Who looks worse? Breitbart or Obama WH?

Great Debates
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Why do I need to pick who looks worse?

I guess Brietbart does, slightly. He’s a despicable asshole for showing an edited clip that suggested something completely different than reality; it wasn’t right when the “100 years” comment by McCain was taken out of context, and this is similar but even worse because unlike a politician she had no reason to think her honesty would be twisted against her this way.

But the fact that she was fired without being allowed to defend herself by explaining what happened/showing what she really said makes her employers look stupid.

To some people that doesn’t matter. My dad was all het up about this, and when the truth came out my mother accurately predicted that he’d say she was still a racist.

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The answer: Neither. Vilsack looks the worst.

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Fired and then restore her ,when he found out they did wrong. They were able to admit they did wrong by her and fix it. You however are not able to understand that you are on the wrong side again.
Brietbart will continue to make up crap about the Dems as long as some people are suckers and jump on it. Eventually enough will get embarrassed about what they have done and Brietbart will be ignored. Perhaps not by you though.

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The Obama White House looks much worse in this. FOX news is a known organization of lying propagandistic right wing crap, and I’d never heard of Mr. Breitbart before. However, I know better than to trust FOX. The Obama White House is so fucking stupid and weak that they do not know not to trust FOX. They work for the American people, and they acted on a FOX story without getting all the facts first. How fucking stupid and weak is Obama? He looks like Fredo Corleone.

Hillary would not have been so weak and stupid.

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Just stupid and weak enough to lose the primary.

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Fox news Sunday was just made the claim {presented as fact} that Sherrod was actually fired {she actually resigned, but under pressure} before the video aired on Fox. I wondered if this was factual.

They also made the claim that the rush from the WH was an attempt to get in front of the rapid news cycle. They knew that once the story broke people would be using Sherrod to critisize the WH so hurry up and take care of it. Get rid of her and make it go away. This seems in line with her story of being made to pull over for a cell phone call.

I find it hard to believe that she was pushed to resign before the video hit Fox. If someone reacted to a story on an internet site with “get rid of her” as a solution that is far to reactionary. THat is throwing her under the bus. I can understand a strategy of staying on top off the news cycle but the proper response would be to quickly get all the details you can so you are ready to respond with accurate information. That’s how you stay on top. Don’t let the rapid news cycle push you into being so reactionary.

Now I want a timeline to see if the claim that she was pushed to resign before it hit Fox, is true.

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Of the two, Breitbart and Obama, which has apologized to Sherrod?

The one who hasn’t apologized is the one who looks the worst, in my opinion.

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Does it matter? I imagine that someone from Fox asked a WH source for comment in advance; but even if they didn’t, the WH knew that Fox would run with the story for days. They just tried to get out in front of the story and were not cynical enough to believe that someone would be evil and ballsy enough to edit the tape to completely misrepresent the woman’s position.

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It’s hard to tell exactly. As this Fox News story (from 7/19-7/20) pointed out:

But this CNN story seems to maybe suggest that the decision to make her resign happened before Fox News broke the story:

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Good timeline at Mediamatters.

I haven’t done the research to see just when who did what first. But this might help.

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Yes it matters. It indicates they are more concerned about image than facts. More concerned about what Fox News would say than taking a few hours to treat this women’s job with the consideration it deserves.

We’re criticizing Fox and Briebart for not giving a shit about who they hurt in their effort to attack the WH. Yes it’s reprehensible that they do this repeatedly and fan racial fears. In this case it appears the the WH , in it’s concern/fear of what Fox will say also doesn’t give a shit about who they hurt.

To their credit they have apologized and made efforts at reparations but I hope the hell they learned something. It bothers me a little to think of them being afraid of Fox and Beck and being that reactionary. Give some thought to the right way combat them, not just the game itself. Do not play defense to a point where you are throwing people under the bus. Why wouldn’t it occur to someone that the story might be exaggerated bullshit? That’s what they fucking do.
I expect more of the WH.

In the big picture I think Fox and Briebart are swine and will continue to do exactly what they’ve done. That’s the context that leads me to say they look worse. That doesn’t excuse the WH. Stop being pussies and allowing these assholes to push you into actions. Be strong, keep thier bullshit in perspective.
I felt bad when Van Jones resigned. His words were much stronger and they held out longer, but in the end caved to pressure. Here they couldn’t even wait to let the poor women have a say. Check out the time line I will post next.

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Just read it and was about to post it myself. It is helpful Here’s some highlights.

It appears she was asked to resign before it aired on Fox TV but it had made it to the Fox web site. So someone at the WH saw it was on the Fox site, realized it would be all over Fox TV soon, and decided to get in front of it by getting rid of her, no questions asked. Even knowing the history of Fox airing heavily edited videos and sound bytes they decided to discard an employee immediately to make the story go away. It didn’t did it? In fact it made them look 10 times worse.

