__
__
James Fallows sums up the better angels of my nature:
I agree with my colleagues Coates, Sullivan, Green, Ambinder, plus most of the civilized world, in finding this episode nauseating. Silver lining: the possibility that for the Breitbart/Fox attack machine this could be the long-awaited “Have you no sense of decency?” moment. I disagree with my colleague Clive Crook that it’s hard to tell whether the people who first aired and harped on the deceptive video (Breitbart/Fox), or the officials who responded in belief it was true (ie, Ag Secretary Vilsack), are the more culpable. As Marc Ambinder pointed out, it’s easy: Vilsack’s now-revoked decision to fire Sherrod “was a good faith [though rash] mistake based on the bad faith of others.”
__
Comparing Joe ‘Simple J. Malarkey‘ McCarthy and Andrew ‘Danegeld’ Breitbart really highights our modern ‘First As Tragedy, Then As Farce’ culture, doesn’t it?
Darius
I agree with Fallows. If nothing else, the name “Shirley Sherrod” will soon become synonymous with “phony right-wing smear”.
r€nato
The name “Andrew Breitbart” deserves to be synonymous with, “goat-fucking child molester.”
Tom Hilton
This Fallows post exemplifies everything I admire about his writing in general: perceptiveness, proportion, and a fundamental sense of decency.
Incidentally, the Simple J. Malarkey series was pretty bold and controversial at the time. One of the newspapers that carried Pogo threatened to dump the strip if Simple J. ever showed his face again; Walt Kelly just had the character put a sack over his head.
SiubhanDuinne
I love love LOVE that Fallows captioned a photo of Joe McCarthy with:
That’s fuckin classic.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tom Hilton:
Walt Kelly was both of his time and decades ahead of his time.
When I was quite a little girl I had the great pleasure of meeting him in person, and he sketched a drawing of my very favorite “Pogo” character, the adorable Grundoon, the baby groundchuck, who wore a diaper and spoke in tongues.
If I knew how to link (yes, I know you keep telling me how and it keeps not working, sorry) I would embed an image of Grundoon for you.
As it is: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&gs_rfai=&q=grundoon&tbs=isch:1
bkny
ot, but there was a hilarious clip on hardball of charlie rangel busting on a very rude luke russert — rangel telling russert he asked a stupid question; what channel was he from; and then kaboom — this question shows how low the media has sunk.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Lightfart, of course is being 100% mature about the whole thing.
General Stuck
The fucking wingnuts are bad enough, but what makes it like visiting the all night dentist are the pumas and firebaggers that come by to remind us that Obama iz de pits. It is not enough to just say Vilsack and Obama screwed up by reacting too quickly, for which they have apologized and made amends. It is that they are only concerned there is a pattern here, which is btw, the very thing I heard Hannity and his goons saying on the radio last night. They are the wingnuts mini me’s and I will do my best to show them the door to eternal inHanity.
Davis X. Machina
@General Stuck: Forget it, Jake. It’s Progressivetown.
David in NY
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Comments in your link mentioned Ann Coulter, and I realized I hardly ever hear about her any more. Had made me wonder if someone had Stepfordized her, and made her into Sarah Palin, but apparently she’s still around. I guess there’s only one niche for a girl cheerleader on the wingnut bench, and Palin’s grabbed it.
Beauzeaux
I sure wish Walt Kelly were still around to give us his take on the ridiculousness of our news media.
David in NY
@BR:
Thank you.
SiubhanDuinne
@Beauzeaux:
Or Dale Messick. Where’s Brenda Starr when we need her?
Something Fabulous
@BR: Thanks. I was in fact just wondering about this myself. I would be happy to see posts even about how any of the things listed are flawed, or problematic; it doesn’t need to be rah-rah, at all. But I am missing the broader discussion.
DougJ
Fallows and the rest of the Atlantic crew are still neocon fellow-travelers. Let’s see if they’re as nauseated by calls to start bombing Iran.
Davis X. Machina
@SiubhanDuinne: Brenda Starr took the buyout — so, downsized, but living better on her Newspaper Guild/CWA pension than any of us will in our old ages.
Tonal Crow
breitbart (v.): 1. To defame a person by selectively editing her words, then widely promoting the edited version as a fair representation of the unedited text, speech, etc. Compare “ratfuck”; see also “foxify”.
2. To create material tending to breitbart a person.
foxify (v.): To hype breitbarted material.
ellaesther
@SiubhanDuinne: Seconded, and I haven’t even seen it yet!
