War Gamesmanship, The Smearing of Shirley Sherrod

Maureen Dowd
David Ignatius

"We may not have a “nation of cowards” on race, as Attorney General Eric Holder contended, but we may have a West Wing of cowards on race." - Maureen Dowd

"Blaming Obama for this mess, or the NAACP for this mess, is like blaming Martin Luther King Jr. for getting in the way of that bullet that James Earl Ray’s rifle fired." - Kris Broughton

"If you want a handle on what ails the Obama administration (and who doesn't, these days), try thinking about it as the "scripted" presidency. Barack Obama has been very good at following his mental teleprompter -- he has passed health care and much of the rest of the legislative agenda he campaigned on, as his supporters rightly keep stressing. But he has been less successful at responding to the roiling free-for-all of events that is part of governing." - David Ignatius

It was good waking up this morning to a cool breeze and hint of rain. It was good that so far North Korea was just blustering when it threatened to nuke South Korea over the war games being played out with the US. China helped to calm things down by telling the North not to worry, and there were no signs of any military buildup along the border. China also got the war games moved from the Yellow Sea to the sea of Japan, putting some extra distance and breathing room for our hysterical friends.

We were trying to intimidate North Korea because it got a bit too cocky recently, firing off missile tests and torpedoing a South Korea ship that caused the deaths of 46 people. To be honest, it's pretty easy to get North Korea to freak out, and we've had these kind of war exercises with South Korea several times before. For the last 50 years paranoia has become the established norm, as big Kim and now little Kim have based all of their internal propaganda that the evil US is out to destroy them, and all of the droughts, crop failures, and wretched poverty of the North Korean citizens is because of what the US has done or about to do to North Korea.

 The problem whenever a Kim threatens nuclear retaliation is that we don't have enough information on his mental state, and assume that he is crazier than batshit to order a missile strike in the middle of one of his prescription drug infused ramblings... At least I don't have to run outside and try to build a bomb shelter...

"Shirley Sherrod has a platform this week that it looks like she is trying to take advantage of to advance OUR cause, but many of you are already afraid that she will talk too much.


That she will lose her moral authority, or her claim to victimhood, or some other such nonsense, because she is not willing to comport herself as if she is bucking for a promotion for the executive suite at the tight ass corporation YOU work for, instead of being what she is – a sixty something year old black woman who was probably only a couple of years away from retirement in her old job, a level headed woman of at least average intelligence who is availing herself of the chance to tell it like it is, unfiltered, unbought and unbossed." - Kris Broughton, Brown Man Thinking Hard

Along with so many other people, I was appalled at the poor handling of the Shirley Sherrod incident, but didn't want to comment until it had mostly blown over. I see her firing as a pure bureaucratic response, to quickly get rid of the source of any problem or embarrassment in a zero tolerance format. Most bureaucrats don't care about  the accused person's side of the story, they just want them gone and things back to normal. You see this inflexible attitude everywhere there is a bureaucracy, from the Feds on down to the Pike's Peak Library District. Shirley was made to pull her car over to the side of the road, wait until someone from the Ag department caught up to her, and signed a resignation before being allowed to go home. That's how rigid and dysfunctional our system is at the top, not so much that they were afraid of what Rush or Sean or Glenn would say the next day.

That someone in the administration took the time to investigate Shirley's side, and then pass along the information that an embarrassing mistake had been made, attests to the good part of the system. Apologies can be made, and job offers remade... Should Shirley take back her old job? Depends. It would be better to have her as someone who can point out where racism has become institutionalized and who the racists are within the administration, like a roving ombudsman. She can turn those instances into teachable moments. But, if she can't sit down and have a beer with the President, then yes, she should get her old job back...

Was race an issue here? Of course, race is an issue every time two people or more of different races get together.  The good old-boy strategy to discredit Barack Obama on every level has no qualms using dirty tricks, especially after they saw how easy it was to spread lies about Van Jones and ACORN without any defense being raised. The full tape of Shirley Sherrod did not support the impression Mr Breitbart wanted to make, so an edited version that implied reverse racism was used. What has not come out is if Mr Breitbart edited the tape himself, or, if not, where he got the edited version. It tells me that someone is getting paid to scour through old archives of CSPAN and organizations like the NAACP, looking for potential grenades. It was pointed out on the Rachel Maddow show, that producing instances of reverse racism, whether true or not, is aimed at scaring and creating fear in older white folks, especially those who grew up when there was still segregation.

Taken together, Van Jones, ACORN, and now Shirley Sherrod is an attempt to create fear that will express itself at the ballot box. It also was payback at the NAACP for criticizing the tea party and getting Mark Williams fired. It also counted on Barack Obama's reluctance to delve into the race issue, like so many other folks who are half-black. Quite often, children from mixed parentage grow up feeling that not only do they live in two different worlds, but that they are not fully accepted in either world. And the Rovian plot is to make sure that Obama is getting criticism from both the white and black communities, along with branding him an unacceptable radical out to ruin the republic and for which it stands. I suppose that before November rolls around, they will have begun to smear Obama as a husband and father, dragging his children into the mud. Or maybe they will wait for that strategy until 2012, and let Sarah Palin make the comments more stinging, coming from the top Grizzly Mama...

The Andrew Breitbarts of this world will never repent or apologize, and try their hardest to churn out stories profiling Shirley Sherrod in a bad light, and that they really don't have any racist bones in their bodies, much less their web sites. We really need to get rid of ugly people like this, and start putting some principles back into the Republican Party. For example, on Andrew's web site, here are the titles of articles trying to turn opinion:

1. SHERROD: BREITBART WANTS BLACKS TO BE SLAVES AGAIN

2. SHERROD BLASTS FOX NEWS AS RACIST

3. HOWARD DEAN TELLS CHRIS WALLACE FOX NEWS IS RACIST

4. HUMAN EVENTS: SHIRLEY SHERROD FALSELY SAINTED BY PROPAGANDIST MEDIA

5. GOLDBERG: SHERROD OWES BREITBART AN APOLOGY

6. RIEHL: SHERROD OWES BREITBART AN APOLOGY

7. PONNURU: SHERROD OWES BREITBART AN APOLOGY

8. POWERLINE: SHERROD ACTED RACIALLY IRRESPONSIBLE

9. BOZELL: ‘I WATCHED THE FULL TAPE, IT GET’S WORSE!’

10. INSTAPUNDIT: 'BREITBART HAS, ONCE AGAIN, ACHIEVED ALL HIS OBJECTIVES'