Not the Wright Decision

Lot's of racial tension stories in the news lately. Heh, sounds like an opening bit to a Leno monologue. The whole Shirley Sherrod story hits on the heels of the NAACP vs Tea Party, Mark William's racist satire, the New Black Panther story, and Liberal mainstream media caught conspiring to hide racist pastor Jeremiah Wright story to avoid making Obama look back.

Let's start with Shirley Sherrod. She was the Director of Rural Development for the Department of Agriculture for the state of Georgia. Back in March, she gave a speech at a convention for the NAACP in which she said she always tried to help black people when they had financial problems with their farms. Then one day, a white person came in looking for help, and she chose not to give him as much help, and instead, gave him the bare minimum assistance required and sent him to a white lawyer--a member of his own kind for help. Now, if she's getting paid as a state worker to help people in need, turning away white people is pretty darn racist. This is where the video clip of her speaking ends and it's since gone viral--though I'd never even heard of it until last night--in part mostly by conservative websites like biggovernment.com who also helped the ACORN videos get big.

So the video gets out, and within a day, the NAACP calls for her to resign. According to Sherrod, Obama's people were making harassing comments to her on the phone and one told her to pull over to the side of the road immediately, take out her Blackberry and use it to send in her resignation which she finally did. She said on CNN she was told if she didn't do it right then and there, she would be mentioned on Glen Beck and condemned as a racist and Obama desperately needed to avoid any more race related controversies right now. So Sherrod gets the sacrificial boot for being a racist(and based only on what she said on that tape--rightfully so).

Why is the NAACP so eager to get involved? They recently passed a resolution to condemn the Tea Party movement as being racist. The Tea Party fought back, bringing up the recent story of New Black Panther voter intimidation dismissal. Then Mark Williams, founder of the Tea Party Express, writes some offensive "satirical" racist blog entry joking that black people are lazy and live off white people and the NAACP point to that as evidence of racism. The Tea Party condemn Mark Williams post, saying he doesn't speak for them. Blah, blah. In short, Tea Party and NAACP go after each other and leave equal shares of blood on the floor. Newt Gengrich gets in the news for making the interesting suggestion that the Tea Party and NAACP should forget all that nonsense and join forces. Wouldn't that be interesting? Have I said lately I hope Newt is our next President?

Also recently in the news, The Daily Caller broke a story about a now defunct site called Journolist in which members from major mainstream media sources conspired to hide the Jeremiah Wright story because it was obviously embarrassing to Obama. Journalist Spencer Ackerman, who's appeared on CNN and various other networks, even suggested to his media friends they should pick a conservative at random and call them racists to distract from the Jeremiah Wright story and let conservative journalists suffer the consequences of going after the left. Other journalists are quoted as saying the best path is to just ignore the story. If you remember when it "broke," you'd know that's exactly what happened.

And, I mean, it was kind of a big story... or would have been had anyone covered it. Here you have Barack Obama's pastor to the Trinity United Church of Christ where Obama was a member of until recently, saying hateful things against jews and whites and Obama, who at one point, donated $20k to the church, can't disassociate himself well from it. And nearly all the mainstream media refused to cover the story. Fox covered it, naturally. ABC covered it briefly. And when ABC covered it, they were blasted by the other journalists on this private message board called Journolist.

None of this should be surprising. Fox broke the ACORN story in which employees were caught giving advice on how to smuggle underaged prostitutes into the country illegally. The brother of the founder of ACORN embezzled a million dollars of tax payer dollars through ACORN, and ACORN used tax payer dollars to help elect Obama and to lobby for his causes(instead of using it to find housing for people which is what their contract was for). Obama was once a lawyer working for ACORN. The other networks eventually gave token coverage to the story long after it broke.

