Thursday, July 29, 2010

THE RE-DEMONIZATION OF SHIRLEY SHERROD

Right-wing rule #1: Never, ever, ever, ever acknowledge error or admit defeat. Fight every fight to eternity.

You thought, with regard to Shirley Sherrod, that they were going to lick their wounds and move on? Hah. Adam Tragone, writing for Human Events:

... Then, she stepped to the podium and confirmed to America what Breitbart's video conveyed: Shirley Sherrod is a rambling race-hustler. Speaking with Anderson Cooper, she said that Andrew Breitbart would like to "get us stuck back in the times of slavery. That's where I think he'd like to see all black people end up again." Uh. What? How can she even come out and imply that this is how Andrew Breitbart feels when she doesn't even know him and all she does know about him is of a videotape that he released of her own words?

Then, Shirley took her anger out on -- who else? -- Fox News. Speaking with the Washington Post, Sherrod said she wouldn't go on Fox because she felt that they considered her a "pawn" and that the network wanted to go "back to where black people were looking down, not looking white folks in the face, not being able to compete for a job out there and not be a whole person."

Now, you would like to think that she would have to explain these outrageously outrageous statements, right?

... Shirley Sherrod went on a racially tinged rant, this time in the safe confines of the leftist media, and was never heard from since. They've given her a pass. Sherrod is now harder to find than Waldo. I don't blame her. She's demonstrated that her world view is deeply shaped by race and gender. Stay hiding, Shirley. We don't need any more of your disjointed racial musings.


Jim Treacher at Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller, reading off the same list of alleged crimes:

... The joke was on everyone as the Sherrod chainsaw howled to life. She announced that Fox News was just using her as a "pawn" to "take us back to where we were many years ago. Back to where black people were looking down, not looking white folks in the face, not being able to compete for a job out there and not be a whole person." She dragged out the wheezy old canard that all opposition to the policies of our glorious Leader Of Color are due to racism. And the true motivation of Andrew Breitbart? Why, nothing less than the reinstitution of slavery. Once Shirley Sherrod is out of the way, there will be nothing to stop Breitbart from using his giant mechanical spider to kidnap the President and reboot the Confederacy.

... Nobody on the Right should be terribly surprised to learn the full extent of Sherrod's racial obsessions. It takes some rigid ideology to pry open the door to the comfortable government office she used to occupy. There are an awful lot of theories floating through the mind of the permanent entitlement bureaucracy, and none of them have
anything to do with individual responsibility, sovereign liberty, or the moral independence of free men and women....

What Sherrod says during the remaining fourteen minutes of her celebrity is doing a lot more damage than anything she said on that videotape....


Larry Elder at TownHall:

Who knows what lies ahead for Shirley Sherrod -- a book, the lecture circuit, a wrongful discharge lawsuit that could bring millions? But if she keeps talking, the woman "wrongfully portrayed" as a racist may out herself as exactly that.

... Sherrod is now heralded as a symbol of a black woman unfairly victimized by the wretched, vicious, racist tactics of Breitbart in particular and the "right wing" in general....

But what about the rest of Shirley Sherrod's NAACP speech?

She made this observation about those who opposed ObamaCare: "I haven't seen such mean-spirited people as I've seen lately over this issue of health care. Some of the racism we thought was buried. Didn't it surface? (Audience responds approvingly.) Now, we endured eight years of the Bushes, and we didn't do the stuff these Republicans are doing because you have a black president."

So the self-proclaimed colorblind woman attributes legitimate opposition to the government takeover of health care ... to racism.

And what motivated Breitbart to post the out-of-context excerpt? Was Breitbart erroneously, but in good faith, using it to hold the NAACP to the same standard the organization asks of the Tea Party? Not according to Sherrod. She told CNN: "I know I've gotten past black vs. white. He's probably the person who's never gotten past it and never attempted to get past it. ... I think he would like to get us stuck back in the times of slavery. That's where I think he'd like to see all black people end up again. ... I think that's why he's so vicious against a black president, you know. He would go after me. I don't think it was even the NAACP he was totally after. I think he was after a black president."

This from someone who's "gotten past black vs. white"? ...


They're not going to drop this. I guarantee you that it's a priority in some corner of the fetid right-wing swamp to comb through archives looking for some new piece of evidence proving that Shirley Sherrod, or her husband, or some relative or neighbor or Facebook friend is a Big Bad White Person Hater. I guarantee you that one or more well-remunerated young right-wingers get up every morning and do nothing but seek such evidence. Like the most radical wing of an insurgent movement, these guys will not honor any armistice. They will prevent any peace from tasking hold. The only thing they know how to do is fight, and they don't intend to stop until every one of their enemies is destroyed -- unless we destroy them first.

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