July 23, 2010
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Shirley Sherrod and the Banality of Evil
Keith Olbermann pretty much perfectly captures my feeling on the whole Shirley Sherrod affair.
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Weirdly despite all the nonsense that has happened during the last year and a half, I think this was the one incident in which the Obama administration disappointed me the most.
I mean Shirley Sherrod in this speech presented exactly Obama’s philosophy on race and social justice. At least she expressed a view perfectly congruent with the one Obama expressed during the campaign. So the whole thing comes off as seeming as if Obama will sacrifice any ideal, any principal, and any sense of Justice if it will protect him from criticism so he can win more votes and get more democrats in office. I don’t know why I didn’t fully believe this before, but I guess now I do.
I want my Presidents to care about what’s true, first. I want them to care about what’s right. And I want them to lead other people to care about those things to. I want them to protect the powerless when they are set upon by the wolves, especially if it’s one of the people who work for you. At the very least, I want them to try. But they didn’t. The administration comes off as the same as any of the worst most feckless bosses in the country who will fire you at the very first hint of complaint from a customer. They don’t have anyone’s back.
I’m glad the President at least called Sherrod to apologize in person. For a second I thought he wasn’t even going to offer her that minimal courtesy. Of course the administration only changed course after this was covered in like every major newspaper and television network in the country and was even starting to get international coverage. Of course that makes it seem like they didn’t apologize because it was right. They apologized because not apologizing would have looked bad. It’s twisted.
It’s like he just didn’t care if a woman who did no wrong’s character was deliberately assassinated by monstrously grotesquely evil people.
But I’m being a bit unfair. It’s not just him who didn’t care enough. Lots of people didn’t care enough. Her boss didn’t care enough. The entire hierarchy above her didn’t care enough. The media didn’t care enough. The viewers who swallowed the bait hook line and sinker didn’t care enough. Almost nobody cared enough. And we haven’t been caring enough month after month after month as these tactics of lies and deception capture the national debate and destroy people’s lives over nothing.
There are always people saying that dark times are coming, etc. etc. etc. There’s always doomsayers in every age in history, but I’ve always been an extreme optimist. People generally find a way to reach a better state against all odds.
But for the first time I’m starting to believe them. We seem to be heading to a really dark place filled with prejudice and fear and intolerance and I don’t know how we are going to change course.
Keith Olbermann is right. There’s a fucking war going on out there. And Hate is winning.
Comments (5)
Man, I gotta keep up with my MSNBC. I know I can do it online, but that seems to take time away from doing other things I’ve got going on with the computer. MSNBC needs to get a full featured Android app already! (they have none!!!) That way, I can watch Maddow and Olbermann right off my phone. That would be nice lol
“Pornographer of propaganda”
Wow, Olbermann is such a rhetorician! I love listening to his special reports.
@bryangoodrich - Maddow has a good iphone app I use. Maybe you can pressure them to port it. Mostly I keep track through BestOfTheLeft podcast which clips some of the best segments from left wing shows including Olbermann, Maddow, Stewart and Colbert and others less well known. But it’s audio only sadly and you get the stories a couple days late. The above hasn’t shown up on BestOfTheLeft yet for example. But still it’s one of my favorite podcasts. It’s very well produced. The rest I just hear about through twitter and on various blogs I follow.
Yeah Olbermann’s special comments are amazing. I’ve never been a huge fan of the show Countdown but I’ve always loved the special comments. Sometimes I wonder if his rhetoric sometimes uses words that go right over the head of general populace limiting his reach? I’m probably just being overly pessimistic.
@nephyo - No, I’m sure he says stuff that goes over a lot of people’s head lol Of course, MSNBC and his show in particular caters to a more liberal (and I would say educated) crowd. If Fox News watchers listened to it, they’d probably just get angry at him! haha
Yeah, MSNBC has a ton of iPhone apps! They have one Android listed as “Coming soon” and it’s generic. I want to be able to play some of the videos, but video support in Android is very limited right now. I can basically only watch YouTube videos. I’m hoping they’ll come up with a standardized flash player that can port any video content mostly appropriately. The encoding should all be the same, and the commands (and meta-data) can all be interpreted. I mean, YouTube player is already rather standard so it shouldn’t be that hard. I heard a new flash player is coming out for Android by the end of the year, but that’s pretty damn slow! Especially for an open source operating system. This stuff should be coming out faster damn it lol
It’s always saddening to see any administration acting like this. I suppose that’s the danger with power. People can be very idealistic when they are seeking it, thinking of all the good things they can do. But once they have it, the main priority becomes holding onto it. I’m not familiar with the full story on this since it hasn’t really made the news in this part of the world. However I would imagine that like any other political leader, Obama is surrounded by advisers and media analysts. I’ve seen it happen here in Ireland so many times. Real policy goes out the window and it becomes more about looking good in the media and doing well in the next elections. Even with all that I still believe that there are some good politicians out there. Maybe the voting public need to make it clear to their elected officials that they want honesty and integrity, not just a handy sound bite for the evening news.
Her story is fascinating. He own father was killed in a racially motivated attack. Of course, this took place in Georgia when killing blacks wasn’t exactly illegal…at least not to investigating parties in the south. So, if she had actually been a reverse racist, having the charges dropped against the murderers of your father might have a huge part in shaping one’s opinion on race. She overcame it and she happened to be describing the moment at which she overcame it.
THe worst part of this is Andrew Breitbart can’t admit to being wrong…and just like the growing support for SB 1070, so too is the support for what Breitbart has done. This after the first spin that the Whitehouse should have investigated further, which they should have…but didn’t. But, Breitbart and FoxNews only proved that they are going with the country-wide Southern Strategy. His aim, now, was not to show Shirley Sherrod as racist, but to show the throngs of NAACP members cheering for racism. Of course, Breitbart still says the tape shows it, but that dipshit doesn’t get that unless Shirley Sherrod is being racist, then the second point is nil.
They just showed us all of their cards. It is a Southern Strategy…yet people like Marco Rubio, MIchael Steele, Ron Christie, Nicki Haley, and even Michelle Malkin ( all major players in conservatism) won’t ever understand of get that this strategy will someday bit them as well. It almost did for Nicki Haley, who’s opponent in a republican primary called her a raghead. You think you are in the club? Think again.