The Slings And Arrows Of Outrageous Fortune

Barack Obama came into office in large part as the "post-racial" President, a racial healer. That doesn't seem to have worked out too well. Shortly into the first months of the Obama term, his Attorney General announced that we're all cowards for refusing to discuss race. Given the recent flap over the Shirley Sherrod public relations disaster, I would ask "who's the coward now?"

For good background, I suggest you re-read Andrew Price's Wednesday article on this blog. Andrew Breitbart went off half-cocked and aired an edited and partial video of Ms. Sherrod making some remarks about an incident of her own racism twenty-five years ago. But once the entire video was aired (it was in the hands of the NAACP the whole time, but that's another issue entirely) it became apparent that the not-too-bright Sherrod was trying in her stumbling way to tell a story of reconciliation. But I'm also going to say without hesitation that even after seeing the full video, I'm not convinced that she has come very far from her early days. Her post-firing statements only confirm my suspicions.

At this point, a race-obsessed nonentity is dragging the President of the United States and his administration flaks around by the nose. She's in charge here. She has received a personal telephone apology from the same President who says he had nothing to do with her firing. I find that extremely unseemly. She has blamed Fox News for her firing, even though the firing occurred hours before Fox News did any extensive analysis of the Breitbart fiasco. But they're all racists at Fox News, as Sherrod would have it, so they must be to blame. Meanwhile, she gets to decide whether she should accept a much better-paying federal job with a much loftier title (even though she had already risen far above her level of incompetence), or a massive lawsuit. Best of all, she could choose to do both. At the same time she gets to make her evil boss, Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, look like a white buffoon. Well, strike that last remark. She's right--he is a buffoon.

So where am I going with this? Just this. Obama and his gang have stood up to, defied and ignored every conservative point of view, any moderate view that disagrees with his own, and even the plaintive cries for help from liberal Democrats. But the same people who called us cowards for refusing to deal with race issues have a yellow streak bigger than an entire cargo of bananas. Health care? Attack. Financial reform? Attack. Confirmation of dangerous political appointees to office? Attack. Race? Cave in, and do it as quickly as possible.

Obama and his Attorney General have no problem standing up to those who charge them with blatant racial favoritism in the dismissal of the New Black Panther cases. A minor disagreement and misunderstanding of the law, they say. But when it comes to one of their own officials hinting at black racial bias, it's time to bury her and circle the wagons. They couldn't even wait for Sherrod to get to her office to fire her. They called her twice, and the third time had her pull over to the side of the road to submit her forced resignation online. It was more important to act precipitously, fire her, and get her out of the public eye than it was to have at least sufficient information to decide whether or not the Breitbart allegations were true.

I am convinced that there was no problem for the Obamists with Sherrod making black racist remarks. Her sin, at least as it appeared at the time, was getting caught. The NAACP Director, Ben Jealous (not the old one, Ben Chavis) made outrageous remarks about racism in the Tea Party, and that was no problem for Obama or Holder. Obama sat in the pews at the church of Jeremiah Wright who damned America and white people every Sunday, but took no action until Wright's sermons were exposed to the public. Obama referred to his own grandmother as "a typical white person" (his version of "you people"). But it is clear that in order to keep dividing people so ethnic groups will continue to vote Democrat, it is vital that conservatives and Republicans appear as racists and black people must be shown always as victims, never as oppressors. Shirley Sherrod got caught in the middle of that. First she was punished, but now she will be rewarded.

Obama got caught with his racist pants down in the matter of the Skip Gates arrest, but quickly pivoted, told everyone they misunderstood his remarks, and had a jolly beer fest at the White House which included, horrors, the racist cop who dared to arrest a black Harvard professor. In other words, Obama got caught making black racist remarks, and since he can't fire himself, he had to enlist the help of the MSM to spin the whole thing into a simple misunderstanding. The left has spent nearly two years trying to prove that Fox News makes outlandish charges of racial favoritism in the Obama administration, and this Sherrod matter was likely to prove them right.

So, fleeing in terror, the Obama administration fired one of their own leftists to avoid an embarrassment rather than taking the time to see if she was actually guilty of anything. Screwing over a white farmer is OK, maybe even desirable in their minds, but getting caught talking about it is bad for their post-racial image. Off with her head! Imagine the relief they must have felt when it turned out that the unedited video could be turned into something neutral, or even positive. But imagine their additional embarrassment in having fired a black woman. So, Obama, who swears he had no part in the decision, has the Secretary of Agriculture fall on his sword. And even that was a quibble. He wasn't "wrong," he was just "hasty."

I can't help concluding that the Obamists are scared spitless about race. Not racism itself, but the very open and honest discussion of race relations that Holder claimed to want. His idea of the discussion of race is "America is racist, white people are oppressors, as a victim class blacks can't be racists, and let's keep this all off the front pages of the New York Times." End of discussion. Sherrod's sin was that she admitted her own racism (even if it was in the past, maybe), and that blows the one-sided "discussion." Holder doesn't know the difference between a discussion and an ongoing soliloquy.

Well, as you all know, this is a racist, right-wing rag of a blog, so it is inevitable that I would continue the clarion call of white supremacy by blaming the Obamists for the very pickle they got themselves into. Well, then, please explain the following from my old nemesis, Jonathan Chait at The New Republic:

"If there is a single idea the Obama administration most fears, it is that the Obama presidency systematically favors blacks over white. The Obama administration is able to hang tough in the face of many right-wing charges. Anything that carries the whiff of racism, though, and they'll run for the hills." I guess I'm not the only one who thinks they're cowards.