The morning after the initial post CNN interviewed her and John Roberts asked

She was called while driving in her car and they couldn’t possible wait to check things out. Cook called her several times and finally told her to pull over because they wanted her to resign right now before it made the rounds on Fox. That’s foolishly reactionary and IMO the absolute wrong way to combat a bias network that’s clearly out to get you and catering to those who won’t vote for you anyway. This crap has been going on for a couple of years. Show some intelligence and balls in dealing with it.

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There is a back story here, one that illustrates the urban/rural divide in awareness. To oversimplify, did you ever notice that so many family farmers are white, and so few are black. They did. Turns out that, over many, many years the USDA favored white farmers with aid and assistance. As you would expect, this prejudicial favoritism goes way, way back.

But its effects are felt today because it takes so long to make a farm a profitable enterprise. You can’t just grab a chunk of dirt and become a farmer, you are a gardener. It takes a huge investment of time and money to turn that chunk of dirt into a working farm. So, naturally, the original prejudice against helping black farmers perpetuated, since so few black people had become farmers, there were fewer of them to help.

This resulted in a hugely complex and ponderous class-action lawsuit against such practices. And, after an incredibly long, drawn-out process, with ferocious resistance from conservatives and agri-business advocates (who, not surprisingly, tend to be the same people…), the lawsuit was won, and the USDA is in the throes of figuring out how to cope with it.

OF course, right away, you hear from the people who bitch about affirmative farming (to coin a phrase). You know the song, sure, black people were discriminated against, but that’s all over now, and there is no need to compensate for past injustices. Look at all the cushy deals black people are getting now that Obama is President (ignoring that this was a decades long process…)

In my ignorance, I would be willing to bet that Ms Sherrod’s problem was seen as a possible bombshell for that process, a rallying point for those people eager to bitch about how powerful black people are, all of a sudden, taking stuff from white folks. In their panic, they saw this “scandal” as derailing a crucial effort in amending previous failings.

Now, Fox News is just as urban as the rest of us, they hadn’t gotten around to that part yet, they were mainly concerned with undermining the tyrannical power of the NAACP. But they would have, soon enough.

There was a whole lot more at stake here than Ms Sherrod’s job. I do not approve, mind you, but I am more understanding when I reflect on the stakes.

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And it is highly (and interestingly) coincidental that this whole kerfluffle is occurring at a time when the Senate, this week, removed $1.2 billion from the budget that was earmarked to settle this lawsuit.

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Well, shit happens. Thank God, it mostly happens to poor people.

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I had to think about this for it to sink in. It wasn’t just about striking out at Obama and fanning racial fears, it was about something going on currently within the USDA, so they felt she needed to be sacrificed to prevent letting this other effort from be painted in a bad racial light?

What’s to prevent anyone from still doing that?

It seems obvious that many people are worried that this admin will favor blacks and that white folks in general are losing their dominance. That fear is being used as a poltical tool with some effectiveness. Somehow this admin has to address it in a non fearful manner. Racism still exists among whites and blacks and others as well although we are making progress. It’s bound to continue to be an issue and an opportunity with our first black president and a changing culture. Let’s acknowledge it and work at it rather than allow the fear mongers to parse every action and sentence looking for “reverse racism”

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And why is it, I wonder, that those same folks are loathe to think that it’s possible that previous administrations might have favored whites? It’s always astonishing to me that people are so afraid that non-whites will act in the favor of non-whites to the exclusion of whites, but are completely unwilling to consider the possibility that the reverse has happened or could happen.

It’s like to these people, white ethics are automatically non-suspect, while non-white ethics are automatically suspect.

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It’s a twisted justification alright. It’s as if

“Yeah we know blacks have suffered terrible injustices because of racism for generations but that doesn’t mean we should excuse reverse racism now”

and while this may be true out of any context , it is being grossly misapplied as every situtation is put under the microscope.

On CNN this morning there was a lively discussion as some young conservative tried to defend Briebert. Sherrod made a comment in one interview that she thought Fox and Briebert were racists {rather than just mistaken} and young conservative guy wondered is she should get a pass on this.

Yes, one commentator exclaimed and went on to put things in perspective by talking about this

So as actions and sentences are parsed to try and find minor examples of prejudice of blacks towards whites, let’s try to have some dam perspective.

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You want class? This is the comment under the WWII article you posted.

“Posted by efts on July 21, 2010 - 12:40 p.m.
My friends who are more well versed in WWII than I are tearing this article apart, but one of them noted the most glaringly obvious error: “…joined the Navy in late October, 1941. Two weeks later, Pearl Harbor was bombed…” Even if he joined on the 31st, Pearl Harbor still wouldn’t be attacked 2 weeks later. Like, I said, there are many other factual errors in this article, but that one is pretty inexcusable, IMO.”

WTF are wrong with these people?