Categorical Aperitif

While it's good to know that the Obama administration has rethought its stupid and impetuous actions in the Shirley Sherrod case, it's also painful to contemplate the levels of political cowardice and incompetence summed up in this Guardian article:

The White House has been forced to make an embarrassing U-turn after it appeared to have acted rashly in approving the sacking of a senior black official who was being targeted by a controversial rightwing blogger.

The Obama administration had initially supported the decision of Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, to force the resignation of Shirley Sherrod after a misleadingly edited version of a speech she gave in March caused outrage on the internet. The edited clips, put out by Andrew Breitbart of the conservative site BigGovernment.com, who has worked with the leading rightwing blogger Matt Drudge, gave the impression that Sherrod, the department's head of rural development in the southern state of Georgia, had boasted about having discriminated against a white farmer 24 years ago.

But when the full footage of the speech was released hours later, it became clear that she was recounting the story as a parable for why every poor person deserved to be helped equally, whatever their race.

In the wake of the full tape becoming available, the White House said the case should be looked at again. Vilsack, who initially had said his department had a "zero tolerance for discrimination", also made a startling volte face, promising a "thorough review to ensure to the American people we are providing services in a fair and equitable manner".

But by then the damage had been done, with the White House and a key department having apparently acted in haste to force out of office a senior black woman at the whim of rightwing pundits.

Jeebus, but the truth hurts sometimes. The Obama people are supposedly packed with internet savvy; is there nobody in the administration who, you know, monitors the blogosphere or keeps up with the important media-crit sites at least? I mean, anybody who's read Media Matters for even the last six months would know better than to take an Andrew Breitbart story at face value. To act like this because of Andrew Breitbart is beyond shameful:

Sherrod said she was ordered to resign by Vilsack's deputy, Cheryl Cook, while she was on a long drive, and was even ordered to pull over on the side of the road and send in her resignation by Blackberry. "The administration were not interested in hearing the truth. No one wanted to hear the truth," she told CNN.

And I guess nobody at the NAACP keeps up with Media Matters, either:

The saga also embarrassed the NAACP, which was also over-hasty in judging Sherrod, telling Fox News that it repudiated "racists in our ranks". After seeing the full video, it said it had been "snookered" into misinterpreting her views.

Ye gods. After what Breitbart did to ACORN through video trickery, you'd think that any story associated with him would be treated with extreme skepticism by anyone to the left of Tom Tancredo—let alone by people working for the oldest black political organization and the first black POTUS. Yet here we are.

People! Do yourselves a favor: go here, bookmark it, add it to your RSS feeds, subscribe to the email list, whatever. It won't solve all your problems, but it should at least help you avoid being marks for cheap scammers like Breitbart. Tear yourselves away from Politico and Drudge if you have to, and for God's sake get a clue about the media apparatus arrayed against you—before it's too late.

It's good that they're making nice with Shirley Sherrod again, but karoli is right: "There's no question that the administration walks out of this one with the taint of a Breitbart/Fox punking on them." And so does the mainstream media: When, oh when, will the recognize Andrew Breitbart for the journalistic fraud that he is? (But hey, it's all the NAACP's fault for provoking Breitbart in the first place, right? Blecch.) And so does the conservative media, for that matter:

At some point conservatives need to ask themselves about the larger meaning of this kind of conduct [i.e., the Daily Caller and its Journolist nonsense]—and Andrew Breitbart’s—for their movement. Beyond the ethics of lying and smear one’s opponents, I would think conservatives would worry about the fact that a large portion of conservative media is dedicated to lying to conservatives. They regard their audience as marks to be misled and exploited, not as customers to be served with useful information.

I hate to say it, but damn if the shoe doesn't fit.

Those are digby's words for the deep-seated impulse that led Democrats to turn their backs on ACORN and kick out Shirley Sherrod rather than face, gosh, Republican complaints of "reverse racism"—and all because of video punkings by the likes of Andrew Breitbart. And now the email record confirms that the Obamanites did not bother to check out the context, see the full Sherrod speech, get Sherrod's side of the story, etc. before tugging their forelocks and rushing to do the Right's bidding.

As I've said before, the really incomprehensible thing is that nobody in this supposedly internet-savvy administration could apparently, you know, keep up with the work of an organization like Media Matters, which has compiled an extensive record which would lead any rational being familiar with it to conclude that everything associated with Breitbart must be looked at with great skepticism and checked carefully before being acted upon. How anyone in a Democratic administration could not be automatically skeptical about a story put out by Andrew Breitbart is beyond me.

You can bet that those in the upper reaches of the Republican hierarchy have no illusions about him.

Jeez, three weeks after they fall like fools for a Breitbart punking, they say this sh*t about their own supposed base (h/t Balloon Juice):

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

Yeah, we all want to abolish the armed forces and rely on flower power to protect us. He's got our number, all right. F*cking idiot.

GG says it best: In 18 short months, we went from "hold me accountable" to "get drug tested." This, the Breitbart punking, the extension of Bush-Cheney wars and civil liberties degradations—boy, is there an ugly pattern here. I guess they're figuring that whoever rises to the top of the Republican heap in 2012 will be so scary that we'll all come running back to the Hope and Change administration out of necessity. "He's Not Sarah Palin" doesn't strike me as a very inspiring campaign slogan, but hey, if they finally want to stop pretending that they're anything more than the lesser of two evils, I guess we can call it a victory for honesty.

Y'know, if the Obamanoids are going to throw people to the wolves this easily, I'm not sure it matters all that much if the Republicans get their precious subpoena power back after the mid-terms. As digby notes:

They are telling wingnuts everywhere that all they have to do is gin up a phony controversy (especially about a black person, apparently) and the administration will fire them so as not to shake confidence that they are "fair service providers."

This is sheer cowardice.

And "political malpractice," and that's almost too kind. Did the Clinton years teach these people nothing? Have the last 18 months not given them ample evidence of just how cynical, nasty, and ruthless many in the right-wing power structure are? Did the Obama administration learn nothing about its opposition from the stimulus fight, the healthcare fight, the unemployment fight, etc.?

Watch out White House staffers, indeed. Your own boss just painted a big 'ol target on your backs.