The Shirley Sherrod Affair

The Shirley Sherrod affair seems to have become one of those uniquely summertime stories which gain so much traction in the lull of the hot summer vacation months.

Except that there's actually quite a bit still going on this summer.

How to begin to tackle this story? Here's the video clip of Glenn Beck airing the Brightbart video clip for the first time, on Tuesday evening, then explaining the administration action, and then...the full context.



I guess the best way to view this whole mess is that many wrongs result in, well, a mess.

Over two decades ago, Shirley Sherrod engaged in racist behavior toward a white farming family. Later, feeling guilty about it, she made amends to the aggrieved party.

She spoke about this at an NAACP conference, it became public, and the administration pressured the Agriculture Secretary to fire Sherrod, without any knowledge of how long ago her apparent transgression occurred, or that it was actually just the first part of a larger story of redemption. Sherrod resigned under pressure, as desired by the administration, in its haste to cleanse itself of what it believed would be a racist burden.

But, for her part, upon having all of this aired, Sherrod steadfastly refused all invitations from Fox News to appear on any of their programs. Fox's Bret Baier read a quote from Sherrod, given in an interview to another media outlet, in which she berated Fox for wanting to turn the clock back on integration and see blacks as second-class citizens once more.

It turns out that Sherrod is very liberal, perhaps fully socialist, with a lot of activism in her past, including suing her employer, a government agency.

The whole situation is quite a mess. But it's clear that Wonderboy acted quickly, and, as usual, without complete knowledge of the situation, to distance himself from an apparent racist situation. As did the NAACP.

The final chapters to this, unfolding yesterday, were that Wonderboy's mouthpieces and the network and print media were casting themselves as victims, claiming that Fox News misled everyone, and is the real villain in the matter.

Nevermind that the person Sherrod mentioned as being feared by Wonderboy's minions, Glenn Beck, didn't even air the material on the day they expected. And, in fact, defended Sherrod.

You can't make this stuff up, can you?