very beginning with Beck and O’Reilly and Limbaugh and Hannity singing the “I Found A Black Racist” chorus if not for that.
Cat
@Citizen Alan:
You win this thread. This is what they are all over looking on how badly this incident was handled.
You win so hard I imagine you’ve killed this thread.
slightly_peeved
@NR:
about that cartoon:
– The drawdown in Iraq is actually going according to schedule, so Obama has started to get the US out of Iraq.
– He didn’t campaign on a drawdown in Afghanistan, so I’m not sure what Tom Tomorrow’s expecting there.
– Obama did a series of speeches promoting health care reform, to the point that some of the MSM started talking about him being over-exposed. So he did work the “bully pulpit”.
– George Bush actually had lots of problems getting what he wanted in his second term (see Harriet Miers, privatisation of social security)
– The public option got introduced by Harry Reid, and was defeated in the Senate. The administration were wary about him introducing it because they didn’t think it had the votes, and guess what? It didn’t have the votes.
I don’t have a beef with people criticizing Obama. I have a beef with people who make shit up, or don’t read bills before they complain about them, or don’t check their history before they opine about it.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Let’s enumerate:
Healthcare reform = not major change
Financial reform = not major change
Withdrawing troops from Iraq = not major change
Department of Labor enforcing labor laws = not major change
Department of Justice investigating discrimination charges = not major change
Nobel-prize winner in charge of Department of Energy = not major change
You’re right, if you completely ignore all of the major changes, Obama hasn’t made any changes at all!
Cacti
For reals. Why couldn’t the President have just shoved aside the first official visit from David Cameron, and any accompanying discussions of the gargantuan BP oil spill, or getting Finreg or the extension of Unemployment benefits signed into law, so he could immediately deal with the weighty national issue of…
Andrew fucking Breitbart.
Mnemosyne
@Cat:
Only if, like Citizen Alan, you think this story wouldn’t have gone anywhere if Sherrod hadn’t been fired and Breitbart wouldn’t have been able to get anyone to listen to him as long as Sherrod still had her government job.
And if you think that, I have a lovely bridge in Brooklyn I’ll sell you for a song.
Citizen Alan
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s a good point. The Obama Administration hasn’t surrendered preemptively on every single solitary frivolous complaint brought Reichwingers. Apparently, if you are sufficiently high-profile such that forcing you out is more embarrassing to the Administration than trying to outlast a three-day news cycle, the right will have to come up with something more than a ludicrous, ginned-up, complete non-story before you will be thrown under a bus. That’s just swell. I completely withdraw all my objections and concerns.
Man, I just can’t wait until the House Republicans get subpoena power next January. It’s gonna be like Franz Kafka and Hunter S. Thompson had a crack baby together.
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
Fair Pay Legislation = Not major change
SCHIP Expansion = Not major change
Mnemosyne
@Citizen Alan:
Tell us, Alan, how do you drive that last nail in once you get yourself up on the cross?
Nick
@Mr Furious:
When the administration has to govern in a world dominated by news cycles, yes it does.
matoko_chan
@Cat: oh no, i don’t think Obama “meant to do that.”
its just serendipity.
I think Breitbart chose a horrible target without researching her because he is a lazy vindictive assclown……….but…..what if hes NOT lying about receiving the tapes pre-edited?
What if he was completely set up?
now that would be pure machiavelli.
:)
FlipYrWhig
@Citizen Alan:
I think you’re right about that — and to be honest I’m surprised that the “taken out of context” defense, which was true, actually worked. Normally it doesn’t, and the whole story would have continued to be about the mean black lady who favors her own kind. But in the realm of actuality, the turnaround from offense to remediation was crazy fast.
It’s easy for me to believe that what happened was that there was a low-level freakout by the USDA deputy; Vilsack handled it — as the NAACP did — with platitudinous statements about how all bias is wrong; as more facts emerged, Vilsack clung to his formulation that all bias is wrong; then Vilsack got a late-night phone call from the WH _at the end of that same day_ telling him to wise up and reverse his decision. To me that’s _effective_ gaffe management.
I think USDA really does want to project that they’re not going to use their chastisement for discriminating against black farmers in the past to turn around and discriminate against white farmers as payback. They thought from the tape that Sherrod was saying that’s how she saw the world, and panicked. Then they backed themselves into a corner. Obama bailed them out. I honestly don’t know what else Obama was supposed to do. I don’t think he’s responsible even in part for USDA being hair-trigger sensitive on matters of race. I believe that it was a fuckup organic to conditions at USDA that Obama fixed in basically a day. I think he deserves _credit_ for that.
Nick
@Citizen Alan:
no, because she would’ve been a white-hating racist and we would’ve moved on without question. Which is why they let her go, because they weren’t sure where this would go and were prepping for the worst.
gwangung
@matoko_chan:
You can still make a case for willful disregard of the truth because he didn’t bother to verify. Ie, he’s still a major league ass.
slightly_peeved
According to politifact, 120 promises kept so far, to 37 compromises and 19 not kept. In the face of an entirely obstructive opposition party and an occasionally obstructive Democratic party.
The people who are so keen on Obama to keep his promises don’t seem to ever point out when he actually keeps them.
And the President saying “whoops, that was a fuckup, let’s admit the error and try to fix it” is actually a pretty big change in the way Washington works. Not that I’ve been there, but it doesn’t seem the kind of place where people are keen on owning up to their mistakes.
Angela
@NR:
Since you ask, I would say the only thing you are missing is a little common sense.
Nick
@NR:
yes actually you did.
Wanting Obama to keep his campaign promises to bring major change to Washington AND IGNORING WHEN HE DOES = Wanting a pony.
Criticizing Obama from the left ON ISSUES WHERE HE’S RADICALLY TO THE LEFT OF THE COUNTRY ALREADY= Thinking Obama is worse than Bush.
And now, wanting Obama to stand up to the right-wing noise machine ON ISSUES LIKE RACE WHERE HE CAN’T WIN = Wanting Obama to act like an angry black man.
Citizen Alan
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t think that at all and that’s not what my point was. My point was that all you folks who think Obama is just marvelous because he rehired Sherrod after just 48 hours are overlooking the fact that he only did so after irrefutable proof that her firing was unjust and only after his political enemies had already reversed course to condemn him for firing her without justification.
My point was that if there had been no video and no white farmers to corroborate Sherrod’s story, she’d still be out of a job, the Obama administration would be trying to spin this whole story as showing how they have zero tolerance for nasty anti-white racists, and Fox-Breitbart et al would be crowing about how most likely every black person who works in the Administration is out to get whitey.
Sherrod got fired because of the Administration’s ongoing compulsion to preemptively surrender to Republicans. She got rehired only because Republicans turned the firing itself into an attack which needed to be quickly deflected.