/quickly toggles over
ETA: Now I’ve seen it, and my goodness me, kids, that’s the way it’s done! Brilliant.
ellaesther
Since you did say Open Thread, I’mma jack it a little:
Egged on by one Mr. John Cole, yesterday I posted one of those “hey, guess what, Obama’s doing ok!” posts that we on the left occasionally have to post in order to remind ourselves of reality.
If you’re interested! The state of our union.
Resident Firebagger
@General Stuck: It shouldn’t be too much to ask that a Democratic administration be capable of recognizing that Andrew Breitbart is a piece of shit. His (latest) vile smear does nothing if Vilsack doesn’t wet his pants in the first place.
If you folks weren’t all so invested in Obama-is-the-best-we-can-possibly-do, maybe you’d accept this…
Zifnab
@DougJ:
That’ll only happen if they stop wanting to hear the sounds of their own voices.
Brendan
Given the nerdish nature of some of John’s commentary I thought it would be appropriate to note the apocalyptic clowning of Westboro Baptist Church picketers at Comic-Con.
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/07/22/super-heroes-vs-the-westboro-baptist-church/
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNO-TOAD.
John Cole
@Brendan: I saw those over at Pharyngula. My favorite- “Magnets- How the %$!@ do they work!”
Keith
At least this results in Breitbart being interviewed more, which lets regular folk actually get to see how crazy the guy is. I mean, he really has what appears to be legitimate psychological issues (I have seen him arguing with someone where he just randomly goes ‘AAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!’ when he doesn’t get his way. Clinical stuff, and now it is out there for the rest of the world to see.
BTW: Can BJ *please* add the X-UA-Compatible IE7/IE8 metatag to the HTML header? IE8 currently has to render the site twice, and the javascript that is controlling layout is painfully slow…takes me 30 seconds to be able to start reading the page without the site blanking out due to bad markup.
lawguy
I am not really ready to rate the total awfulness of all those involved in this. I have enough contempt to go around for Bietbart, the media, Obama and his people and the NAACP. The only one who came out of this with her reputation was Sherrod.
When the going has gotten tough in the past Obama has dumped those who were under attack, just like he dumped Sherrod. Am I suposed to ignore that. The fact that the truth came out in a way that couldn’t be denied put the pressure on him (or his) to rehire her immediately, although apparently for a different job (I will bbe interested to see what it is).
I am not ready to rate sins: is it venial or mortal? Who is the most fallen? The Obama people acted true to their nature. I didn’t vote for Biertbart, I voted for Obama and as silly and hopeless as it is, I still expect better from him.
dmsilev
@Brendan: The one thing that can truly unify us as a country: Hatred of Fred Phelps and his clan.
Good to see that the mockers were out in force. I like the ‘God Hates Jedi’ sign held up by a Trekkie.
dms
Mnemosyne
@Resident Firebagger:
Andrew Breitbart is a piece of shit that the MSM believes implicitly and gives lots of airtime to. It’s not like this was confined to Fox. ABC has been running pieces defending Breitbart all day.
Don’t you remember how Jake Tapper practically broke down in tears in defense of “his colleagues” when the Obama administration tried to argue that Fox News wasn’t really a news channel? Breitbart is One Of Their Own. Ignoring him was not really an option, because he was spreading the disease to every media outlet out there. The man was on Charlie fucking Rose last night, for fuck’s sake.
Mnemosyne
@lawguy:
You mean when Van Jones signed a Troofer petition?
Gee, I can’t imagine why he got dropped after that came out.
Allison W.
Ms. Sherrod talks to the president:
She even invited him to her hometown. So resident firebagger, if the victim in this case – Sherrod, not you, not the left – can forgive him then its time you moved on to another reason to trash Obama.
http://www.newser.com/story/96236/sherrod-gets-call-from-obama.html
Sly
@Brendan:
That’s the best stuff I’ve seen from nerds since John Hodgman at the 2009 Radio and TV Correspondents’ Dinner.
Brendan
@John a few of my friends were involved in the counter-protest, and I’m very proud of them.
@dmsilev the Starfleet officer is one of my boys.
SiubhanDuinne
I am confused.
Surprise surprise surprise.
No, really. There are two or three posts in this comment thread addressed to “BR” but when I click on the link to see what “BR” had to say for him/herself, nothing happens. And when I scroll through the entire comments thread, there’s nothing by anyone called “BR.”
Am I doin’ it rong?
Bubblegum Tate
@SiubhanDuinne:
A misunderstood American hero who was victim of a vile LIEbrul slime machine!
