Wow the White House acts fast when it wants to

[Enrique]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/20/agriculture.employee.naacp/index.html?hpt=T1

(CNN) -- A former USDA employee who resigned after a video surfaced of her talking about a white farmer told CNN on Tuesday that the administration "wasn't interested in hearing the truth."

Shirley Sherrod, who resigned Monday as the department's former state director of rural development for Georgia, told CNN she had four calls telling her the White House wanted her to resign. She was driving at the time, she said, and the last call asked her to pull to the side of the road and offer her resignation.

Her resignation came after media outlets aired the video, in which Sherrod, speaking to an audience, says she did not give the white farmer "the full force of what I could do" to help him avoid foreclosure.

Sherrod told CNN on Tuesday the incident she discusses in the clip took place more than two decades ago, and she recounted it to an audience to make the point that people should move beyond race.

"I was telling the story of how working with him helped me to see the issue is not about race," she said. "It's about those who have versus those who do not have."

(...)

[VMI Dem]

1. The President obviously like to have all the facts.

And act in a thoughtful manner.

[mdmc]

2. I can't wait for that rw'er to get film of Obama doing drugs or smoking

The WH really threw this lady under the bus it seems..

[dionysus]

9. i bet you would.

:eyes:

[mdmc]

22. nice du handle

:toast:

[AtomicKitten]

16. Sect'y of AG Vilsack asked her to resign, not the White House. nt

[dionysus]

19. doesn't matter. everything boils down to punishing obama for existing.

:shrug:

[Cha]

35. THey think they sniff blood and blame President Obama

first and never question anything. Cartoonists rule.

[Ignis]

45. Who's "they?"

:shrug:

[proud2BlibKansan]

27. He's part of the administration

[flpoljunkie]

3. TPM: Everyone Take a Deep Breath

Everyone Take a Deep Breath

David Kurtz
July 20, 2010, 11:36AM

Andrew Breitbart has another notch in his belt: the forced resignation of a black USDA appointee in Georgia who Breitbart has on tape addressing a local NAACP chapter earlier this year and seeming to admit that she didn't give a white farmer all the help she could have because he was white. Or at least that's the story you get from Brietbart's Big Government and from Fox.

But that was enough for the Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to issue a statement condemning her remarks, and for the national NAACP to do the same.

But the Atlanta Journal-Constitution interviewed the woman, Shirley Sherrod, and if what she says is true, there's a lot more to this story. She tells the paper that the incident she was recounting happened 24 years ago, before she worked for the USDA, that she went on to provide considerable assistance to the farmer, that she eventually became friends with the farmer and his wife, and that the whole point of retelling the story was to show how she had managed to move beyond race herself.

Sherrod is on CNN telling a similar version of events right now.

But none of that part of her speech is in the clip that Breitbart and Fox are running. We're on the hunt for the full video. The local production company won't release it to us without the sign off of the local NAACP chapter. But the guy who owns the production company confirmed to us over the phone that the entire video matches what Sherrod is saying.

I'm going to wait to pass judgment until I see the entire video. Maybe a lot of other people should have, too.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/07/everyone_take_a_deep_breath.php#more?ref=fpblg

[Enrique]

4. no time for a deep breath

get out of the car NOW so we can throw you under the bus!

[pansypoo53219]

6. that bratbrat

guy is an evil shit.

[Enrique]

5. Glenn Beck apparently has veto power in personnel matters

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/07/usda_worker_quits_over_racism.html?hpid=topnews

(...)

"They harassed me," she said. "I got three calls from the White House. At one point they asked me to pull over to the side of the road and do it because you are going to be on Glenn Beck tonight."

[activa8tr]

7. I think this is just ANOTHER example of the job Fox does every day...

race baiting, taking things out of context, and not being "fair and balanced"

This whole incident is disgusting.. she should NOT have been fired so quickly, or asked to resign..

The farmer's family, for goodness sakes, is friends with her!

This is just wrong wrong wrong all around... and Fox News fanned these flames of racism.

[frylock]

8. disappointing, but hardly a surprise anymore

[AspenRose]

10. That poor woman.

I feel horrible for her. And very, very angry about this whole thing. Even the NAACP jumped on her; what was up with THAT?!

[AngryAmish]

11. WHy was she fired so fast?

This woman did nothing wrong.

[LostinVA]

37. Glenn Beck -- for real

[laureloak]

12. She screwed up and it cost her job. Happens every day. n/t

[Forkboy]

13. How did she screw up?

[laureloak]

23. She was a gov employee using her position to discriminate

against someone because of race. How stupid of her to broadcast it then and again yrs later.

[zipplewrath]

24. No she wasn't

IIUC, she wasn't a government employee at the time. She was an employee of some nonprofit set up to help black farmers deal with a new law roughly called "chapter 12" for a special kind of bankruptcy for farmers. This white couple comes in, in her perception with some attitude, and she relates that she thought it was odd that white folks were looking to black folks for help. She thought that white folks had plenty of resources to help them, and tried to guide them towards those resources. What she found out, rather quickly, was that poor white folk get treated just as badly as poor black folk and ended up extensively helping the couple to save their farm, which they still own today. And the couple consider her a personal friend at this point.