Citizen Alan
@Mnemosyne:
Good one. That comment might have actually hurt my feelings if I had any respect for you.
FlipYrWhig
@Citizen Alan:
OK. So who have been the victims of the Obama Death Bus, the people who have been pushed aside after a trumped-up complaint by Fox and right-wing blogs? ACORN, I suppose, though that was more Congress’s doing. Van Jones, maybe, although that dragged on a long time and my impression, at least, was that he just got sick of the whining, rather than that Obama’s people shoved him out the door. Anyone else?
cfaller96
Sigh, no you will get no amen from me on that piece. Josh is fretting horribly about OMG JOURNALIZTS R TEH SUXORZ THINK OF THE CHILDREN!! Which would be a fine sentiment, if that sentiment was expressed alone and not in relation to another sentiment.
But that’s not what Josh did. He explicitly said this sentiment should take priority over any concern about the Obama Admin’s role in this disaster. I don’t agree- consciously putting someone on unemployment because the boss is an idiot is, IMO, a much, much bigger problem than the process by which Breitbart was able to dupe the traditional media.
Firing Sherrod in a matter of hours was a very real and indisputed fuckup that Vilsack, and various WH staffers participated in here. Further, the characteristics of that fuckup (e.g. drama, hasty action, panic, etc.) completely contradict the narrative and leadership style of President Obama. That concerns me far more than the completely predictable behavior of the media. I mean, does anyone really expect that the media will change its behavior if only we bitched about their behavior juuuust a little bit more? Really? If not, then why should pointless bitching be the top priority here?
There are finite resources available to us all, and it seems foolish to dedicate so much time and energy to a project (i.e. getting the media to stop smearing anyone left of Newt) that is futile in the short term, and iffy in the long term. I don’t understand how someone so proud of his pragmatic instinct in other areas (you can scroll down for John’s latest “no you can’t have that, liberals” post) can so blindly ignore the pragmatic constraints around reforming media behavior. No matter how much you scream about Fox and Breitbart and the rest of them, John, they don’t care and they won’t change. So why not redirect your energy towards a project (i.e. getting the Obama Admin to improve their governance skills) that is, uh, less than futile?
FlipYrWhig
@Citizen Alan:
Yeah! He should have defended her with less proof! That would have showed some balls!
This is one strange complaint. He only did the right thing because there was good evidence for it… the coward?
Cat
@Mnemosyne:
A) The administration takes longer then 6 hours to figure out whats going on, finds out it was edited and taken out of context with proof to back it up. Doesn’t fire her.
Result :
Noise machine continues to claim she discriminates against whites.
Good person still has job.
B) The administration takes longer then 6 hours to figure out whats going on, finds out it was edited and taken out of context. Doesn’t fire her.
Result :
Noise machine continues to claim she discriminates against whites.
Good person still has job.
C) The administration insta fires her. Then finds out it was edited and taken out of context with proof to back it up.
Result :
Noise machine gets to claim Obama is incompetent and damaged a good person’s reputation. They still get to claim that its resonable to think Black people discriminate against whites because She admitted it. They want this so bad to be true. Sure they’ll applaud that she changed her ways, but they’ll use her admitting to it to say all blacks do it and only a few ever change.
Good person still fired, maybe takes a new job and promotion.
D) The administration insta fires her. Then finds out it was edited and taken out of context but with no proof to back it up other then her word.
Result :
Noise machine continues to claim she discriminates against whites. Gets to strut about about how they got her fired.
Good person still fired. I wonder how easy her life will be at her age after fired because of a national incident like this?
…
You are under the delusion that proof maters to the Fox/Beck/Limbaugh demographic. It doesn’t.
We are locked into the game of American Politics and one of the key pieces, The Media, in this game has a ruleset that heavily favors the Republican/Tea Party strategy.
Nick
@cfaller96: So, ok, we don’t have the ability to take on the media as an organized body, but Obama should definitely do it by himself.
WTF?
Lawnguylander
@FlipYrWhig:
“Obama never stands up for his people” reminds me somehow of “Bush got everything he wanted from Congress.” It’s evident after 30 seconds of reflection that neither is true but we’ll be hearing both for six more years anyway. These things feel right and that’s more important than them being objectively correct it seems. I’m not going to psychoanalyze all the people who have been pushing these ideas but maybe someone else can. I’m more puzzled by the instinct to bolster Bush’s record of success than the inaccurate criticisms of Obama though.
Cacti
@Citizen Alan:
Yes, he should have just shoved David Cameron’s visit and Finreg to the side for this. The hiring and firing of mid-level USDA employees should always have priority as a national issue.
matoko_chan
@gwangung: i dunno….Breitbart sure flailed around a lot with his apology and calling the farmer and his wife ringers.
The beauty of the scam is that he could never admit how badly he got pwn’d.
so simple….so nasty.
heartless towards Ms. Sherrod tho….Rahm…is that you?
Cat
@matoko_chan:
Brietbart had to have seen the whole tapes. I base this on the fact nobody in their right mind, though that has been my undoing many times, calls a 2 minute snippet of an hour speech ‘rambling’.
I believe he is unsophisticated enough he’d not look a gift horse mouth and fall completely for a setup like this.
Tom Q
Yeah, Citizen Alan, you lose all credibility if you think this story would be playing out the same without the existence of the full tape and the white farmers’ testimony. Absent them, the story would be “Black lady making what sounds like racist remarks”, the right-wing Wurlitzer flogging it non-stop, and not one single fact to rebut that — which would have the same Liberal Media now moaning over the administration’s rush to judgment in full-on lynch mode. It wouldn’t matter how loudly Sherrod protested her innocence; the Village verdict would be Off with her head.
What I’m getting from these comments is just how committed many are to the notion of Obama the Disappointment. It’s been pointed out more than once above the number of times the administration has stood up to the smear machine (Jones for a long while, Dunn, Somtomayor, etc.). Yet people persist in claiming they cave “Every time”. If you’d at least balance your comments with reality once in a while, the rest of us might not be so quick to dismiss you as whiners.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne:
What I enjoy so much about this is how bad you FAIL with this poor analogy.
My child makes a mistake, I hope they learn from it. And it’s my job to educate them on the situation.
A team of very highly paid, seasoned professionals != children, unless that is at the heart of the argument you are making.
This was an own goal. You can’t admit it.
You want to diminish the damage caused, primarily to Ms. Sherrod and her loved ones, but in other ways a larger community that expected calm reflection prior to decision making that harms people.
You display a complete lack of empathy for Ms. Sherrod and repeat that “All’s well! All is well!!” but this isn’t true.
