Seriously, I think Vilsack should be sacked for his overreaction and not going to the source for the real story. Anyone that reactionary should be fired and replaced with someone who is thoughtful and honorable, Shirley Sherrod comes to mind. When you hear the entire story, what smacks me up-side-the-head is that the story pushed by Breitbart, Fox News, Morning Joe and others at MSNBC, the blogosphere and even the big 3 networks was the exact opposite of what she said. This woman’s father was killed by a KKK member, she harbored all sorts of hatred for white people and rightly so, until she met these white farmers. She grew as a person and realized that it wasn’t about black versus white, but about rich versus poor. Farming used to be one of the foundations of our economy, families could make a living from it and were respected. With the take over of “agribusiness”, farmers were struggling and it taught Shirley Sherrod a lesson that apparently no one else is going to learn.
A larger question is when are people, including the idiot media and those in our government, going to stop believing ANYTHING that Andrew Breibart and Fox News say? It’s like the boy who cried wolf, haven’t we been tricked enough times now? I can’t wait to see what Rachel Maddow does with this story, unless she gets sidetracked like most everyone else and tries to blame it on the Obama administration. Sure, it’s a story about a screw up, but isn’t the larger story the blatant ploy of Fox and Breitbart to try to create racial tension in our country? Us poor, poor white people have been soooooooo discriminated against over the years……cough, spit, choke. We live in a fucked up country that is only getting worse by the day.
UPDATE:
The White House has apologized and is going to try to make things right. I knew they would, thankfully this administration is capable of admitting when they’ve made a mistake. We’ll see how it all pans out but this is one classy person, go check out this discussion on CNN with her after Robert Gibbs apology. This may turn out to be a great way to expose the right and their relentless attempts to drive a wedge between the races and rile up the violent extremes in our country. Let’s take them fuckers at Fox News down…and that is really who Breitbart works for, you know?
Extreme Liberal's Blog 
My thoughts exactly! Fire Vilsack and that bullying undersecretary, and give the job to Ms. Sherrod. She obviously personifies the mission that Vilsack set out when he took the job.
On the other hand, I don’t think the bloggers and media should be given a pass. Even this morning, Bob is tweeting that the Obama Administration is scared of Glenn Beck (or some such nonsense). That’s a crock of shit, and Bob is better than that. Probably too much Morning Joe.
No-fuckin’-body did due diligence on this story. And, as I asked on Bob’s blog, why in all hell did she resign if she had done nothing wrong. I would have made them (whoever them is) fire me and then sued their asses for wrongful termination.
I want Obama to use this as a “teachable” moment, but instead of being a professor having Prof Gates and the policeman over for beers, I want him to be like the professor Sam Kinison plays in “Back to School”. Unfortunately, there have only been about 600 times during his presidency when Obama should’ve really let someone have it, and he never does. When he’s mad at “Washington”, he blames Democrats and Republicans alike.
I wish he’d address America and say, “Cut this racist sh*t out. Yeah, I’m black. I was born in the United States. I’m your President. And for 18 months, I’ve been working my ass off for all 300 million of you. You might not agree with everything I’m doing, but there’s an acceptable way of disagreeing in America. There’s discourse, and there are elections. I’ve always been open to honest debate, but, as for the blatant racism, the veiled racism, the games…ENOUGH!”
I totally agree, Staci. Bob buys into the hyperventilating too much of the time. He usually comes to his senses after a while.
President Obama better call her up and hire her back, kiss her ass and then fire Vilsack. But I don’t think he will fire him, though.
The media is trying to turn this story away from themselves and put it on the White House. The White House needs to push back on this. The other thing that gave cover to Vilsack was the NAACP jumping to conclusions without checking. A whole lot of people fucked this thing up and the real story is Breitbart and Fox trying to raise racial tensions in the country and they have to make the shit up.
Not to give a pass to the NAACP, but also lost in this whole fiasco is the fact that they were responding to racism AGAINST a white couple. To hear the conservatives tell the story, this organization is only concerned with promoting a “black” agenda.
I’m really on the fence as to how much direct involvement I think Obama should pursue with Ms. Sherrod personally. He is the president, for goodness sakes. He has to deal with wars, the economy, the oil disaster, Iran, North Korea and now we want him involved in the hiring/firing of low level administrators, too? I thought the Gates beer summit was a stretch, but I could see that one since Obama weighed in publicly. This situation could only become a huge distraction on the Jeremiah Wright level.
