by Glenn Littrell
UPDATED and REPOSTED from 7-25-2010:
In another indignant outrage over a misrepresented account reminiscent of both the Rev. Wright and Shirley Sherrod(below) incidents the right wing has gone bonkers over the misrepresentation of an inspirational Easter Sunday Sermon. Why the attack on the Reverend giving the sermon? Two reasons:
- The Reverend is the Presidents current minister and the President was in the building, and
- The Reverend mentioned the ‘right’, in the case the more specific ‘religious right’
Obama, plus a Reverend, plus a comment that could be misquoted, misrepresented or edited for convenience = a right-wing feeding frenzy.
Fortunately there was one Conservative blogger who was in attendance at the sermon who has stepped forward and called out the attackers in a sensible and responsible manor:
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Obama Pastor Quoted Accurately About 'Religious Right' In Easter Sermon
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What really happened at St. John’s Church on Easter Sunday
Original Post::
In relating a story of personal awakening and realization Shirley Sherrod was targeted and maligned by the right-wing in there never-ending quest to incite fear and hatred to further their ideological agenda.
Faced with continued criticism of racist elements in their loose coalition of ‘Tea Parties’ the right-wingers and Tea Partiers sought to defend themselves from those criticisms, not by dealing with those criticism or the elements mentioned, but by repeated attempts to paint their critics as even more racist. In these attacks the right-wing propaganda machine known as FOXNews and the right-wing bloggers and conservative radio host continue to prove that they’ve never met a smear, unchecked fact or deceptively edited video they couldn’t use.
The Tea Party itself is currently a very diverse and broad-based group*. There is little doubt that it pulls much of its support from disenchanted conservatives but it also contains a fair share of disenchanted Democrats, moderates and even African-Americans, so to call the Tea Party as a whole racist is at the least, debatable. On the other hand there is little doubt that racist behavior has been observed and it is in response to these observation that the NAACP and others have demanded that the Tea Party purge themselves of these elements or openly denounce them. It never ceases to amaze me that the hardest thing for some organizations to do is to acknowledge the possibility of extremist in their ranks and denounce them. In response to the NAACP’s demand instead of denouncing racist behavior Mark Williams of the Tea Party Express posted a vile and racist letter, supposedly as satire, in which he denounced the NAACP as racist. Almost immediately Mark Williams and the Tea Party Express were no longer considered part of the Tea Party movement. Since this was not the first questionable event by Mark Williams wouldn’t the Tea Party have been better served to denounce his previous activities and save themselves this embarrassment? In the wake of Mark Williams obviously racist letter where was the instantaneous condemnation by FOXNews? | note: For the Tea Party the irony is that it is presently experiencing a problem common to the Democratic Party in that their wide ranging diversity has opened the door for the fringe element to move willy nilly amongst the more sane but equally impassioned element of the party. This is complicated by the fact that it is governed by the tactics and laser focus of the Republican Party which relies on the use of fear tactics to rally their base by arousing the more extreme elements of the right-wing. In other words the racist elements are there and will continue to embarrass the movement. This embarrassment, along with the inevitable narrowing of the Tea Party’s platform, will soon cause it to loose its broad base and become just another element of the right-wing. The question is when? This November? Before 2012? |
All words, names and phrases highlighted and in bold are links to background, evidence or related articles and information. just click them.
Mark Williams demonstrated the moronic tactic of answering an accusation of racism with the childish and repetitive chant of ‘no I’m not, you are’. Accusing the accuser to divert attention from the original accusations. It appears that it isn’t important whether or not they’re racist as long as they can find someone who is more racist. This may explain why FOXNews has never met a case of ‘reverse racism’ it didn’t like. This is why they get more upset over an accusation of racism than they do an act of racism. It isn’t that they are upset over being called a racist as much as they are being the only ones called a racist.
This debacle was then followed by another right-wing blogger who, instead of defending the Tea Party, sought to issue the same childish chant of ‘no I’m not, you are’. Andrew Breitbart, of BigGovernment [a blog] announced and posted an edited video of Shirley Sherrod’s speech to demonstrate the presence of racism in the NAACP. This is the same Andrew Breitbart, who posted edited video to support attacks on ACORN. The difference this time is that Andrew Breitbart did not have access or control of the unedited version of the event and as a result he and FOXNews ended up with egg on their face when the full version of the video came out. Also facing embarrassment from there own knee-jerk reactions were the NAACP, the USDA (Sherrod’s employer), Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack,(her boss) and by connection the White House.
While I sometimes consider MSNBC nearly as extreme as FOXNews [in the opposite direction] I believe these two videos will better explain the nature of FOXNews and its brand of ‘News’.
The hatefulness, fear mongering and demonizing that passes for journalism and conversation on FOXNews and conservative radio has to stop. This is not the first time FOXNews has promoted a story that, along with the facts that where used to distort it, was later revealed to be untrue. The irony is that because of the knee jerk reaction of the USDA it then becomes OK for FOXNews to criticize the Whitehouse for Mrs. Sherrod's quick dismissal, even though we all know that if they didn’t respond quickly, if there had been any hesitation, FOXNews would be criticizing them for moving to slowly as they have done in the past.
And don’t think it stops here. After repeatedly slamming Sherrod before the truth came-out the right-wing/FOXNews propaganda machine has already forgotten about their deceit and gone after Mrs. Sherrod again for… well… not disappearing fast enough after they slandered her.
When faced with an accusation of Racism there are only two kinds of people that would defend themselves by trying to accuse others of racism.
One is a fool and the other is a racist.
To view the full, unedited video of Shirley Sherrod click here.
by Glenn Littrell
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