The bottom line is you will say anything to not admit the truth. More than a little bit sad, actually. But expected from you.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
Health insurance reform, not health care reform. And no, it is not a major change. Yes, the bill that was passed does make some things better for some people at the margins, but overall it reinforces the status quo of the failing American health care system. It does not change it.
You’re 2 for 2. The financial reform bill that just passed isn’t a major change either. It does not restore Glass-Steagall and force the separation of investment banks from depository banks, it doesn’t even attempt to address “too big to fail” but it does guarantee that banks will still be bailed out, and it has enough loopholes to make derivatives regulation meaningless. Oh, and the part of the bill that would audit the Fed was removed. Again, this is a bill that reinforces the status quo rather than changing it.
Not if he’s just shifting them over to Afghanistan. Oh, and let’s not forget about the 50,000 troops he’s leaving there.
So, yeah. I’m still looking for the big changes that Obama promised. Oh, but I guess I just want a pony. Never mind.
matoko_chan
Cat…..if i were Breitbart….and the shit had gone down like this….i would try to recover by saying i was set up, instead of doubling down….
unless…..i really was set up.
;)
catclub
@matoko_chan:
“If Sherrod had been kept on, been interviewed, explained the situation to her supervisor, and that information made its way up the chain of command until Obama’s press secretary told everybody that her remarks were “taken out of context” – well, what do you think the trajectory of this news story would have been?”
Gibbs would start asking – repeatedly – of anyone who asks him about it – “Have you seen the ENTIRE tape, that is now on the White House website, showing the real nature of what this outstanding employee said, whom we will back to the hilt, especially when some lying dirtbag tries to smear her, or do you not even have the rudiments of a clue of what being a reporter entails?”
A fellow can dream.
Corner Stone
@Angela:
You must not read very many threads here.
catclub
@matoko_chan:
@218
Now that’s interesting!
Mnemosyne
@Cat:
For another few weeks, until the noise machine gets fully wound up and there’s no chance of saving her. You know, exactly what happened with Van Jones.
And, of course, there’s the fact that this story and the NBPP “story” get linked together as part of the ongoing “Zimbabwe” narrative of Obama favoring black people over white people and Obama’s numbers among whites continue sinking lower and lower as the Mighty Wurlitzer grinds away.
You seem to think we can just ignore this shit and let it run forever unchallenged in the right-wing media. Funny, that’s what people kept telling me about Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s — “Ignore him, he’s too crazy, people will never listen to him.”
How’d that work out for us so far?
Nick
@catclub:
ADMINISTRATION IN CRISIS!! GIBBS ON THE DEFENSE! RACIST LADY NOT YET FIRED! Rachel Maddow says there’s some sort of tape actually shows what she said isn’t true, but, that’s just liberal Maddow in panic! IS THERE ANYMORE RACISTS WORKING FOR OBAMA? WHAT’S THIS ABOUT BLACK PANTHERS? LET’S SEE WHAT ANN COULTER HAS TO SAY ABOUT THIS!
HRA
@Mnemosyne:
“At what point did we decide that the Obama administration is not only never allowed to make a mistake, but that fixing any mistakes they do make within 48 hours is Not. Good. Enough.? ”
Totally on the mark! Amen
Amen to Josh Marshall, too.
Cacti
So you’re disappointed that Obama’s not withdrawing from Afghanistan, when he campaigned on increasing our troop presence there?
Yep. You just want a pony.
cfaller96
@Nick:
I never suggested Obama should attempt to reform the media by himself. In fact, I’m suggesting that President Obama should also not try to reform the media. I think you have me confused with some other commenter.
matoko_chan
@catclub: yah, but the way it has worked out is better….Breitbart is on tape “apologizing” to Sherrod, trying to impeach the farmer and his wife, insisting that the audience applause still shows the NAACP is racist, which was his main goal.
Was he relly so dumb he’d try to slime the daughter of a civil rights hero and a black man that was killed by a white farmer over a cow?
i think he didn’t know that.
If he watched the whole tape, he would know that when it came out he’d be ‘refudiated’.
im thinking he had a trusted source that just sent him the edit.
or possibly he was just going for a rev wright style viral video.
Cat
@matoko_chan:
His strategy of doubling down reflects on how narcissistic he must be. He can never be wrong or at fault.
The most difficult thing about my progressive beliefs is not exploiting easy marks like Brietbart. He could easily be manipulated to cause so much damage do any cause he’s aligned with.
gwangung
@matoko_chan: Oh, I’m just pointing out that Breitbart really can’t blame anyone else. He wouldn’t have run the story if he had done even modest due diligence. And because he didn’t, he’s open to a defamation suit. Not sure he’d lose it, but I think it could go to trial….and it’s all his own damn fault.
Heh. It would be funny if he got baited into this.
slightly_peeved
It’s the biggest increase in the US social safety net in the last 30 years. It ends recission and discrimination on pre-existing conditions. It lets anyone without insurance buy into the same scheme that Federal Employees currently have.
It also establishes a pilot program for payment bundling, which if it replaces fee-for-service will fix the biggest problem in the US healthcare system; that companies get rich through giving people unnecessary and expensive treatment. So it does address, head on, the major issues of US healthcare; fee-for-service, a lack of insurance portability, recission, pre-existing conditions, and community rating.
Cat
@Mnemosyne:
It was months for Van Jones I thought and I believe the consensus was he got fired for being dumb enough to support 9/11 truthers.
Nice try though.
cfaller96
@Cacti:
Even though it’s OT, I find this sentiment curious. President Obama made many campaign promises. Some of them he has kept, some of them he has not. Some people will be upset by that, some will not. There is no evidence to suggest that if he declined to follow through on a campaign promise to escalate an unpopular, costly, and arguably pointless war that the American people would OMG CRUCIFY HIM and his fellow Dems.
To be clear, my point is not “he should have broken that campaign promise because I didn’t like that one.” Rather my point is “you know, it is possible to break a campaign promise and survive.” The idea that Obama was forced, FORCED! to follow through on a stupid foreign policy just because he campaigned on it is a little ridiculous.
General Stuck
@LT: @LT:
:
See now, this is what gripes me about firebaggers. You are pulling the same rhetorical stunts as the Breitbarts of the the world. To carve out that little snippet from the entire context of the quote would make it seem to someone not having read the complete Marshall quote would clearly get the impression that Cole and he were giving Obama a pass. But of course they weren’t.
You and fuckwits like liberal are not interested in honest critique of a democratic president you support. Instead, you search out causes and memes to attack that dem president, why? BECAUSE YOU DON’T FUCKING SUPPORT THAT DEM PRESIDENT – but you come by every day with this Breitbart light shit selling it, and when you get called on it, you cry “hippy puncher” because you think you are higher on the totem pole of assholes pining for another president. You are not.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
45 million Americans are “at the margins”? The millions of people who will now qualify for Medicaid are just “at the margins” anyway, so we shouldn’t have helped them?
