According to a Rasmussen poll , voters are less optimistic about race relations than they were a year ago. And there is plenty of blame to go around for that. Only 36% believe relations between blacks and whites are getting better, down from over 60% last summer. Those who believe relations are getting worse are up. For whites, there are obvious reasons to think that race relations are getting worse. The commander and chief claimed that local police “acted stupidly” when arresting a black Harvard professor last year. The Department of Justice has swept under the rug a complaint about voter intimidation, where the offender was black. A prosecutor believes that the DoJ is no longer race neutral. On the flip side it is no wonder that blacks think race relations are going downhill. The media is full of talking heads claiming there is a racist under everyone’s bed. And that gosh darned Tea Party is just too white for comfort. I’m sure Andrew Breitbart’s stunt against Shirley Sherrod did not help either. Oddly enough, it would seem that liberals, who like to think of themselves as those who support improved race relations, may actually be making them worse, by overusing the accusation of racism to the point where it no longer has much meaning. But as noted above, there are plenty of culprits responsible for the current trend. Filed under: Politics
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Shock: Race Relations Worse Under Race Baiting President
AP – Shirley Sherrod, ousted from the Agriculture Department during a racial firestorm that embarrassed the Obama administration, rejected an offer to return to the USDA on Tuesday. But at a cordial news conference with the man who asked her to leave — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack — she said she may do consulting work for him on racial issues.
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Ousted worker Sherrod rejects return to Ag agency
(AP)
David Letterman and Rachel Maddow demonstrate beautifully how galaxies separate left and right: RELATED : ” The Other Side of Shirley Sherrod .”
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Rachel Maddow on Breitbart and Fox News
**Written by Doug Powers Media Matters was all about getting the “full context” of Andrew Breitbart’s Shirley Sherrod video from day one . From that controversy, everybody walked away with a good refresher course in the importance of “full context” in the name of honest debate — everybody except Media Matters. From Media-Ite by way of Sister Toldjah : Let’s end the week with some Shirley Sherrod-ing – editing a clip to make it sound like a person is saying something that is actually the complete opposite of what they’re saying. In this case, the offender is Media Matters, which tries to prove that Glenn Beck’s radio co-hosts were saying Keith Olbermann was responsible for the deadly Manchester workplace shooting. Here was Media Matters’ (sic’ed) headline: “Beck sidekicks Gray and Burguiere: Keith Olberman and media responsible for Manchester shooting.” The sidekicks are Pat Gray and Stu Burguiere, who co-hosted with Beck out today. And why did Media Matters write this? Well, because that is what Gray and Burguiere said – at first. Gray: “Obviously Keith Olbermann is responsible for those eight people dead.” And Burguiere: “A guy like that who’s a little bit unstable anyway can’t help but react to the constant pressure of Keith Olbermann on the air on MSNBC and all of MSNBC talking about all the racism there is out there.” But the problem is, the co-hosts were being sarcastic, to make a point. A minute later they get serious, and Stu says “Keith Olbermann was not responsible for any shooting,” but that part is conveniently out of the Media Matters audio. Because Media Matters cut the audio right before they make it clear. Media Matters issued a correction and altered the title when their attempted Sherrodding of Beck’s people was discovered: CORRECTION: The original headline on this clip did not make clear that Beck’s co-hosts were being satirical when they linked MSNBC host Keith Olbermann to the Manchester shooting. The original clip also did not include their subsequent statements that Olbermann was not responsible for the shooting. Media Matters regrets the error. Even without the “full context” of the recording it was painfully obvious that Burguiere and Gray were being sarcastic, but this is where Media Matters often gets tripped up. If you’ve read the things I write for any length of time, you know that sarcasm takes up a good portion of my tool kit. Satire is like a knock-knock joke — there can be a point to it but there’s never anybody actually at the door. However, if I were to try to tell Media Matters a “knock-knock” joke, instead of saying “who’s there” and then maybe getting a laugh (heaven forbid), they’d get up, open the door, see nobody there, and then write an article entitled “Mean Right Wing Prankster Strikes Again.” Either that or Media Matters purposefully ignored the obvious and were fully aware they were trying to score cheap out-of-context political points — but that can’t be, because it would mean they engaged in the same behavior they claim to abhor. However, it isn’t a stretch to assume that if a Media Matters writer published a piece entitled “Glenn Beck co-hosts use satire to point out ridiculousness of blaming media for lone deranged killers,” George Soros would put a stop on his or her paycheck. It would also directly contradict other Media Matters pieces, such as “Beck’s incendiary angst is dangerously close to having a body count.” Here’s the full Burguiere/Gray segment: **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
Excerpt from:
Media Matters Caught Context-Editing a Tape — Hey, Where Have We Heard That Before?