[/wingnut]
Mark S.
@Brendan:
I liked “God Hates F
agsred Phelps.”PTirebiter
Holy crap! I was just now listening to the NBC nightly news in the background when I heard Brian Williams intro a piece with Luke Russert at a Charlie Rangel presser. I got to the tv just in time to watch Rangel rip Lil’ Luke an new one after Luke asked the Senator if he though he “would lose his job” over the ethics investigation. It went on forever while the other reporters just shuffled and stared. I can’t believe NBC aired it.
Elisabeth
@Allison W.:
It was a seven minute phone call; I’d guess some folks will find fault with it’s brevity. And tardiness.
Tom Hilton
@SiubhanDuinne: Wow! How lucky that you got to meet him. I grew up on Pogo, and Walt Kelly has always been one of my heroes.
Bob L
@Resident Firebagger: Well when the GOP takes control of the House come next November you will have your wish thanks your’ fellow traveler Bachmann.
So government will be paralyzed over continuous witch hunts and fishing expeditions until the GOP can work themselves into another impeachment. Just what every progressive dreams of, isn’t it? What a dreamy day, you can sit there on your keyster and say “told you so, they’re all the same”.
BR
@SiubhanDuinne:
No, my comments got eated by the WP beast.
I was trying to link (and did for a bit) to booman’s list of Obama’s accomplishments this week. I give up on the link, so go to booman’s site…
ellaesther
@SiubhanDuinne: Me too! I did exactly and precisely that same thing! Hmm. I suspect magic. Ghosts? Ghosts.
ellaesther
@BR: Oh. Here you are! Not a ghost.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Davis X. Machina:
This really deserves to be added to the rotating set of taglines.
cyntax
Just saw this over at the Hunting of the Snark; aimai drops a daisycutter on McMegan:
There’s more; it’s 100% full of win.
Omnes Omnibus
@ellaesther: It is obviously Obama’s fault.
Allison W.
@lawguy:
So I guess part of their nature is to immediately admit and apologize for their mistakes? The Sherrod case, the response to the oil spill, the Christmas day bombing plot, etc.
A major complaint from the left about bush is that he never owned up to anything. When Obama makes mistakes and apologizes for it, the argument then becomes that he shouldn’t have done it in the first place.
You don’t expect better, you expect perfection. He’s made mistakes and he’s going to make more. That’s life, he’s human.
merrinc
@Brendan:
You’ve obviously raised them right. (Unless one of them is dressed as a Klingon, in which I have to take some of that back.)
Sad_Dem
Here it is–not hard to find:
http://www.blackfarmers.org/
http://www.blackfarmers.org/html/pr_020707.html
“Eight years ago the US Department of Agriculture settled the largest civil rights suit in American history seemingly ending the decades-long struggle by Black farmers who were discriminated against by all levels of the USDA.”
“Thousands of families lost their farms and their livelihoods because of discrimination and farm bureau gatekeepers who prevented Black farmers from accessing federal grants and loans that were created to help sustain and grow family farms. Applications were not reviewed on their merits, and in many cases they were even thrown in the trash.”
“At the turn of the century there were a million Black farmers in the US , but today there are less than 18,000. This is a travesty and the government played a big role in forcing Black farm families from their professions.”
“Today many of the Black farmers who did not have their cases heard by the USDA and the Department of Justice have new hope. When these bills become law – and the President previously told me he will support it – these farmers will have their cases heard on the merits.”
Sad_Dem
http://www.blackfarmers.org/html/pr_020707.html
“Eight years ago the US Department of Agriculture settled the largest civil rights suit in American history seemingly ending the decades-long struggle by Black farmers who were discriminated against by all levels of the USDA.”
Tom Hilton
@DougJ: Um, no–not in any definition of ‘fellow travelers’ of which I’m aware. Fallows and Coates have never been sympathetic toward the whole neocon project. (Sully is another story, but we all know that one.)
Now, maybe you’re stretching the term ‘fellow traveler’ to mean writing for the same publication. Okay–that’s redefining to the point of meaninglessness, but let’s set that aside. The real question is: why on earth would you think that kind of lame-ass guilt by association bullshit could ever conceivably be even the slightest bit useful for any positive purpose?
Mnemosyne
@Elisabeth:
Well, it took him a whole 48 hours to call her! At that point, he shouldn’t have even bothered at all.
/firebagger
mr. whipple
That’s a beautiful piece of music. :)
Allison W.
@Elisabeth:
lol. of course. the article did say he was trying to reach her last night, but I guess the argument then becomes he’s the president so he could have gotten in touch with her if he wanted to – yes?