We could have continued letting people die in the streets, or we could do something that helps them now and lays the groundwork to do bigger fixes later. I’m not sure why you think the morally defensible position is “Do nothing and let people keep dying until we have a perfect fix.”
I think you’re one of the people I keep asking for an example of a country that switched from private insurance to single payer in one go. Have you found that yet? It took Canada over 30 years to make the transition, but that’s no reason we couldn’t do it within 1 year, right? USA! USA! USA!
Funny, Paul Krugman and Elizabeth Warren disagree with you on the uselessness of the regulations. I guess I should listen to you, a random guy on the internet, over Krugman and Warren, because you’re so much smarter and more knowledgeabler than they are, right?
Actually, some troops are coming back from Iraq even earlier than planned. Most are not going to Afghanistan. But why let facts get in the way of a good betrayal?
matoko_chan
@gwangung: i like my toy theory.
i think ill play with it somemore.
Cat is right…if he did get spoofed, he has waaaaaaay too much ego to ever admit it.
cfaller96
When “mistake” turns into “mistakes,” that’s when. It’s ok to make a mistake every now and then. It’s NOT ok to make the same mistake twice. Then it’s Not.Good.Enough.
I know I’m going to get flamed for this analogy given what we know now, but I remember having this feeling about John Edwards back in 2008. I liked how he would completely own up and confess his mistakes wholeheartedly…but I didn’t like that I was seeing him do that all too often. Ultimately, I couldn’t vote for him in the primary because I envisioned his Presidency being one long train of damage, apology & repair, damage, apology & repair, etc.
Mnemosyne
@Cat:
Funny, from what people have been saying here for days, the problem was that Van Jones didn’t get enough support from Obama and was thrown under the bus. Are you now admitting that maybe there was a reason other than Obama’s total pussyhood when it comes to the right wing that led to Jones being dropped?
Better not let NR and Corner Stone see that concession to reality or they’ll turn on you right quick.
Cacti
@cfaller96:
I don’t disagree, but not every campaign promise is of equal weight.
The Iraq draw down + Afghanistan build up was pretty much the centerpiece of his foreign policy platform.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Corner Stone:
To which I would add, they are in the most consequential positions in the world and have the power to blow up the Earth twenty times over. They are to be held to the highest standards of anybody on the planet, and I don’t take seriously anyone who thinks otherwise.
All that said, i recognize that they have to walk a fine line between consideration and decisiveness, and that they are human beings who are going to make mistakes. If they learn the right lessons from this episode then I’ll be somewhat content. It would be funny if, the next time Major Garrett gets contentious with Robert Gibbs, Gibbs dismissed him by pointing out that FOX flogged a doctored video for a couple of days and nothing they say can be taken seriously and then moving on directly to the next question. Not holding my breath on that, but it would be gravy.
NR
@Cacti: Tell that to the families of the soldiers dying in Afghanistan for no good reason.
Oh, right. They’re just upset because they didn’t get their ponies, too.
cfaller96
@Nick:
I would prefer the situation you just described to the situation we’re in today. The media frenzy you describe would IMO be no different than the one we’re in now, except one innocent person would not be unemployed. That would be better, IMO.
Just for the record.
Mnemosyne
@cfaller96:
What was the first iteration of the mistake?
And if you say “ACORN,” please explain how Congress’ defunding of ACORN had anything to do with the White House.
Cacti
@cfaller96:
I couldn’t vote for him because I thought he was completely phony.
I was right.
Mnemosyne
@Corner Stone:
Once again, Corner Stone has trouble with analogies. Not really a surprise.
cfaller96
@Cacti:
True, but:
A) This is far more nuanced than your original argument to defend Obama’s decision to escalate the Afghan war. I take exception to the whole “lol of course he had to escalate in Afghanistan because he promised it in the campaign!” logic.
B) Foreign policy centerpiece or no, just because he won the election does not mean his entire platform was wholeheartedly endorsed by the American people.
C) Situations change over time, especially in politics. He does not have to remain committed in 2009 to something he said on the campaign trail in 2008, especially when the facts change. More importantly, the American people understand this and are willing to cut a President some slack.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Right. What was I thinking? Lilly Ledbetter, a mandate to buy insurance from the same private, for-profit companies that have screwed up our national healthcare, and financial reform that confirms and entrenches “too big to fail” is a huge change from the stauts quo. OMG, GO OBAMA! GO DEMOCRATS!
The fact is that Obama ran on the message that he would bring major change to Washington, and the biggest of Obama’s accomplishments to date consist of tinkering around the edges of the status quo. And that’s not even getting into all the places where he didn’t even tinker, but rather left in place and even strengthened policies from the Bush administration.
I’m no starry-eyed idealist. I always knew that the country was so fucked up that it was going to take far more than a single election cycle to fix it. But seeing Obama either move in the wrong direction, or take only the most timid of baby steps in the right direction, on issue after issue is disheartening, to say the least.
I’ll vote for him again, because I know that whoever the Republicans put up is going to be batshit nuts, but if this truly is the best we can do, then our country is fucked. It’s not a question of if it’s all going to come crashing down, but only of when.
cfaller96
@Mnemosyne:
Van Jones. Right Wing Freakouts should not lead to someone being fired. Yet that’s happened a second time now.
And if you say ACORN isn’t related to this mistake, then Josh’s post and God knows how many BJ posts are all meaningless. Andrew Breitbart is the key to the lesson that should have already been learned, and you can’t talk about Breitbart without talking about ACORN (and now, Sherrod). I’m pretty sure that’s a lot of what John Cole and Josh are saying.
frankdawg
@eemom:
You win this thread! :)
Cacti
@NR:
I have a family member who died in Afghanistan, so kindly GFY.
Cacti
@cfaller96:
Because it was someone else’s fault he signed a dumbass 9/11 truther petition.
redactor
It’s the same old story: Left Blogistan demands that Elizabeth Warren get to run the organization she championed, and … crickets. A wingnut charlatan like Breitbart says jump, and the media and administration say “How high?”
The acceptable range of opinion is still from the New Republic to the Free Republic. However this story plays out, that won’t change.
Mnemosyne
@cfaller96:
So you’re deeply concerned about the administration dropping one guy who stupidly signed a 9/11 Troofer petition but didn’t even notice the dozens of nominees named in this thread who were not dropped despite attacks from the right wing because they didn’t do something as stupid as Jones did?
