The
media and progressive-left Democrats now appear in a rush to convict
Andrew Breitbart of shoddy journalism, while exonerating Shirley Sherrod
and the NAACP from charges of abiding racism within their ranks. Both
Sherrod and the NAACP have charged the Tea Party movement and the
Republican Party with racism, while offering less proof than Breitbart
did of the racism he correctly alleged. In many cases, the Left has
outright manufactured evidence of racism regarding Tea Party events, yet
no one has raised a voice about that slander at all. If one didn't know
better, this wouldn't be today's news, but an Orwellian script circa
1984.
At
approximately 17 minutes into the now-released full video of the event,
Sherrod can be heard relaying a tale from her past in which she
initially failed to help a white farmer with the full effort she would
reserve for a black farmer.
The
assembled crowd of card-carrying members of the NAACP took great
pleasure in that, their laughter was not nervous at all. That is a
contemporaneous expression of racism by today's politically correct
standards, not racism from some 40 years ago.
Sherrod
later says, "It's not so much about white…" then catches herself and
says, "It IS about white and black." Perhaps Sherrod should explain why,
even today, color is so centrally important in her work, be it at the
Agriculture Department or elsewhere.
Breitbart’s
web-posting of the speech showed more racism at one NAACP event than
those charging Republicans and Tea Parties with racism have yet to
produce after making accusations for months on end. The people making
that charge include both Sherrod and the NAACP, neither of which has
produced any proof. But it is Breitbart who should be convicted for
false charges in the court of public opinion? That is totally absurd
given the actual facts.
Sherrod
twice decried present-day racism, as if it was 400 years ago. That
suggests a person whose views on race have not truly changed at all. But
she doesn't stop there. Sherrod says, "I haven't seen such
mean-spirited people as I have seen lately over this issue, healthcare.
Some of the racism we thought was buried, didn't it surface."
In
Sherrod's world, no one is allowed to object to a significant
Obama-supported policy change impacting the healthcare of all Americans
without being labeled a racist. Clearly Sherrod sees everything through
the lens of color or race. If her view is not racist, it is supremely
ignorant and unfit for a public official. It is meant to marginalize any
and all legitimate opposition to a political act. Sherrod is merely
projecting her own racism into a perfectly rational, legitimate
political debate so as to avoid it. That is not democracy; it is
race-based demagogy commonly employed by racists everywhere. And still
she was not done.
During
the Bush years, says Sherrod, "We didn't do the stuff these Republicans
are doing because you have a black President." Gone is any valid
argument over actual policy, fiscal restraint, government growth, or
control of healthcare—supported or opposed by entire national political
parties. In Sherrod's world, everything is all and only about race. If
that isn't a tenet of racism, then what is? Without ignorant race-based
presumptions, otherwise known as racism, Sherrod's entire scope of
political argument falls apart.
Atty.
Gen. Eric Holder said America is a nation of cowards on matters of
race. He was correct, but in a manner he likely didn't predict. The
racism Breitbart revealed is the racism of the Shirley Sherrods of the
progressive-leftist Democratic Party and the NAACP. Afraid to honestly
look at and address that, the usual leftist suspects are simply turning
the tables as a distraction in a weak effort to instead attack
Breitbart.
Breitbart
did exactly what he set out and claimed to do, put the inherent racism
of the NAACP and the American left on full display.
Additionally
troubling are Sherrod's race-based political views that amount to
Marxism. She sees an America in thirds. Evil capitalists are at the top,
exploiting racist divisions to maintain control. She argues that whites
were deliberately propped up to make them feel superior to blacks,
which they apparently still do in Sherrod's view. Blacks then bring up
the rear, seemingly oppressed by all. The racism in that view is
inherent and severe, no matter how much she would try and dismiss it
with an anecdote or two. Clearly in Sherrod's view, what is needed is
the type of government-dictated economy more like a Marxist state, than
the America we know and live in today.
Sadly,
Sherrod wants to pass on that view to young black Americans. How tragic
that she would saddle a next generation of black Americans with such an
ill considered, ignorant, utterly divisive and ridiculous view.
If
there's anyone who needs to apologize, it is a Shirley Sherrod unfit
for public service and the NAACP—not Andrew Breitbart, who did precisely
what he claimed he set out to do.
Dan Riehl works as a political consultant in Washington, DC and also maintains a popular Internet blog, www.Riehlworldview.com.
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