Omnes Omnibus
@cyntax: Damn.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tom Hilton:
Yeah, me too :-)
I was very lucky. My family owned a bookstore and I occasionally went to booksellers’ conventions with my mom, and there were usually a lot of really well known authors there, as I now understand stimply flogging their books at the publishers’ displays, but of course at the time I thought they all came around out of the goodness of their hearts, and what an interesting coincidence that they just happened to have new books out that they would autograph. My mother had an enormous collection of personally-inscribed first editions thanks to all those conventions!
Anyhow, Walt Kelly was at one of those, presumably with a new collection of comics or possibly “Songs of the Pogo” or something, and Simon & Schuster had him doing sketches for everyone and autographing them.
I have no idea what ever happened to my Grundoon. Haven’t seen it since my mom died. I blame my sister . . . .
Sad_Dem
Sorry, I was using Firefox, and it really cannot handle this site anymore. I couldn’t see the posts. Here’s more: On April 14, 1999, Federal District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman approved a settlement agreement and consent decree resolving a class action discrimination suit (commonly known as the Pigford case) between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and black farmers. The suit claimed that the agency had discriminated against black farmers on the basis of race and failed to investigate or properly respond to complaints from 1983-1997.
ellaesther
@SiubhanDuinne: If you come over to my place and put me in the same sentence as Rachel Maddow again, I may have to personally send you your own pony. (Oh, to even be followed by her on the Twitter machine! Sigh. Rachel…).
El Cid
I like it how when nothing came out of the $80 trillion the right wing spent on investigating Whitewater they all learned their lessons and were publicly shamed by the billion dollar media which had been printing just as much of this worthless nonsense they could.
SiubhanDuinne
@BR:
Thanks! Glad to know you’re a real person and I wasn’t just hallucinating!
I’ll check out booman if you’ll check out ellaesther’s blog (link to it by clicking on her BJ handle). She does something very similar in her latest post, and it’s an encouraging and reassuring thing to see.
Edit to ::wave:: at ellaesther
SiubhanDuinne
@cyntax:
Saw that last night. aimai is full of awesome.
ellaesther
@BR: Ooh! I’ll do what SiubhanDuinne suggests too! I like to be reassured by the reassurances of others.
Edit to ::wave:: back!
SiubhanDuinne
@ellaesther:
My own pony? REALLY? Will it fart lilac-scented rainbows and EVERYTHING??
El Cid
@Sad_Dem: The right is now going after the settlement — using Sherrod as an example of an illegitimate bunch of Negro race pimps getting federal money for being lazy failures.
From Talking Points Memo:
The article is hinting that perhaps the upcoming settlements vote was the reason racist fraudster Breitbart (or his ‘source’) was targeting Sherrod.
(It’s also maybe why the USDA hierarchy had such a hairtrigger on one of their employees as one of the lead plaintiffs on Track B.)
demo woman
ABC nightly news had the latest Shirley update and addressed the issue about the media being to quick to run with a story. We all know that won’t change but they did get Breitbart’s opinion. Breitbart feel that he is the one that’s been vilified and there has been a rush to judge him. lol lol lol lol
He’s done.
Tonal @ 17, Love the new words..
ellaesther
@Anne Laurie – That a capella Beach Boys doo-hickey is just lovely. Wow. I’d like to hear some of the Beatles’s songs like that.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I wonder if we will ever find a sane person to run for President again in our lifetimes. Trying to lead this country is like trying to impose order on a daycare center filled with heavily armed toddlers after somebody’s put meth in the chocolate milk.
ellaesther
@BR: … and now I’ve added an update to my post with a link to his post. He listed achievements I didn’t even know about!
(PS Hoping he’s a he. BooMan was my hint, but one never knows…).
SiubhanDuinne
@ellaesther:
Yeah. This was, for instance, the very first I had heard about the Stewardship of the Oceans E.O.
BooMan is new to me. I’ve possibly linked to something over there once or twice, but I think I’d better bookmark him.
SiubhanDuinne
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
That is one terrific description! Well done.
Dr. Morpheus
@Resident Firebagger:
O.k., Obama fucked up, he and Vilsack should apologize and make up for this.
Oh wait, they did…
What the fuck else do you want?
Tom Hilton
@SiubhanDuinne:
@ellaesther:
Yeah, I hadn’t heard of some of those either.