Here’s the thing: if you can look at, say, the Jones debacle versus Sotomayor, Solis, Holder, Napolitano, Kagan, et al and decide that the administration always folds to the right wing, you may want to get your eyesight checked. Either that, or you’re consciously cherrypicking to find OBAMA FAIL!
And Another Thing...
@Elizabelle: That’s a good question. My WAG (wild ass guess) was that that would mean Sherrod would then continue to be working for Cheryl Cook the woman who called her three times to quit and told her the White House wanted her to quit.
Just looked it up, and according to the USDA site:
Cheryl Cook, Rural Development Deputy Under Secretary
Sherrod was the Georgia State Director of Rural Development. Looks like she reported to Cook.
http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/RD-Deputy-Under.html
Methinks Cook’s got some splainin’ to do on her role in the controversy.
Vilsack’s right to offer Sherrod a position elsewhere.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Yes, it is. You may want to burn the whole thing down and start rebuilding from the ashes, but government doesn’t actually work like that.
By your standard, Social Security shouldn’t have been enacted at all. It left too many people off the rolls, it deliberately discriminated against African-Americans, and it took too long to help the people who needed it most. Who cares if those problems were fixed later? If they weren’t in the original legislation, it was clearly FDR FAIL!
And, again, please name the country that went directly from a for-profit healthcare system to government-funded healthcare with a single piece of legislation. You only need to find one.
Mnemosyne
@redactor:
Can we at least wait until a nominee is named before we start the emo about Warren not being nominated?
kthxbai.
LT
@General Stuck:
You’re a fucking idiot.
That’s all I have to say about that.
Except this: I walked the roads and knocked on doors for Obama, and will do it again in 2012. (Actually, I’m moving overseas, so…) In ten years I know I’m going to continue calling him one of our greatest presidents. And I’m disappointed in particular things with him. And you’re a fucking idiot.
scarshapedstar
@Mnemosyne:
Oh, come on. I don’t see how you can compare a confirmation hearing to a trumped-up firing.
Shirley Sherrod and ACORN differ from Sonia Sotomayor in that they were UNFORCED ERRORS. Everyone knew that the Republicans would get pissy no matter who Obama nominated. Welcome to America.
What people did NOT know was that the Democratic party would publicly condemn and destroy one of their strongest grassroots organizations heading into an election year, based on ludicrously fabricated evidence — selectively edited video and dubbed-over audio. The Democrats cut off their right hand because Breitbart told them to, eliciting peals of laughter from the right and shock and dismay from the left — because they were punked. And they have yet to even admit that they were punked about ACORN! It was horrible politics, horrible policy, an all around disaster. I guess that’s what happens when you solicit advice from people bent on your destruction. (And yes, I know that was Congress, but the head of the Party didn’t help.)
I was honestly surprised to see the Administration admit that they fucked up here. I figured it would be ACORN all over again – “we’ve moved on, and we’ll be sure and listen to FOX and Breitbart in the future!” Can you blame me? They still have yet to state in no uncertain terms that Fox LIED to America and that they will no longer be treated as a legitimate news organization. What’s the worst that could happen if they did?
General Stuck
@LT: And you are a liar and the best friend the wingnuts have on the left. And I always like it when the progressive princesses cite all the sacrifice for Obama’s election as a shield for their asshattery now. You did just what Breitbart did. Spliced and diced a commentary to make it sound like something it wasn’t, and now you are butthurt for getting called on it. Moving overseas, best thing yet for liberals, take some of your fellow fuckwits with you and we will thank you for it.
cfaller96
@Cacti:
You honestly think the Right Wing Freakout about Van Jones was based on substance?!?!?!? Oh my God.
WAKE. UP. It didn’t and doesn’t matter what the person did or said- wingnuts were and are looking for scalps regardless. If it wasn’t a 9/11 Truther petition, it would’ve been something else that Van Jones did or said that would’ve precipitated the freakout. The substance, accuracy, or honesty of the critique matters not one bit to rightwingers, the only thing that matters to them is making a critique that can get someone fired.
If you honestly think Van Jones “did this to himself,” then answer this honestly: do you believe Glenn Beck et al would have been sated and shut up if Jones had apologized and disavowed his signature on that petition? No, of course not, which logically means it was never about the fucking petition to begin with, it was about taking a lefty down.
You are fooling yourself if you think Van Jones was a “special circumstance” that could not have been prevented, but was totally justified all the same. And I don’t know if you think this, but people are fooling themselves if they think Shirley Sherrod is the last time the Obama Admin will have to deal with this. People are fooling themselves if they think Breitbart won’t be able to do this again and again and again.
Come on, you know this, I don’t need to tell you this. All you have to do is take the next logical step- if a wingnut freakout isn’t dependent on the substance of the critique, then the substance of the critique doesn’t have to automatically lead to a firing.
As long as wingnuts keep getting scalps (which, again, can only happen if Obama and Dems choose to let it happen, to their shame), then this will continue. To quote BSG: all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
Cacti
@General Stuck:
What are you talking about.
It was totally the internet left that put Obama over the top in states like Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, etc.
Cacti
I reitirate, no one made Van Jones sign a dumbass 9/11 troofer petition.
He dug his own grave. The nutroots are just upset that Obama didn’t jump in it with him.
cfaller96
@Mnemosyne:
I never said “Obama always folds to the right wing.”
What I am saying is Obama should never fold to the right wing. As an aside, I’d go even further- if you know a freakout and huge fight is going to happen no matter what you do (e.g. completely reasonable, non-controversial hires of Sotomayor, Holder, Kagan, et al), then you may as well stretch to go for the more “dreamy” outcomes. If you’re going to be in a fight, why not make it worthwhile?
But I digress. Remember the context that started our discussion- making a mistake is ok, but making mistakes is not. Folding once to the right wing = mistake = eh, bummer, but ok. Folding twice to the right wing = same mistake = NOT ok.
scarshapedstar
@Cacti:
There’s no way Obama would get reelected in 2012 if Van Jones was still… whatever he was. It would be issue #1.
I think giving the wingnuts their first taste of blood was the best decision of Obama’s career. After all, look how satiated they’ve become! Maybe just one more scalp and they’ll stop… yeah… that’s the ticket. And then Fox News will run nothing but pro-Obama stories! And we’ll all get a pony!
I think we’ll get a lovely compromise out of this: the Administration will only kowtow to Breitbart’s demands if he promises that he’s not lying to them. Everyone wins!
cfaller96
@Cacti:
I’d appreciate an honest answer to my question. I’ll repeat: do you believe Glenn Beck et al would have been sated and shut up if Jones had apologized and disavowed his signature on that petition?
Cacti
@scarshapedstar:
No, you’re right. The wise move would have been to stick his neck out to defend 9/11 troofers.
