Manufacturing racist charges to cover up racism

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Psst.... she corrected herself.

Only after someone else pointed it out.

 

[332nd]

Only after someone else pointed it out.

True.

 

[leftysergeant]

Breitbart had the whole video. According to Bill Press this morning, Faux News had the whole video.

I consider both to have acted criminally in this matter. Given Breitbart's known lies, any news organization should consider every second of video that he offers for consideration to be a lie without a sworn affidavit from God. The dirtbag is not a journalist by any stretch of the imagination.

If any government official needs to be disciplined over this incident, Obama needs to take Vilsack to the wood shed.

 

[Lurker]

Breitbart had the whole video. According to Bill Press this morning, Faux News had the whole video.

Source? I was under the impression that only the edited vesion was sent to Breitbart.

 

[The Charnel Expanse]

If any government official needs to be disciplined over this incident, Obama needs to take Vilsack to the wood shed.

You don't think Obama was complicit in her dismissal?

This is part of a pattern with this White House. Right Wing media manufactures a scandal and they inevitably buckle under the pressure it generates and throw one of their own under the bus, regardless of facts or morality. It happened with ACORN, Van Jones, Dawn Johnsen, and now Sherrod.

For a bunch of committed radical Marxist revolutionaries, this Administration sure is spineless when it comes to defending its own.

 

[Drysdale]

Yea, because the dems have never manufactured racism charges.

 

[headscratcher4]

And your proof for that assertion?

 

[leftysergeant]

Source? I was under the impression that only the edited vesion was sent to Breitbart.

If you have no source other than Breitbart or an associate of Breitbart for the "fact" that he had only the edited version, you have no source. Breitbart and all his allied sources are known liars.

 

[leftysergeant]

For a bunch of committed radical Marxist revolutionaries, this Administration sure is spineless when it comes to defending its own.

Obama clearly shows too much concern for the feelings of the lunatic right, but I blame Vilsack more for not checking the facts. That's what the lower levels of any organization are supposed to do, because the man at the top can't be everywhere.

It still all comes down to this being the fault of slime like Breitbart, Murdoch, the Rushblob and Hannity.

 

[joobz]

If you have no source other than Breitbart or an associate of Breitbart for the "fact" that he had only the edited version, you have no source. Breitbart and all his allied sources are known liars.

So you don't have any evidence.

Ok.

ETA:
I'm very annoyed at your response here, Lefty.
Do you honestly think such an answer would fly on a skeptic forum?

 

[leftysergeant]

So you don't have any evidence.

Ok.

Given that the whole video appeared in public within two days and given that Breitbart has apparently never shown us all of any footage he ever produced, the likelihood that he had the full video is enormously greater than the possibility that he did not.

There is also the fact that he is a lying sack of compost.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Psst.... she corrected herself.

Scrut's comment fits the pattern of the right wingers who won't or can't take an honest look at their imaginary anti-Obama beliefs (socialist, racist, foreigner, Muslim, danger to the Country, going to enact reparations legislation, and so on*).

In this case, Scrut is taking a lesser aspect of the story and trying to use it to draw attention away from the key aspects of the story. The date of the video did matter, as I noted, in respect to the length Breitbart went to to find evidence against the NAACP. And it even suggests the evidence could have been handed him on a platter since recent memories of Sherrod's NAACP talk would have been floating around.

But the key aspect of the story is the propaganda technique of manufacturing a story promoting the claim that whites are the victims of racist blacks. I think Rachel Maddow's insight was right on. And this does of course play to actual racism beliefs among the whites this message was intended to play to. After all, who else is the target market of this particular propaganda? I suggest the target is whites who resent blacks and are already convinced blacks are getting even. Lots of people with those attitudes are Fox viewers.




*Not all right wingers harbor all the false beliefs, but they generally hold at least 1 or 2. The claim Obama is a socialist is the most common false belief. The fact is Obama's policies have so far have been closer to Kowtowing to corporate interests than the policies have been socialist.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Obama clearly shows too much concern for the feelings of the lunatic right, but I blame Vilsack more for not checking the facts. That's what the lower levels of any organization are supposed to do, because the man at the top can't be everywhere.

It still all comes down to this being the fault of slime like Breitbart, Murdoch, the Rushblob and Hannity.

I think it's a stretch to have expected Obama not to have trusted that Vilsack had properly investigated the story. A President has to delegate something like a personnel matter of this kind. Do people really expect upon hearing from Vilsack that Obama should have personally investigated this news story and gotten involved in a personnel decision in the first 24-48 hours after the story was aired?

Obviously in hindsight Obama should be critical of Vilsack's error.


As for Obama the peacemaker, I think we both agree that policy is not producing many, if any, results.

