Fox News and it extreme-right cohorts continue to play the race-card for the paranoid of mind. The latest is the posting on its website a video of comments taken out of context by Shirley Sherrod, the USDA director of rural development in Georgia, at a NAACP conference last March. Sherrod is quoted as saying she did not at first do her “utmost” to help a white farmer avoid foreclosure many years ago, apparently because the farmer gave her the impression of being a racist and regarding her as incompetent. In the part not included in the edited version of the video, Sherrod concluded she needed to overlook her feelings about the farmer and him because “it’s really about those who have versus those who have not.” The farmer and his wife have since come forward to credit Sherrod with helping to save their farm from foreclosure. But after the airing of Fox's edited version of the episode, the Obama administration once again reacted in knee-jerk fashion, throwing an honest, capable employee under the bus.
This comes on the heels of another Fox News “exclusive” (courtesy of right-wing shock jock Andrew Breitbart, who called Ted Kennedy "a special pile of human excrement" following his death) that charges that the Obama administration is showing racial “favoritism” by not investigating the New Black Panther Party for allegedly “intimidating” white voters at one polling place during the 2008 election. The Bush administration actually decided to investigate this particular case, but decided that a couple of guys merely standing around looking tough, engaged in low-level tit-for-tat didn't have much politcal value (but oh contrare, determines the scumdwellers at Fox). But it was certainly nothing near the level of the massive voter suppression going on in Florida in 2000, in Ohio in 2004, or in Philadelphia in 2008, or the Arizona militia pointing guns at Latino voters. None of these incidents were investigated by the Bush administration at all.
The Obama didn’t cave on that case, although it did itself no credit it the case of Van Jones, an administration environmental adviser, and an African-American. Once again, the shit-shovellers at Fox News dug-up “evidence” linking Jones to a group that suggested that the Bush administration ignored evidence that terrorists were planning to hijack planes, in effect “allowing” the 9-11 attack to occur. Jones was also accused of making “derogatory” comments about Republicans. Jones was forced to resign, but why? There has been evidence that, at the very least, the FBI had information from operatives concerning suspicious behavior by people who would later turn-out to be members of the hijacking team, but did little follow-up. The Bush national security team was also warned as late as August, 2001 that there were plans afoot to hijack planes to target buildings in the U.S.; these reports were apparently either dismissed out-of-hand, or thought not to be as serious as they turned out to be. Of one thing there is of no doubt: the Bush administration could not have had a better public relations “victory” in its effort to convince the public of going along with his plans to invade Iraq, which cost more than 4,000 American lives, and still of dubious long-range ramifications. Meanwhile, the charge of “derogatory comments” against Republicans by Jones is wholly bizarre given the fact that nearly every member of Congress frequently makes derogatory comments about each other or the president; does that mean the 90 percent of senators and congresspersons should resign?
Why has the Obama administration been so quick to toss good people under the bus, particularly African-Americans? Do not people know by now that Fox News and the rest of that extreme-right ilk are attempting to use race to poison the minds of the racially-inclined with false notions that with a black president in office, blacks are out to “get” white folks, to wreak vengeance on whites for wrongs perpetrated in the past? This is nonsense, and Obama needs to call-out the right-wing media for creating an atmosphere of racial division, instead of trying to “avoid” it by allowing the racial politics of Fox News a measure of undeserved credibility.
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