Safronie
@Kryptik:
the media are the enablers, the Administration just has to deal with the consequences of that (and fucked up doing so).
Cacti
@cfaller96:
I’ll repeat, Van Jones has no one to blame for the fruits of his poor judgment but himself.
Keith G
Wow. This is fun.
DHF, what’s for dinner?
Mnemosyne
@scarshapedstar:
The argument is that Obama always folds to the right wing. I have multiple examples where he did not. So now you want to stack the deck and pretend that the only two opportunities that Obama has had to stand up to the right wing were Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod so it’s OBAMA FAIL! all the way down?
Gosh, you mean they actually learned something despite everyone’s declarations that it was absolutely unpossible?
You can’t be right about that, because I’ve had 6 people just in this thread tell me that this was exactly like the Van Jones firing and the administration has never learned a thing and always folds to the right wing.
The entire White House press corps would revolt. It would be on the news 24/7 that Obama shut down press access and it’s just like a dictatorship and what is he hiding?
As I mentioned above, Jake Tapper vehemently defended Fox News as his “colleagues.” The media would not allow Fox News to be expelled, because Fox is One Of Their Own.
cfaller96
@Cacti:
I’ll take your repeated refusal to answer the question to mean “no.”
Which means, of course, that there was a possible alternative to the “Van Jones gets axed because wingnuts freaked out” story. Van Jones could have been pressured to apologize and disavow and disassociate himself from the 9/11 Troofers, and that would have enabled him to stay in his job. The right wing freakout would have continued, at least until the next news cycle, but you and I both agree now that it was going to continue regardless of what happened. My point is that you and everyone else should stop caring about the freakout. It is inevitable, no matter what Obama does, and therefore no action or reaction by Obama is going to mitigate or prevent it. Read that last again.
Over the long term, I don’t see how repeatedly having staff resign or get fired as a result of (insane, dishonest, racist, etc.) rightwing criticism is going to result in good outcomes for the President or the American people. To me, that’s more important than some fucking 9/11 Troofer petition. But whatever, keep repeating your same non-response over and over again. It’s charming, really.
FlipYrWhig
@Cacti: Furthermore, do we know for sure that Van Jones was _asked_ to resign, i.e. fired, as opposed to just getting tired of the never-ending bullshit he was receiving and resigning of his own accord? I thought he said he didn’t want to be a distraction anymore. If that’s what happened, it wouldn’t even count as an example of Obama’s own scapegoating lefties or caving to the right wing noise.
FlipYrWhig
@cfaller96: I think the characteristics of this particular freakout had to do with the history of USDA: they wanted to nip in the bud the possibility that white farmers would be leery that after the anti-discrimination settlement — which just happened THIS MONTH — the agency under Obama’s administration would overcorrect by discriminating against them instead. Vilsack kept alluding to that sorry history. That’s what gave the whole thing such urgency within USDA. And that’s also what created the perfect make-good opportunity: asking Sherrod to help out as they rebuild trust in the agency especially between black and white farmers.
Mnemosyne
@cfaller96:
Did Van Jones want to stay after having had to put up with all of that bullshit for months on end already? David Axelrod went on the record to say that Jones quit of his own accord and was not fired.
So if the bullshit was unstoppable, as you seem to be saying, at what point is the guy allowed to say, “Fuck this, I’m going home”?
Mnemosyne
Here’s Jones’ actual statement at the time:
So, cfaller96, was Obama supposed to beg Jones to stay? Refuse to accept his resignation? Go out into the crowd at a press gaggle and kick some Fox reporters in the ass until Jones agreed not to quit?
As usual, it looks like I let myself be bamboozled by people who were totally sure that Jones was fired so obviously it was exactly like the Shirley Sherrod case. Foolish me for thinking people actually knew what the fuck they were talking about and not looking it up myself to check and see if they were full of shit.
Malron aka eclecticbrotha
Shorter version of every “blame Obama first” commenter in this thread: “fuck being reasonable I still blame Hopey.”
Dirk Gently
Okay, I’m gonna get all sociological here for a moment:
You know, there’s a big part of this, I think, that’s an aspect of the way in which our two-party system has a gendered discourse. As we all know, Democrats have consistently been “pussies” (I say for effect, not because I wish to perpetuate misogyny); liberals/progressives are–in both thought and action–effeminate, coddling, etc. The explosive nationalism/jingoism after 9/11 was almost always couched in masculine terms (gawd, even down to that TIME magazine shoot of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld down on the ranch, in sepia, with huge belt buckles and symbolic codpieces). Hell, even academics tend to characterize the different politics of the country in terms of the “strict father” and so on of conservatives.
So I wonder if part of the lefty freakout is a combination of:
1) Watching as “our” side cowers from rightwing charges/memes, yet again;
2) The extent to which as a result this is about getting hit again with being the weaker of the two “sexes”
3) How the aggressiveness and utter disregard for anything but their own agenda (“So what?”) links conservatives with a form of “traditional” masculinity which still symbolizes and confers authority and power in our patriarchal society.
Considering the extent to which our media-political establishment is still dominated by men, seems reasonable to me that gender plays a part in how these things are both seen and described, and in these terms, the left is not as “manly” and therefore
eemom
damn, look at all the fun I missed while picking up my doggie from the vet, driving my daughter to the mall, and buying stuff for dinner.
And to think, we will never have this argument again. : (
RinaX
@Mnemosyne:
Thanks for that. I sure didn’t remember Van Jones being abandoned by that cowardly Kenyan, but all of the best progressives kept saying it, so…
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@El Tiburon:
And this the crux of the thread. Nevermind Breitbart editing the video. Nevermind Fox airing it. Nevermind the NAACP not even checking their own videos before throwing Mrs. Sherrod under the bus. They had no hand at all in her firing. Its all on the administration.
How well does Grover Norquist pay for ratfucking? I could use a little extra income.
Elie
Ahhh – what can I say… another occassion for our dear left wing cousins to scream about how Obama let us down again… sigh…
..And they show up here gleefully in droves for the bad times — when there is another opportunity to scream about how Obama sucks and how he sold us out again..
Always the relatives who show up at family funerals and get into a fight about how so and so screwed them, took their money or whatever — things don’t feel right for them unless someone has a black eye or leaves in tears… – The “Borderline Personalities” of the progressive movement — everything is black and white and whatever he did it was WRONG and they are damned mad about it…
cfaller96
I think it’s silly to pretend that there was noooooooo possible way Van Jones could have stayed on, and of course it was special circumstances that were totally the fault of Van Jones and it’ll never happen again promise!…But fine, you don’t like the Van Jones example? Fine.