Obama's Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones... only Fox covered him. Van Jones was quoted saying on camera that Republicans are assholes, that it's only white kids that shoot up schools--never black kids, and that big companies pollute in black neighborhoods on purpose. He also signed a petition claiming that George Bush planned and orchestrated 9/11. Again, none of the other media outlets covered this story. And now we see some evidence that the mainstream media have atleast in part, been caught conspiring not to cover important stories if they make Obama look bad. I actually think it's less sinister than that. I think mainstream media is less likely to cover stories that make a popular President look bad because their viewers don't want to see them. If your market doesn't want to buy what you're making, you go out of business. But Obama's popularity has dropped, so that's changing. Obama knows it, which is why he went from freakishly overexposed, to rarely interviewed anymore. I think the mainstream media is a lot more likely to run negative Obama stories now, which has got to have Obama nervous lately.

Ok, so Obama eventually said of Wright that he strongly condemns his racist words and was saddened and angered by them. I think that's probably true, but I'm not buying that Obama didn't know Wright was like that from the beginning. I mean, we all have a racist relative that we still talk to even if we don't exactly approve of what they have to say about some things. So personally, I think the news should cover Wright, but it's not a big deal in my opinion in regards to my opinion of Obama. I don't think Obama is a racist. He has overtly racist people around him because he doesn't pick his people very well and he's not a very good leader. But that doesn't make him a racist by association.

Ok, so back to Sherrod. Obama wanted to avoid another headache. The NAACP, no doubt, was tired of taking damage from the Tea Party hornet's nest they stirred up. Both parties wanted this Sherrod story to go away before it ended up on Glen Beck--which tells you how much power Beck has over Obama. And really, if I was Obama, I wouldn't have such a glass jaw and worry about what people think about me. I'd just do my thing and let the people that aren't for me be damned. But anyway, Beck did cover the story, but he took the exact opposite position that Obama and his people seemed to assume he would. I'm a fan of Beck, and to me, Beck's take on it is pretty much what he always does. Beck asks more questions than he gives answers, which is something I like about him.

Beck watched the rest of the tape. See, most people had only seen the beginning where she said she didn't want to help the poor farmer because he was white. The extended version of the tape shows that she goes on to say of this incident that happened 24 years ago, that she realized she was in error and that the white farmer needed help just as much as a poor black farmer, so she changed her mind and helped him after all, going over and above her job to save the man's farm. So she might have been a racist at one point 24 years ago, but changed her ways. Beck, instead of blasting Shirley Sherrod, blasted the Obama knee jerk decision to pressure her resignation based on bad information. Beck also played the tape of Obama speaking of the Boston police that acted "stupidly" before Obama had all the facts just to remind ous of Obama's history on knee jerk reactions.

Ok, so obviously I'm not an Obama fan. But I still don't think he's a closet racist. I do, however, think Obama has had to deal with a lot more crap because he's black. Not so much because crap is thrusted upon him by the mainstream because he's black, but I think black people in general have to walk a difficult path between embracing mainstream culture without being a "sellout." Case in point, if McCain had appointed a white guy czar who had made racist comments in the past, McCain would have full support from everyone in firing the guy as soon as he knew. It would have been clear cut. But Obama actually got backlash from firing Van Jones from his Liberal base. Isn't that weird? Howard Dean, whoch was the Chairman of the Democrat party at the time even praised Van Jones and said he shouldn't have been fired. Again, that would not have happened if all the colors and political leanings were reversed.

There was a poll that showed that 29% of blacks supported the racist, anti white comments made by Jeremiah Wright. Now 29% is a minority, but it's still a pretty high number of African Americans that agree with such horrible comments. It's almost one out of three. Isn't that a little frightening? Reverse racism is just more accepted in society. The point I'm trying to make is Obama's hands are tied in condemning "reverse racism." He seems to only do it if the mainstream is upset by it. I think most people would agree Obama is a terribly weak leader who has trouble making decisions about anything. And when he does act quickly and decisively, it goes badly.

Sherrod's boss has since offered her a new job and apologized. Interestingly enough, all the major news outlets are covering this story. Again, Obama's popularity has slipped, so the negative stories start to make it on air.