I agree with you Toastie, but I also agree with Staci’s comment below that this is a low level employee and he has more important things to do. The media, of course, plays by their own set of rules there is no checking each other going on at all. CNN and MSNBC are both competing for the crazies who watch Fox….the almighty ratings and dollars are what they all look at. They wouldn’t want to offend any crazy people, now would they?
But I do agree that President Obama has passed up a whole lot of opportunities to smack down the Repugs, but he is getting back into campaign mode so we might see some of that soon. Fun day today in political-ville.
I have to say the NAACP got played like never before by Breitbart. They are certainly classy in how they’ve admitted getting burned, I’m waiting to see how Vilsack deals with it. Maybe he has since I went to lunch, I better go do some reading.
Gotta be the first to report anything or you lose. There is little journalism anymore, there are just talking heads. How many stories are reported first and checked later.
journalism — did, did, did you say journalism? a laughable thought.
I think the big reason that the white house fired her had to do with scandal. They may not hire her back because this fake story that Fixed News and pals created tarnished her reputation.
I hope she sues the living piss out of them and take them for everything they got. Of course that’s just optimistic thinking though.
Who are they going to file a lawsuit against. The federal government because they fired her. There is no case against anyone else because they did not lie about what she said, they just didn’t quote all she said.
This is no difference than many other “mistakes” the news media has committed. Dan Rather lying about Bush and his service record when he knew it was a lie. I don’t recall a lot of suing the station or Rather over that one.
We are so concerned about race that we refuse to discuss it. If you don’t like Obama’s policy, you are a racist. If you are against people who can work and won’t receiving welfare, you are a racist even though all races are at fault.
The news media promotes racism because it gives them headlines and the government goes along with it. Toastie had a good response but it won’t happen because it doesn’t go along with the current agenda, create animosity between liberal and conservative and hatred toward the “rich”
You’re right; this probably isn’t the issue that Obama should finally go ballistic on. He doesn’t say anything when congressmen are spat upon. He doesn’t say anything when Rush and Beck attack his children. Sarah Palin herself could call him the n-word, and he’d ignore it. I’d like to think he’s saving it all up for the right moment. Like ExtremeLiberal said, he’s getting back into campaign mode.
good point atlanta. As I said it was optimistic thinking that Fox could get sued. It would be nice but it can’t happen. :(
Actually Dan Rather was correct. He just didn’t have the correct documents.
Either that, or he understands that at the end of the day, all of that stuff doesn’t mean jackshit for advancing his agenda and vision for this country. I love that he doesn’t get distracted by bright, shiny objects! Obama has a lot of work to do, and there is only so much energy to be spent in a 24 hour day. He knows that he cannot win with the media. If he goes up, they say not only should he have gone down, but he showed absolutely no leadership while doing so and then the conversation has totally changed from the action to the pathway towards that action. Look at what happened when he said that officer was stupid for arresting a man in his own home after ownership had been resolved. That’s a conclusion that could be made rather easily when you saw the entire exchange. Obama got his ass smashed both in the media and the polls for responding and it cost him a week of bullshit PR. He learned his lesson.
The “White House” didn’t fire her – her boss did. He just happens to work for the White House. Again I ask, in what other organization is the CEO responsible for the hiring and firing of the folks in the lower departments? Has any other president EVER been held responsible for the firings that occur in the many, many departments of government? This is bordering on the ridiculous.
A wrongful termination suit can be filed against any employer; the government is not exempt.
And one more thing, why in the fuck should this woman be entitled to a conversation with the president because she has opinions? Fuck, I’ve got opinions. Jim has opinions. We’ve all got stuff we would just love to have a sit down with Obama and spill to our heart’s contentment. Jeez, I just saw her in yet another interview. She is moving really quickly from victim to VICTIM.
Oh-my-fucking-goodness, the bullshit that is put upon this man.
What she said…..staci you rock. Thanks for your awesome contributions to this blog, are you sure you don’t want to guest blog here?
I was a bit worked up this morning, Jim. I’ve got to quit beginning my day with Morning Joe. Combined with the stress and aggravation of being unemployed, it’s just not pretty. :-)
Gayle King made a fantastic point. She asked if anyone thought that Obama was presented with two minutes of video and made a decision to terminate an employee. Crickets on that particular question.