You still haven’t addressed the fact that ACORN is a previous lesson NOT LEARNED about Breitbart and the traditional media. I’m sure you think that was a special circumstance that Obama tooootally couldn’t do anything about and besides they brought it on themselves just like Van Jones and funny how that works! But fine, you don’t like the ACORN example? Fine.
Dawn Johnsen. Go.
(And if for some reason you feel like Dawn Johnsen was yet another special circumstance that tooootally couldn’t be avoided and whatever, keep in mind that in a year’s time we’ll have one or two more examples of a right wing freakout leading to a firing/resignation. Count on it.)
Mnemosyne
@cfaller96:
I had a sneaky feeling that “Johnsen” would be the next thing from you as soon as you were called out for misrepresenting the Jones resignation. She’s the Joan of Arc of the firebaggers.
Yes, Obama nominated Johnsen twice, didn’t do a recess appointment, and let her withdraw her nomination when she got tired of waiting, which is EXACTLY the same as what happened to Mrs. Sherrod. You sure got me there.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@cfaller96: Seriously? Obama asked Congress to defund ACORN? I get your point about the administration learning by now that Breitbart and other right wing wackos selectively edit videos but on the Obama-ACORN thing, are you for real?
If you have evidence that you and others burned up the phone lines to Washington urging Democratic congresspeople not to vote to defund ACORN, it’d be nice to share it, because last time I checked the US wasn’t a dictatorship where the president says “jump” and congress goes “how high?” You (and I) have a role to play too.
DougW
I know that is contemptible and wrong headed, but isn’t turn about fair play? These blowhards edit anything to make a false point. What are we waiting for?
I’m still aghast that our President didn’t go after the previous administration in any way after all the crimes committed under its’ aegis.
Clearly the rabid right isn’t about to cut the Obama administration any slack, in fact they make up stuff all the time.
Again, what are we waiting for?
Nellcote
@FlipYrWhig:
And the thing is, the payout is 1B+ and needs to be approved by congress. They haven’t had any success so far attaching it to various bills. It’s now attached to an emergency Defense bill but it might not make it through the senate. No surprise there. But it’s important to get this finally settled.
Elie
@DougW:
I think that the problem is that we confuse the war of being right with the responsibilities and obligations of governing a divided and complex country.
Sure, it would be easy, even bring relief as I myself am vulnerable, to give in to being the “opposition” — that holds nothing against taking everything to its absolute opposition… But as we know — this leads to more of the same — which is not the same as saying we want to give ground forever to the oppositve viewpoint, but that opposition is less pointed, less derisive and absolute. Our partisans obviously note that and decry that and feel wounded by the government administration that they put in office to impose (to our minds) the right way of being and thinking — that seems to give ground and capitulate at every turn…
We are in a rocky marriage of opposites. The only way to resolve the opposition in a clean way is to split. By everything that is this administration and for most of us, that is a solution that is no solution. So somehow we must try to make it across the divide, reach out and react to the other — take in our drunk cousins and overlook the vomit on the carpet for the sake of family and hope that at the end of the day we can all be snapshotted in one frame, dysfunctional, haphazard, but still ONE and trying to keep it together. Alas, it is less stressful at times to consider the split, the quiet of separation and cleaving to our own kind. But that is not what United States means — at least for most of us yet. We labor more for the promise of it than the actuality right now…
Corner Stone
@Citizen Alan:
This really has to be said a few more times. Civil rights activist, and general overall great example of a complete human being Ms. Sherrod would have been FUCKED in any other circumstance. No full tape? Deceased farmer?
FUCKED.
Corner Stone
@LT:
Co-signed.
Can a brother get an AMEN?
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne:
As usual, you are correct about nothing.
Here’s a question for you:
I have praised Obama on several instances. Have you ever once criticized him? Is that even possible in your mind sans aneurysm?
redactor
@Mnemosyne:
I’m willing to wait and see what the WH does about Warren, but I’m expecting to be disappointed. My larger point is that both the media and the Administration continue to be on a string that the VRWC can pull at any time, whereas the center-left of the Democratic Party continues to be treated like a bunch of bomb-throwing anarchists. It would be lovely to think that Breitbart has finally jumped the shark, but I’m really not hopeful.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne: What is absolutely not surprising at all is that you are 100% incapable of answering a simple question.
Has there ever been a time or circumstance where you have criticized Obama?
Is that even possible?
You would rather diminish the damage done to a civil rights hero and her family than admit a mistake was made that has actually impacted someone beyond your stupid 48 hour timeframe.
And Another Thing...
This is what should happen now. Mrs. Sherrod should thank Mr. Vilsack for his offer of a job, team up with Oprah Winfrey on a biopic titled High Tech Lynching. She’s got a really dramatic life story, most Americans could do with some education about what racism is really about. There are lots of genuine villains and Breitbart will get all the free PR. He is the BigHollywood guy isn’t he? He’s gonna love it, he might finally make it to the Bigs.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone: Please spare us the theatrics on Obama criticism jackass.
And how did our loyal democrat Corner Stone respond in Obama’s victory thread for the nomination in May 2008. You would think by graciously conceding that while his candidate HC lost, he would selflessly and loyally throw his support to democrats choice as the democratic nominee. But you would be wrong.
Barack Wins!
Corner Stone
and
more
There is more, but you get the picture. CS hated Obama, and still hates him, and has the fucking gall to currently question people on when they didn’t approve of something Obama has done.
You are a fake, phony democrat corner stone, and no more need be said.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck:
You’re not even a Democrat, by your own lights. You ran away. What do you have to say about anything?
You’re too much of a coward to even work in the party to effect change. You ran like the little bitch you are. First from the D party, then from BJ when it got too hot for you.
You’re a sad little man with no stomach for the hard struggle.
You didn’t pay any attention until 2000 (!) for God’s sake.
All that time an elected D President was getting slagged you had nothing to say? Even though you were like in your 40’s? You didn’t know any better?
FlipYrWhig
@cfaller96:
Was there a right-wing media freakout over Johnsen? I know the Senate Republicans bottled up her nomination, but I don’t remember her being on the Beck/Breitbart radar that was the initial subject of the “Obama always caves” point.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: BTW, thanks for tagging that thread again. I just read through it and THAT was an awesome thread.
Way more fun than 90% of the bullshit posted here nowadays.
Good times.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
weak tea response, from our mighty progressive warrior corner stone. The internets never forget grasshopper.
And Another Thing...
@General Stuck: I agree, thanks for the thread link. It was…us… enlightening. It’s always helpful to know where people are coming from.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: Listen. We all know you’re dumb as a fucking stump. So let me make this clear enough for even a simpleton like you.
There is nothing I have ever posted on this blog I am ashamed of, or care if it pisses others here off.
You can cite everything I’ve posted for the last two+ years in sequential nights. If you think I have one ounce of the Drama Queen in me that you are, you have another think coming.
