The Obama Administration.
The Maureen Dowd op-ed and the Frank Rich op-ed has hit this Shirley Sherrod fiasco out of the park.
The White House continue to straddle the fence by having totally insensitive individuals making decisions that continues to make this administration look like jackasses.
If Barack Obama does not change, do you think people will continue to support him?
That is the real question here. And we need to look at it totally.
I was at the beauty salon on Friday and all the African American women were talking about how the Obama Administration just threw Shirley Sherrod under the bus without any investigation based on FOX NEWS, which the African American Community do NOT LIKE.
Also, many stated that he does need more Black People in his administration. I don't know about that, but he does need some people in that administration that know how to use GOOGLE, because the name Sherrod is legendary in the Civil Rights History.
The West Wing white guys who pushed to ditch Shirley Sherrod before Glenn Beck could pounce not only didn’t bother to Google, they weren’t familiar enough with civil rights history to recognize the name Sherrod. And they didn’t return the calls and e-mail of prominent blacks who tried to alert them that something was wrong.
Charles Sherrod, Shirley’s husband, was a Freedom Rider who, along with the civil rights hero John Lewis, was a key member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee of the ‘60s.
As Lewis, the longtime Georgia congressman, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he knew immediately that something was amiss with the distorted video clip of Sherrod talking to the N.A.A.C.P.
The sad thing about this is that many prominent BLACK FOLK in the KNOW on Civil Rights history did call this White House and they like Sherrod was tossed aside.
And who ended up with egg on its face?
Many on this site has tried to say this is not Obama's fault, but when many look at this it is his fault, along with others to eat crow. Why? He put former Governor Vilsack of Iowa in charge, he hired him. Vilsack nor the White House did not even view the clip before the truck marks was on the back of Shirley Sherrod. How dumb is that one? And then we have Jim Messina from the White House, ELATED for a job well done in throwing Shirley Sherrod over the bus, only to have that bus come back to haunt him.
But three Democratic sources said deputy chief of staff Jim Messina singled out the White House's initial response to the incident for praise in the regular 8:30 a.m. staff meeting Tuesday morning. The sources differed on the substance of Messina's praise, but concurred that he had praised the speed of White House communications in response to the flap, which was driven by a misleadingly edited video posted to Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website.
One source, who is unhappy with the administration's handling of the incident, paraphrased Messina's remarks: "We could have waited all day — we could have had a media circus — but we took decisive action, and it’s a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere."
I have worked on quite a few projects and held a few jobs, but never have I witnessed someone being fired on "hearsay", without a proper investigation. And for the Obama White House, this is what African Americans are mad about.
Shirley Sherrod could have been my mother, your mother, your grandmother. A woman who never asked for anything, worked hard through college, graduate school who decided to make a difference for her community by coming back to live there and be part of it. She could have gone anywhere in this country, but decided to come back home, even after all that has happened to her.
Lastly, Congressman Jim Clyburn is right here:
“I don’t think a single black person was consulted before Shirley Sherrod was fired — I mean c’mon, “ said Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina, a black lawmaker so temperate that he agreed with an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal on Friday by Senator James Webb of Virginia, which urged that “government-directed diversity programs should end.”
“The president’s getting hurt real bad,” Clyburn told me. “He needs some black people around him.” He said Obama’s inner circle keeps “screwing up” on race: “Some people over there are not sensitive at all about race. They really feel that the extent to which he allows himself to talk about race would tend to pigeonhole him or cost him support, when a lot of people saw his election as a way to get the issue behind us. I don’t think people elected him to disengage on race. Just the opposite.”
Again, I don't know if he needs more Black People, but he needs cooler heads over there who are not afraid because FOX NEWS comes calling. And there are people in that White House who are not sensitive about race, they have shown that card repeatedly and continues to get burned.
I hope Shirley Sherrod thanks the Obama Administration for a job offer and passes. She should not be used as a token for all the problems the USDA has on discrimination, that is not what she wants. She loved her job that she had with staff, budget and outreach. That was taken away from her. And though she clearly respects the President, she strongly believes that it was pressure from the White House to toss her and most Americans believe that too. For that, thanks but no thanks to the USDA job.
Cross posted @ Daily Kos
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