The Obama administration fired a USDA employee for an alleged racist incident that turned out to be manufactured by right-wing smear merchant Andrew Breitbart.
Breitbart edited a videotape to make it look like the employee, Shirley Sherrod, was admitting she had not helped a white family keep their farm because of race.
Actually when viewed in its entirety, Sherrod continues on to say she came to realize that was wrong and needed to help this family regardless of race. She says this incident opened her up to seeing race issues in a whole new light.
The family farm, btw, was saved, and Sherrod became friends with the family.
Had the Obama administration actually looked into the story before acting, they would have known the truth.
Instead the White House called USDA Secretary/Monsanto Whore Tom Vilsack and told him to fire Sherrod immediately.
Sherrod told CNN she received three calls from the White House telling her to resign.
On that last call, somebody at the White House demanded her resignation immediately - even though Sherrod was behind the wheel of her car - and told her to pull over to the side of the road and send in her resignation via her Blackberry.
How's that for change we can believe in, eh?
Now the Daily News reports the administration is embarrassed by their actions and are walking back the firing:
On second thought…
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack now says he will reconsider the abrupt firing of a black employee after learning more about a video posted online this week which suggested she was racist.
"I am of course willing and will conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts to ensure to the American people we are providing services in a fair and equitable manner," Vilsack said on Wednesday morning.
Shirley Sherrod, the former Georgia director of Rural Development, resigned under pressure this week after right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart published a video clip where she seemingly tells a group she did not give a white farmer "the full force of what I could do," after he asked for assistance.
Sherrod said her statements, which were given at a local NAACP banquet in Georgia in March, were part of a larger story about overcoming her own prejudices 24 years ago.
Sherrod told NBC's Today show on Wednesday that she didn't know if she would return to her old job.
"I am just not sure how I would be treated there," she said.
Vilsack's change of heart came after the NAACP posted Sherrod's full 43-minute speech on Tuesday night. He initially said he had "zero tolerance for discrimination" and released a second statement later that day saying rightly or wrongly, Sherrod's comments could cause people to doubt her decisions as a federal employee.
The NAACP, which initially supported her dismissal, said she should be rehired. Fox News commentator Glenn Beck has also backed Sherrod, saying on his show on Tuesday, "She should not have been fired or forced to resign."
The civil rights group believes it and many others were tricked by Breitbart, who first posted the 2-minutes and 38-second clip on biggovernment.com, and gave it a spin which took it completely out of context.
Breitbart told political website Talking Points Memo that a source initially sent him the edited clips first and he's in the process of obtaining the full video.
Since the controversy, the white farmer who was the focus of her story in the video, also spoke out in Sherrod's favor.
"If it hadn't been for her, we would've never known who to see or what to do," Roger Spooner, 87, told CNN. "She led us right to our success."
Sherrod said she received a phone call from the USDA's deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook on Monday who told her that the White House wanted her to call it quits.
"It hurts me that they didn't even try to attempt to see what is happening here, they didn't care," Sherrod said. "I'm not a racist. ... Anyone who knows me knows that I'm for fairness."
Here's an idea for the change we can believe in people running the White House:
TRY INVESTIGATING A STORY AND/OR ALLEGATION BEFORE TAKING ANY ACTION.
Yeah, I know dear reader, that seems obvious.
But it clearly seems even more obvious that the morons and cowards at the White House and USDA DO NOT understand that precept.
The good news is, if the American public got to vote on President Hopey/Changey's job this summer, they would send his arrogant, corrupt, incompetent ass back to Chicago where it belongs.
Unfortunately, if you saw the Times today, we have two more years of these assholes making policies like this one by the seat of their pants, taking actions without actually investigating the circumstances or thinking through consequences.
Their arrogance seems to only be superseded by their cluelessness at policy.
One wonders how they will govern with a Republican House.
I can imagine lots more of these phony scandals, a White House caving on every one, and governing with more right-wing, corporate-friendly policies designed to screw the working and middle classes and make their corporate overlords happy.
God help us all.
Especially those of us in public education.
We know EXACTLY what Shirley Sherrod experienced at the hands of President Obama.
We are facing the same thing under his Race to the Top policies.
At today's press conference Robert Gibbs, the president's press secretary, essentially admitted that this administration is so completely and so hopelessly incompetent that it mistakenly fired a competent and honest black administrator on false and absurd charges of black racism...in full view of the American public. If you wanted to appear completely befuddled and completely inept...and wanted to ensure every American was a witness to this befuddlement and ineptitude...this entire episode is what you would manufacture. Putting themselves in a special class of stupid, this White House team are now pointing the public finger at each other. Hopey, changey, ... and stupidy!
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