You’re an authoritarian follower who wakes up every day to hit F5 so you can see what you’re supposed to think and believe that day.
Elie
Old family quarrels….
As long as they don’t break up the furniture too bad and no one goes to the hospital, we are good.
I am having up some nice ice cream on the porch for those of you who want to come out here…
My, its sure hot and humid tonight, but its great seeing all of you and yeah, I love all of you just the same.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone: My purpose was simply educational for BJ readers, not to embarrass you. Why would I? you really are expert at embarrassing yourself, every day, all day.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: Hmmm. FYWP!
Joe Buck
Obama isn’t the bad guy here, but up to now he’s been kind of dim. He evidently hasn’t caught on to the fact that these people can’t be dealt with, they can’t be bought off, they can’t be compromised with, because they want to destroy them. If he agrees to fire the people they say to fire, they’ll call for more blood. If he agrees to meet them half way on a bill, they’ll pocket the concession, demand more and still refuse to vote for it.
The only way forward is to crush them. Fox, Breitbart, the Republican leadership are out to destroy Barack Obama. If they win either house, government will be totally paralyzed and they’ll spend all day every day conducting hearings on how Obama’s out to get white people.
The crook here is Breitbart. He needs to be crushed. The problem isn’t that he’s biased: if a conservative Republican reporter unearths a story embarrassing to Democrats and the story is accurate, it’s journalism. If the “facts” are made up intentionally to destroy reputations, it’s defamation, and that’s against the law.
Mnemosyne
@Corner Stone:
Sorry, I was away from the internet for a few hours. I tried real hard to send you a telepathic message, but I guess it didn’t get through.
There have been many times:
Currently, I criticize him constantly over civil rights and domestic spying. His record is better than Bush’s, but it’s still terrible.
I criticized his decision to commit more troops to Afghanistan, though I wasn’t surprised he did it since it was exactly what he said he was going to do.
If he is stupid enough to bomb or support Israel’s bombing of Iran, I’ll be in the streets protesting. I doubt he will be that stupid, but I’ll be out there if he is.
There are many, many other times that I’ve criticized him, but here’s the difference between you and me: once the event that I criticized him about is over, I let it go. Yes, I wanted him to support the public option more strongly, but he didn’t. What’s the point of continuing to pout about the goddamned thing 6 months later? It didn’t happen, I was sad, let’s move on to the next battle instead of weeping over the trampled grass on this battlefield.
Yes, it was stupid of the administration to fire Mrs. Sherrod, but they fixed the mistake within 24 hours. Why, exactly, am I supposed to be storing up grudges about how this was totally like when Van Jones resigned or Dawn Johnsen voluntarily withdrew her nomination? What’s the point? The problem has been fixed.
cfaller96
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t think you meant to admit this, but “not doing a recess appointment” represents a form of backing down to the right wing freakout (and to the other commenters- YES there was a freakout about her). I’m confused by this shrugging of the shoulders on that one. Not pushing her through was a mistake.
Besides, you still haven’t addressed my contention that there was a lesson to be learned about the media and Breitbart from the ACORN episode. If you honestly believe there was no mistake made from ACORN on the part of the President’s team (about NOT taking media reports/Breitbart “reports” at face value), then it follows that you don’t think there was anything wrong with the initial firing of Shirley Sherrod, right? I mean, in that logical flow, Breitbart and the media can be totally trusted because they’ve never shown the ability to lie before, have they?
Uh huh, sure, ACORN has no bearing on this whatsoever.
Senorita Bonita
AMEN AMEN AMEN
friendthegirl
I saw Marshall’s post before John co-signed it here, and thought it was over-the-top – especially this line: “the idea that he or Obama is the bad guy in this story is not only preposterous but verging on obscene.” I’m late to respond, but it’s been on my mind, so…
Breitbart is despicable, and utterly incapable of introspection and healthy expression of any normal human response or emotion. He’s one guy gaslighting everyone, successfully: You didn’t see what you saw; It’s not me, it’s you; I know you are, but what am I? For some reason, it seems like the craziest fucker in the room is always going to set the tone for everyone – as long as everyone continues to believe that there is a reasonable way of interacting with an unreasonable person. If there’s one rager in the group, everyone else’s interactions with each other and him will be influenced by the very presence of the one guy who lacks both restraining bolt and conscience.
Look at it like this: in more intimate settings, like a family, say, with an abusive father who will tear the house up, no one will breathe around the guy, because all hell breaks lose. And you especially don’t press an issue with a guy like that.
Marhsall’s analogy is way off, because – unlike the Son of Sam – we all know exactly who Breitbart is and what he’s doing. Obama knows who the guy is, too. A more apt analogy – though not as pat – would be something like: We all know who this woman’s stalker is, and he gloats over his past transgressions and publicly announces his plans for future abuses. His MO is well known. But, instead of getting him off the street, everyone clears a path for him to the woman’s door, so as not to piss him off. And then if anyone has the balls to question him about it, he’ll claim to be the victim, and everyone will stop breathing in an effort to be fair to him.
Going back to the smaller family situation, how about this? The whole family scurries around the house holding their breath when the abusive dink walks in the door drunk, to make sure that he is comfortable and satisfied and all his demands are met. Of course, he’s going to do what he’s going to do, and hell will break loose no matter what. At some point, another grown-up has to realize that the only option is to refuse to indulge this prick, and leave him sitting alone in his own mess.
So, yeah Obama’s not “the bad guy” here. Obviously, Breitbart is the bad one. He’s the worst guy. But the fact that the first response to Breitbart’s pounding down the door is exactly the same scurrying and appeasing behavior that rewards him for tearing up the house every singe time he shows up, means that Obama and his administration still haven’t squared off with the fact that they are the grown-ups. They abdicated and let Sherrod flap in the wind just like – and how’s this for an analogy? – a caretaker who cowers when the kids are being berated.
Here’s where I give Obama and admin a pass: As I said above, people who aren’t demented are used to dealing with other people who are not demented. That’s how we get function without losing our damn minds every minute of the day. Our first response is benefit of the doubt, and it’s really hard to get your head around the fact that, yes, that person really is as crazy as they appear to be, and yes, they really are looking you in the eye lying to your face, and yes, they really did say/do exactly what it sounded like they said/did. And it seems that the more outrageous someone’s behavior is, the more we tend to question our own perceptions or behavior first. That seems to be what they did. I still do find them responsible for the outcome, because They Are In Charge. But, I get it – and hope to infinity that they get it now.
I also hope that this has forever destroyed Breitbart’s credibility, and that Sherrod sues him, if only to force him to try to make an actual case for the justifications and lies he’s been insisting on since he showed everyone his ass.