Just read about IPERA today, and it struck me: the President signs a bill that’ll save ~$50 billion, but the Republicans have been opposing $30 billion for unemployment benefits because it isn’t ‘paid for’. And that’s on top of their opposition to ending the Bush tax cuts. Jesus, these people are fucking shameless.
J
I think Fallows is still letting Vilsack of a bit too lightly. When there is an allegation of misconduct, even from a credible source let alone a professional liar like Breitbart, an organization like the Dept of Agriculture owes it to its employees to conduct an inquiry before sacking them. It seems to me that even if there had been substance to the Breitbart accusation, it would have been procedurally unjust to force Sherrod out before an investigation.
HRA
Are we getting mixed misinformation about Shirley Sherrod’s husband being a farmer when I read it was her father who was a farmer and her husband, Charles Sherrod, is a pastor who was prominent in the Civil Rights Movement as organizer and founder of the SNCC?
Breitbart has made me think of a local man here who decapitated his wife and was featured in our news as claiming he was the victim.
Sad_Dem
@ El Cid: That’s revolting. And not a surprise. There is no low those people won’t sink to.
General Stuck
@Resident Firebagger:
LOL. That’s some fancy footwork to eventually return to Obama sucks.
Obama ain’t perfect, nor his administration. Accepted therefore.
But now watch O turn this clusterfuck into a symphony of the possible with troubled race relations in this country. It will change your life, swear to gawd!
Serendipity cannot occur in a perfect world, and there is no perfect world.
JCT
@El Cid:
Hmmm. “shamed” — let me think about this one. Usually goes along with “guilt”, occasionally “regret” for an action that went poorly or caused harm. Tends to require INSIGHT regarding culpability for said action.
Nope, sorry — can’t see this ever happening with today’s Republicans. Not ever. They are the definition of shameless.
PTirebiter
YouTube put up the Charlie Rangel, Luke Russert smack down I mentioned earlier, pretty incredible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s07eOyUeMFc
JMY
@lawguy:
Who are these people that Obama has dumped when the going got tough?
Mnemosyne
@JMY:
Well, he fired Samantha Power when she called Hillary Clinton a monster … and then hired her to work at the NSA after the election.
Oh, and he let Van Jones resign when Jones got tired of being the right wing’s puke funnel. And he didn’t recess appoint Dawn Johnsen.
That’s about it.
lawguy
@Bob L: Well when the republicans did it to Clinton it prevented him from gutting Social Security because he needed liberal support. So there is that possibility.
lawguy
@Allison W.: If I might reply for the left. My major complaint about Bush had litttle to do with his not being able to admit mistakes, but rather about getting us into two unnecessary wars and tanking the economy. Hm, hows that working out?
Allison W.
@lawguy:
how’s that working out? you’re going to have to expand on that “gotcha” question. Do you think that just because I criticize the left that I am automatically a right winger or that I am a fan of bush?
Allison W.
@JMY:
progressives.
angler
Wisdom in this post.
Take that Hamzilla!
Alice Blue
Oooohhhh, the Beach Boys. Their harmonies were unearthly. There’s no music today that can even come close. Yeah, yeah, I know I sound like a cranky old baby boomer fuddy duddy. So sue me.
DougJ
@Tom Hilton:
If John or Anne Laurie or Tim or Mistermix or Dennis advocated Bombing Iran, I’d let them have it. And I hope they’d do the same to me if I advocated bombing Iran.
JMY
@Allison W.
So he threw progressives under the bus by getting the Recovery Act passed, getting HCR passed, getting Wall Street reform passed, is in a position to end DADT, and countless accomplishments despite the fact that he’s had to deal with a Congress (The Senate in particular) that has made it consistently hard to do anything meaningful since he’s been president.
@Mnemosyne:
You can add Desiree Rogers to the list too.
General Stuck
@DougJ: I don’t want to bomb Iran, but wouldn’t mind dropping a few on Texass, Just little ones to get their attention. Phuleassse
El Cid
@JCT: It was sarcasm. The media never gave a shit that there was nothing to “Whitewater” and they’d do it all again.
Yutsano
@ellaesther: When I was in college, the men from my university choir did a rendition of “Penny Lane” a capella. It was truly a stunning thing to be involved with even if the baritones did get the good parts. :)
Allison W.
@JMY:
jesus christ on a biscuit. what the F?
maybe I should have been clearer. I said “progressives” because this is what these victims all have in common. And the firebaggers are clinging to the ousting of these victims as proof that Obama hates progressives. I thought people would have caught on to that.
First someone assumes that I’m a bushie and then you think I’m a firebagger. Its always left v. right.