There was no discrimination of white people by a government employee of the USDA. There was a malicious smear job by a conservative activist though.

[laureloak]

28. I don't know who IIUC is and nothing was returned in Google.

I do know that she discriminated against someone because of their race. No matter how many times she apologizes or what excuses she makes she deserves to be punished to the fullest extent. Isn't That's how the game is played! Racial discrimination = ruination. It's no different because she's black because that would be even more racial discrimination.

[zipplewrath]

33. If I Understand Correctly

She didn't discriminate while she was a government employee is the point.

I understand that you want perfect civil servants. But they don't exist. What we have here is a civil servant that was communicating her own experience FROM 20 YEARS AGO, that one can view things through a racial skew, or they can learn to take larger views.

That kind of civil servant we need.

[Ninga]

25. Ouch. You missed the entire story. Low information voter by any chance?

[laureloak]

26. I didn't miss the story, Ninga the Insulter. She discriminated

against someone because of their race. No matter what she did later, that fact remains. Shoes hurt sometimes when they get put on the other foot, eh?

[proud2BlibKansan]

29. No she didnt

Read the whole story. It's posted in about a gazillion threads.

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Beacool]

31. Ahhhh, but that's where you're wrong.

It's a one way game. Think about how many people have been called racists in the last 3 years.

:eyes:

[proud2BlibKansan]

36. You clearly do not have all the facts

Read the whole story. You are misinformed.

[LostinVA]

38. My God, what an appalling thing to write

"That's how the game has been played for years against whites no matter how unintentional their remarks were. It was blacks who set the rule: Discrimination = Ruination !!!!! Now they must play by it too."

[Ninga]

34. Let me try this one more time. She discriminated in her heart, but never acted on it.

That is the simple truth of this matter. She had a negative view of the attitude of the farmer who sat before her 28 years ago, but kept it to herself and NEVER ACTED ON IT.

[LostinVA]

40. You are wrapping your ignorance of the facts up in statements that sound quite racist

Over and over again in this subthread. Firstly, you obviously have no idea of the FACTS of the story, because you keep repeating misinforming and telling those who ate correcting you with FACTS "wrong." No, Laureloak, YOU are the one who is misinformed. Your gleeful rudeness just adds an extra layer of :wtf: to it.

And, you keep goading Blacks about now being punished for being racist, and not liking to live by "their" rules, etc. :wtf: again. Whether you intend it or not, what you are writing is coming across as quite racist, and I am shocked to see such things posted in DU:GD.

[LostinVA]

39. Except that isn't what happened

[Ignis]

46. Please provide support for your claim. Thanks.

[Diamonique]

48. My goodness! Watch FOX news much?

[Igel]

14. Not like that.

Usually when you screw up you either make it good and 24 years later it doesn't matter; or you screw up and a few weeks later you're out looking for a job.

It takes a special kind of bureaucracy and attitude to keep somebody on for 24 years and then overlook that the incident's ill effects were nil because the screw up was quickly reversed and the other 24 years' performance to fire them.

The WH didn't just move fast. It moved in a way that could be done and over with quickly. They could have moved quickly to explain and defend, but that defense would take a little time. Or they could simply have passed the buck to the appropriate secretary (Vilsack, in this case) to do the explaining and defending.

She was a pawn as far as Breitbart was concerned and no less a pawn to the WH. I wonder if Vilsack was allowed to defend his employee (or even tried).

[laureloak]

21. Gov employee who broke the law in discriminating against

a person because of race. She was stupid to bring it back up.

[LostinVA]

41. Except that isn't what happened at all n/t

[Forkboy]

42. Are you ever going to learn what happened or just keep running with this?

I'm just curious how serious I should be taking you in the future.

[xxqqqzme]

44. No reply - so I'm

w/ you on future posts.

[donco6]

47. I'm assuming he/she is hiding in abject despair after that display of ignorance.

Here's hoping :toast:

[donco6]

32. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Watch the Maddow segment for the story first, then you can resume commenting. Otherwise you will continue looking like a fool.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#38335268

[Forkboy]

43. "Otherwise you will continue looking like a fool."

The poster seems pretty content with that so far.

[Orsino]

15. It's chess!

Specifically, it's the Scholar's Mate. One looks pretty stupid trying it out in the real world.

[MadMaddie]

17. How do we contact Vilsack and give him our two cents?

He didn't even evaluate the situation before he threw her under the bus.

[donal dubh]

18. how is this not illegal?

Vilsack acted on info that was not checked obviously, and he should be roundly vilified for the knee-jerk jackass he is.

But what of the media? Are they not responsible for the product they sell in any way? Cannot Sherrod seek reparations for the trouble this caused her? I would love Breitbart to choke on this...

[meow mix]

20. or when it wants liberal policy tossed out of legislation..

fast as hell then.

[treestar]

49. This is all within the executive branch

This is where they do have complete control.