OK. Seriously, Talk to me like I am 8 years old. What is the real story with Shirley Sherrod?

[PBS Poll-435]

What exactly happened?

Who is to blame?

I have genuinely tried to understand the story, but I don't.

[lazarus]

1. the basics

Andrew Breitbart (the guy behind the ACORN mess) got ahold of a video of Shirley speaking the NAACP a few years ago. In it, she recounts the first time a white farmer came to her for help saving his farm. Her initial reaction was to not help, because the Klan killed her father. The tape was edited down to just her saying she didn't want to help, leaving out that she went on the realize that it was her job to help, that racism is wrong, and she helped the farmer save his farm.

Fox News ran with it, wall to wall, and the administration panicked and forced her to resign. It didn't help that the NAACP jumped on her, too. Then the truth came out, apologies were made, a job offer was made, and Fox is shocked, SHOCKED!, that anybody would overreact to something so obviously taken out of context.

[PBS Poll-435]

3. I am aware of Breitbart and his tactics, but why were people so quickly to jump the gun on this?

And with the exception of Fox, why was this a national story? What did they have to gain from this one person being brought down?

[lazarus]

4. because she's a black woman

and this country has been demonising and vilifying blacks, and especially black women, for decades. Fox has made it their mission to convince their racist viewers that the real racists are the minorities. It's more of the Southern Strategy, conceived by Nixon and his handlers.

Basically, they decided that, the more they demonized blacks, the more whites would leave the Democratic party and flee to the Republican party. And it worked, for a long, long time. Welfare Queens, Sistah Souljah, Van Jones, ACORN, it's all part of the plan.

Why did the rest of the media go along with it? In part, I believe because they can't admit that Breitbart is a fraud, because they got suckered with the ACORN story. But now, apparently, the curtain has been pulled back. Anderson Cooper called him a bully tonight. That's a change. They may have overplayed their hand, finally.

[EFerrari]

9. The corporate media has gone right along with scum like Breitbart for decades now.

They couldn't pull back now because they'd look bad in retro.

And the racist subtext to so many of the stories they use to hook viewers made the reflexive pass that much easier to hand over.

It will be interesting to see what lessons really do get learned from this. It would be karma if the media turned around right smack on Breitbart's head.

[MicaelS]

6. IMO, the MSM is terrified of being accused of being "racist"

Toward whites (and I'm a white man). They jumped on it, so they could be seen as be "fair and balanced".

[JDPriestly]

12. It was a political ploy to make an innocent African-American woman

in the Obama administration look bad. The political aim was to make the entire Obama administration look bad. They were trying to make the entire Obama administration look racist.

[enough]

20. It's not about bringing her down, it's about bringing Obama down, and enflaming white racism.

Exactly the same thing they are doing all day, every day.

To me, the worst thing here is the panic reaction from the administration. You can't spend 24 hours to get the facts before firing somebody?

[boppers]

10. Klan didn't kill her father.

Just FYI.

It was a farming dispute over cows. The white farmer wasn't prosecuted.

[peacetalksforall]

11. Correction, she spoke before the NAACP this past March. The date for

the story was 1986 - 24 years ago.

This is why the NAACP fell flat and disappointed many of us. They could have accessed the tape and listened to it and compared it with the Breitbard edited version and settled this right away. Instead they demeaned their own guest speaker. They failed her miserably. They thought enough of her to ask her to speak and then they screwed up big time.

There is a video of John King of CNN talking to the creature Breitbart and he is trying to get Breitbart to say why he didn't break this in March. There is something to that question. The Republicans who fund Breitbart could have asked him to hold this until it was needed to cover something up - and the worst thing that happened today was the weak follow up about BP Halliburton etc combining oil drilling refuse and some chemical and putting it down the pipe instead of the usual mud on the day of the explosion that killed their employees.

There is more to come out.

The other cowardly and crappily fast decision to fire her from her car on a blackberry is scandalous.

You have to listen to or read the entire speech. The most important thing that is good to come out of this are her words - she learned a lesson about herself - it is not a black and white difference, it is about both being poor. Wtaever she said about her feelings in 1986 were quickly reversed when she went all out to help a farming couple save their farm from foreclosure. There is a video of them supporting her.

I personally hope that there is a Rosa Parks memory to this horrific political character assassination and that we learn that it is about the down and out - without a color line.

It was a character assassination of her that was not helped by the ineptitude of the USDA and NAACP. But Breitbart claims he was after the NAACP, not her - they were after the NAACP because of the NAACP criticism of the tea liars party over racism. He was trying to show that Black-Americans were the racists.