**Written by Doug Powers Howard “Yeearrrgh!” Dean was on Fox News this morning with Chris Wallace discussing the Shirley Sherrod thing, and Dean reiterated simple truths such as the sun rises in the east, kids shouldn’t run with scissors and that Fox News is racist. Wallace asked Dean if he was aware that the Sherrod video did not air on Fox News until after the Obama administration had already crapcanned Sherrod. Dean stumbled after the question because it looks like he temporarily forgot he wasn’t being interviewed by CNN, but the answer of course is irrelevant to Howard and the talking points he’s peddling. Dean went on to say that the White House over-reacted because they were afraid Sherrod “was about to go on Glenn Beck.” Now there’s a non media-driven administration for you. Gingrich scored with this: “If the Obama administration is this afraid of Fox News, how do they deal with the Iranians?” It kind of makes you wonder what Ahmadinejad could have coerced the Obama administration into doing if he had a certain video (as “out of context” as it may be) and was threatening to leak it to Glenn Beck — but why get bogged down by the larger, more important picture when you’ve got Republicans to beat in November? Allahpundit at Hot Air adds… Another question per his insistence that what Fox did with the tape was “absolutely racist”: Is Dean suggesting that O’Reilly and Hannity wouldn’t have aired an embarrassing excerpt from a speech delivered by a white liberal? I recall Glenn Beck having a field day with that clip of the very white Anita Dunn talking about Mao. The liberal line on Fox, I thought, is that they’ll use any weapon to hand to attack the left and Obama, not just lefty minorities. This one’s more effective, I guess, however true or untrue it may be. (h/t Weasel Zippers ) **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
It’s worth a read, at Politico : Here’s the optimistic case: The embarrassment of the Shirley Sherrod story — with its toxic convergence of partisan combat and media recklessness — will be a tipping point. It will remind journalists and politicians alike that personal reputations and professional credibility are at stake, and a bit more restraint and responsibility are in order. Here’s the realistic case: Get ready for more of the same. Every president since the first George Bush has delivered an inaugural address including as a main theme an appeal for more civility and less cynical conflict. Barack Obama is the fourth in a row to be thwarted in this mission — frustrated by forces that have grown far stronger over the past two decades and aren’t abating any time soon. That is because there are two big incentives that drive behavior at the intersection where politics meets media. One is public attention. The other is money. Experience shows there’s a lot more of both to be had by engaging in extreme partisan behavior. The Sherrod controversy is only a somewhat exaggerated version of the new normal. The usual signatures of this new breed of incentive-driven uproar were also on display in another of this week’s controversies, over JournoList, the defunct liberal listserv. Both stories featured sharp personal attacks against political opponents. Both revolved around indignant claims from people claiming to be victims of bias and the corrupt ideological agendas of their opponents — all the while stoking and profiting from the bias and conspiratorial instincts of partisans on their own side. Responsible people in power and in the mainstream media are only beginning to grapple with this new environment — in which facts hardly matter except as they can be used as weapon or shield in a nonstop ideological war. Do you dive into the next fact-lite partisan outrage — or do you stay out and risk looking slow, stupid or irrelevant? No one is close to figuring it out. So, despite a new burst of hand-wringing and talk of “lessons learned,” many commentators predicted in interviews that the situation involving Shirley Sherrod would soon enough be regarded as merely another footnote in the Age of Rage. RTWT . I don’t think we’re in any new age that’s newer than any collapse of what political scientists used to call “objective journalism.” It’s just a faster news-cycle these days, with more participants to add to the spin.
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Age of Ragin’ Partisan Journalism
At Politics Daily (via Memeorandum ). I love this passage: Q : How does the Shirley Sherrod story relate to the JournoList story where liberal journalist Spencer Ackerman suggested deflecting attention from the Reverend Wright story, which was hurting Obama, by wrongly accusing a prominent conservative of being a racist? A : That collusion to slander by Ackerman — and the sin of omission of the other 400 people on the list — to abide by that calculated evil — shows that we have a tremendous problem in journalism today — and then they come and ask me about my tactics. I’m trying to end JournoList collusion that goes well beyond the [listserve's founder] Washington Post’s Ezra Klein’s 400 friends and collaborators, and that includes Politico and Bloomberg. Where are they firing people? Where are the questions about this monumental act of journalistic fraud? Where are the mass firings?
Mitch Blatt writes a weekly column that you can subscribe to at MitchBlatt.com Let me be clear: I don’t think Shirley Sherrod should have been fired, nor should Andrew Breitbart have published the video clip of her speech without publishing the full video context of her speech. But Shirley Sherrod is just one of many casualties of
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Liberals Learn About Race-Baiting…