 

[Newtons Bit]

You don't think Obama was complicit in her dismissal?

This is part of a pattern with this White House. Right Wing media manufactures a scandal and they inevitably buckle under the pressure it generates and throw one of their own under the bus, regardless of facts or morality. It happened with ACORN, Van Jones, Dawn Johnsen, and now Sherrod.

For a bunch of committed radical Marxist revolutionaries, this Administration sure is spineless when it comes to defending its own.

Uhh... Van Jones threw himself under the bus. That dude was a whack-job.

 

[The Charnel Expanse]

Uhh... Van Jones threw himself under the bus. That dude was a whack-job.

He 'resigned'. But we all know that resignations in the political world are seldom purely voluntary.

And how exactly is he a whack-job?

 

[dudalb]

A. Fox news is so slanted that it should not be taken seriously as a news source.
B. The Sec. of Agriculture mishandled this in a world class display of incompetence. and should be outta there.
C. Partisans on both sides will go to any extent to put all the blame on the other side and non of the fault on their side,when in reality NO ONE comes out looking good in this.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Breitbart passed the culpability buck down the chain:

July 20th interview

So we asked Andrew Breitbart, the founder of Big Government, why he hasn't posted the full video.

"I don't have it," Breitbart told TPMmuckraker in an interview. Breitbart said his source sent him just the edited clips at first, but is in the process of sending the full video.

Breitbart said he'll post the full video, if he can get permission from the video production company who filmed it for a local NAACP chapter. He also maintained that he didn't edit the clip and that it was sent to him already edited.

Muckraker goes on to report:

But even if the full video shows what Sherrod says it does, Breitbart said he's seen enough.

"I think the video speaks for itself," he said. "The way she's talking about white people ... is conveying a present tense racism in my opinion. But racism is in the eye of the beholder."

He also takes issue with how the audience, many of them members of the NAACP, respond positively to her comments -- proof, he says, of prevalent racism.

So full video or not, Breitbart isn't interested. He's only interested in supporting his existing beliefs. I can understand his reaction to the audience's reaction to the story. But we need to also look at the audience's reaction to the end of the story. Why shouldn't people who've known discrimination respond positively to a story about revenge? That's human nature. What matters is the point that Sherrod overcame this gut reaction.

Some whites, (Limbaugh professes this view regularly), absolutely resent affirmative action and don't get that affirmative action was about leveling the playing field, not getting even with whites for past discrimination. Some Tea Partiers have imagined Obama is going to enact reparations legislation even though there isn't one shred of evidence to that effect. This kind of paranoia is reflected in Breitbart's reaction upon finding out his edited video clip was misleading to say the least.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

You don't think Obama was complicit in her dismissal?

I don't think a President can or should be directly involved in personnel decisions like hiring and firing the people in a department. That's what Vilsack's job is. Can you imagine how many people we'd be talking about Obama getting involved in the employment decisions of?

This is part of a pattern with this White House. Right Wing media manufactures a scandal and they inevitably buckle under the pressure it generates and throw one of their own under the bus, regardless of facts or morality. It happened with ACORN, Van Jones, Dawn Johnsen, and now Sherrod.....

I totally agree. I hope that lesson sinks in after this particular under the bus incident.

 

[Newtons Bit]

He 'resigned'. But we all know that resignations in the political world are seldom purely voluntary.

And how exactly is he a whack-job?

I view people who are currently truthers, or who used to be truthers, "whack-jobs".

Source:

White House officials offered tepid support Friday for Van Jones, the administration's embattled energy efficiency guru, who has issued two public apologies this week, one for signing a petition that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

Earlier, Jones said he was "clearly inappropriate" in using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.

He was a very early signatory in that petition. His name is amidst a "who's who" of nut-case truthers. Let's ignore his magical fantasy economics where everyone pays more for energy and somehow become more employed.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Scrut's comment fits the pattern of the right wingers who won't or can't take an honest look at their imaginary anti-Obama beliefs (socialist, racist, foreigner, Muslim, danger to the Country, going to enact reparations legislation, and so on*).

In this case, Scrut is taking a lesser aspect of the story and trying to use it to draw attention away from the key aspects of the story. The date of the video did matter, as I noted, in respect to the length Breitbart went to to find evidence against the NAACP. And it even suggests the evidence could have been handed him on a platter since recent memories of Sherrod's NAACP talk would have been floating around.

One wonders how you saw my comment if you have me on ignore?

I was simply pointing out, yet again, how you can't seem to get the facts straight in your tiresome diatribes against the imaginary right wing corporate conspiracy out to ruin your life.

But seriously - maybe she knows about sheep/human DNA. She's in the agriculture business after all.