I’ve been thinking about that guest blogging thing. I’m working up my courage.
I love Gayle King, she is most excellent. And polite too, unlike many of the others. Yesterday I didn’t watch very much Morning Joe, I knew it would just piss me off.
ON the guest blogging, you know you can just email me your posts and I can paste them into the blog. And I will edit them for you if you want too, I’ve been hired as a word editor before, you probably couldn’t tell from my rantings here?
That seem to be the narrative that’s developing the media is trying to remove themselves and place blame on the Obama White House for their Shirley Sherrod reaction. The media always fall for this trap a story floats around in the right wing blog sphere Fox News picks it up and reports it around the clock, the mainstream media finally decide to pick the story up because A. they don’t want to be out scooped and B. they’re so fearful of being called the liberal media or being called pawns of the Democratic party they run the right wing story without even fact checking it.
After the media finds out the story is nothing more than rantings and delusions from a lame ass right wing blogger the damage is done. Look at ACORN Fox News played the holy hell out of that edited tape, the media picks it up, ACORN has to close down and surprise,surprise we find out James O’Keefe edited the tape.
What ticks me off about this story we got a lot of progressive media outlets who have no problem letting the NAACP off the hook(when they should know what’s on the tape after all they TAPED it)but the Obama white house don’t get that luxury.. Cenk Uygur would have you to believe every time someone on Fox say boo the officials in the Obama White House are shitting on themselves.
When he forgets when the Obama White House did push back on Fox News the other media outlets rushed to Fox News’ aid.
Great points Johnny C.
Obama won’t fire Vilsack, although he should. Vilsack is just one of the incompetent members of the cabinet. Janet Napolitano claimed ‘the system worked’ after terrorist attack was disrupted by passengers aboard the aircraft. She actually said that everything worked “like clockwork.” That idiocy was left to stand by the President Obama. Incredible incompetence.
Then we have the not-so-well intentioned Ken “big oil is OK” Salazar. First he did nothing to weed out MMS. He scapegoated Elizabeth Birnbaum, and failed to change the horrible policies of the Bush administration.
Then we have Arne Duncan, who is clueless about teachers, never having been one and leading one of the worst managed large school districts in the U.S., not to mention ONDCP former Police Chief (not a cabinet position anymore)Kerlikowske, has not changed the Bush agenda, was dumbfounded during recent congressional testimony and continues to shunt money to the failed Partnership for Drug Free America.
Unfortunately, the President has hired a ship of fools as agency leaders. They have bluders after blunders. I expect the smart ones to jump ship in the not-too-distant future as this is the White House that can’t shoot straight and doesn’t hold press conferences. Since I srongly supported candidate Obama, I have been totally unimpressed with his approach to governing. Keep choosing those right wing Democrats to write policy Mr. President. Your poll numbers can still drop further. How sad!
Yea well we all have opinions don’t we. Vilsack appears to be incompetent, but I’m not going to judge him for one overreaction. He may be incompetent and whenever I’ve hired people, sometimes you hire the wrong person.
Janet Napolitano talked about the “system working” after the “terrorist attack”…how many people died in that one? ZERO. She talked about the response after the incident, not leading up to it. But with so many simple minds out there who can’t do nuance, it’s no surprise that these simple people can’t separate the two.
And let’s blame the current guy who inherited a big fucking mess at MMS, Salazar. Changing institutionalized corruption is so easy, he should have had it done in a day or two, right? Another stretch to try to blame the current administration for 8 years or corruption by two oil men. Wake up, dude, you are way too naive about how things work.
Arne Duncan, dude, your are fucking wrong on that one too. Here is a little background on Arne…facts, not hyperbole…
“Among his most significant accomplishments during his tenure as CEO, an all-time high of 66.7 percent of the district’s elementary school students met or exceeded state reading standards, and their math scores also reached a record high, with 70.6 percent meeting or exceeding the state’s standards. At high schools, Chicago Public School students posted gains on the ACT at three times the rate of national gains and nearly twice that of the state’s. Also, the number of CPS high school students taking Advanced Placement courses tripled and the number of students passing AP classes more than doubled. Duncan has increased graduation rates and boosted the total number of college scholarships secured by CPS students to $157 million.”
When you have a record like that and get nominated to head the Department of Ed. you come back and talk to me then.
Your comment is quite sad to me, based on warped logic, innuendo and no facts whatsoever. Nice try though.