The racism lingers - not long ago, Congressman Cleaver was spit on by what might have been a teabagger male on the steps of a Federal Building.

Racism is the top item on the teabaggers agenda. Demeaning remarks and agenda items.

Please read what she said, compare to the maliciously edited version, than listen to Maddow on Tuesday night and Olberman on Wednesday night, plus Lawrence O'Donnell who gave a clear account and brought home the mistake and calamity of the NAACP. There will be others to hear tomorrow and the next day and the next years over this.

She was betrayed. With all malice. Everything wrong that happened implied that FOX is credible. So that is the White House, the USDA, the NAACP and the most evil of destroyers to every hit this country - FOX and the teabaggers and their operatives and the people who fund Breitbart and the teabaggers.

I say the WH, because a political firing such as this does not come from a USDA head by himself.

[Lil Missy]

2. In addition to being snookered by breitbart, vilisak fired her without getting the facts first.

The video of Sherrod was from the 1980's

[MrsBrady]

5. I think the video was somewhat current

But the story she was telling took place way back when.
Even before she worked for the USDA.
If I understand correctly.

[pinboy3niner]

8. Yes. The video was from an NAACP mtg. in March; the story was 24 yrs. old. nt

[Nay]

16. This is the most astounding part of the story. Since when is someone

fired without investigation when some idiot nooz channel runs a chopped-up clip of a speech? To me, this is prima facie evidence that Vilsak should be fired.

[Mimosa]

19. Vilsak would then be the fall guy

What about USDA undersecretary Cheryl Cook, who told Sherrod she was speaking for the White House in asking Sherrod to resign?

The buck stops at the top. Nobody saw fit to investigate or to ask questions. Hopefully, the 'White House' has learned a BIG lesson.

[name not needed]

7. The Obama Administration got played by a racist sack of shit with a couple of blogs.

[MiniMe]

13. Sherrod gave a speech to the NAACP 24 years ago

She told several stories during the speech. One of them was a story about a white farmer coming to her for help. She helped him, she handed him over to a white lawyer, and the farm was in chapter 12 bankruptcy and she thought the lawyer would take care of it. The farmer called her back a month or 2 later and said that they were about to lose their farm, and that the lawyer hadn't done anything for him. So Sherrod realized that it was about the haves and the have nots, and not about black and white, and she worked her butt off to save the farm. It was a nice story with a good lessen that she learned about the situation.

Breitbart was pissed that the NAACP said that some TPers were racist, which is true. They didn't say the TP was racist, but that some of it's members were. So he looked and found that speech, and didn't include what she had said before she told that story, and didn't include the last part about saving the farm. He just included the part where she said that she didn't do everything she could for him at first, and didn't include the last part. Breitbart has actually said the he doesn't care about what happened or happens to Sherrod.

Vilsack asked for her resignation without doing any further investigation, and Sherrod gave it to him. The NAACP also condemned her words before they had seen the whole tape. It was after that that the whole tape came out. And now, everybody is falling over themselves apologizing to her, Vilsack offered her a job, but I don't know what the job is. The farmers came forward and defended her.

Sherrod was not working for the federal govt when she gave the speech, she was working for a non profit in GA and in the end, she did the right thing and learned the right lesson. Breitbart conveniently left out that the tape was done 24 years ago and that she saved the farm.

[pinboy3niner]

14. The speech was recent--March 27, 2010.

It was the story that Ms. Sherrod told that described her experience 24 years ago.

[dipsydoodle]

15. Nicely worded

I needed an explanation too. Being remote I'd thought that any previous references to Breitbart over the years had been something to do with the Simpsons.

[SmileyRose]

17. It was time to remind the white people that blax can't be trusted

Big primary day in the US of A and the message went out that black people in government are out for blood. Can't trust um, don't vote for um.

The story was corrected the day after the big primary.

the end.

[Jamastiene]

18. Some right wing ass wipe took some of Sherrod's words out of context.

The ass wipe spliced a tape together to make it seem she was saying one thing when really there was a moral to her story that said the exact opposite.

The USDA, where she worked, and a bunch of other people in political circles got all up in arms about it without looking further into it. They demanded she resign. Even the NAACP was fooled for a while and sort of dissed her too.

Next thing you know, it turns out the moral to her story was that we need to get past race. She was not advocating racism at all, but saying we needed to do right by each other, regardless of race.

So, now, the USDA and a bunch of other people in political circles are scrambling to apologize to her and try to make it right. They are admitting they screwed up by not checking the "facts" that came from the right wing ass wipe before demanding her resignation. Those "facts" from the right wing source turned out to be a hatchet job intended to stir up controversy and fuck with the Democratic Party.