Fox News is Lying to You -- AGAIN

Fox News reported that a video of Dept. of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod talking to an audience of NAACP members proved she was racist, and shows her saying that she was proud of withholding help for a white couple who were in danger of losing their farm.

Only one problem: When you view the whole tape, you see that this is not so.

Ms Sherrod was relating doubts she had way back in 1986, when she was working for a non-profit. She was explaining how for a while in her position there, only black clients had come through needing help. Then one day, she had her very first opportunity to help a white couple. As she explained after this controversy broke out, she was at the time "telling the story of how working with [the white client] helped me to see the issue is not about race. It's about those who have versus those who do not have."

She related how she had joined this non-profit to help other blacks, since that was all she had seen suffering growing up. So when a rare white couple in this area applied for help, she was, at this early point in her career twenty-four years ago, taken aback, and she admits, tempted to see them as not worthy of help somehow. But the whole point of the story she’s relating, as you see if you watch her whole talk, is that she saw the light, and realized it was poor people in general she wanted to help.

And another small detail left out by the makers of this video, conservative activist Andrew Breitbart, and Fox “News” is that the white couple in question -- you know, the “victims” of Sherrod’s “racism”? -- absolutely love her. When questioned on this story, the old couple were incredulous that anyone could call her racist, and talked about how great she was with them, and how she helped save their farm.

The farmer's wife, Eloise Spooner, 82, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday that Sherrod helped save their land. Spooner, who considered Sherrod a "friend for life," said that "the federal official worked tirelessly to help" the couple hold onto their farm as they faced bankruptcy in 1986. "Her husband told her, ‘You're spending more time with the Spooners than you are with me,'" Spooner said. "She took probably two or three trips with us to Albany just to help us out."

Some racist.

Look, we all experience doubts in life, and adjust our viewpoints as we mature. Shirley Sherrod was courageous enough to talk openly about her doubts, to make a point that she knows she was wrong to think that way, and that she realized it is better to unite with all races to fight the injustice of poverty.

And this is the type of person Fox News wants to smear? What are they really doing here? Just stoking racial resentment in whites?

No? Are you sure? After all, there’s a pattern here. There was the episode in September 2009 with White House Adviser Van Jones being forced to resign after it was revealed that he said some bad things about Republicans before joining the administration, basically. And what about the ACORN video circus, brought to you by the same folks who brought you this latest “creatively edited” tape?

That one was also proven to be surreptitiously edited with nefarious intent, for once again, when you view the unedited tape, you find that you are being deceived. In the ACORN case, tapes were edited to make it seem employees were helping a pimp and his whore with plans for housing underage prostitutes from Mexico. Just one problem: This too, was a big lie.

One of the employees these slimeballs were trying to frame turned out to be a guy who was actually eliciting as much information as he could from them. After all, he believed that they were criminal sex slave traders -- he bought their act -- and he wanted to report them to the police. Which he did -- immediately after these soulless “pranksters” left with their secret video “evidence.”

Which “evidence,” as you may recall, was dutifully reported by Fox News. And reported. And reported. It was all they talked about for days. Playing the clips over and over again. The heavily edited clips. The intentionally misleading, slanderous clips. Reported as news. By Fox “News.”

Now the latest is that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said his department will reconsider the ouster of Shirley Sherrod. He decided this after civil rights leaders told him they were "snookered" into believing a conservative website's charges of racism against her were true, which was what had caused them to make an earlier, rushed statement that she should resign.

So, conservatives, I ask you: Is this really “fair and balanced” reporting? Is this the “trusted news source” you want to get your information from?

Because, if it is, you must really like being lied to.

And we ain’t talkin’ no “white” lies here, either.

Yes, by now the truth is plain. It is, shall we say, black and white.

* * * * * * * * *

Check out Rachel Maddow’s brilliant dissection of this story, as well as her brilliant dissection of the Obama administration’s terrible habit of kowtowing to right wing media on these character assassination attempts, before thoroughly investigating the charges. The administration is, as she puts it, “feeding the dog at the table -- and the dog is going to keep coming back.”

News report on the Shirley Sherrod story.

Letter to Republican friends and family

Don’t worry, the country will not collapse, nor become anti-Christian, nor turn socialist if Barack Obama gets elected.

Really now – take a deep breath. That’s right, still your fears for just a minute. Think. Don’t you see the pattern here? This has been the GOP campaign strategy since Karl Rove took it over. My God, they did it to John McCain himself, in 2000.

Don’t you remember? How, in South Carolina, when it became apparent that McCain’s momentum was growing and that he might take the Republican nomination, they started the whisper and email campaigns about him? They said his adopted Bangladeshi daughter was actually a black “love child” of his and that McCain was both gay and cheated on his wife. No, seriously, it’s true. You don’t remember? They spread lies, vicious rumor after vicious rumor, just like they always do. Bush supporters even circulated church fliers that labeled McCain “the fag candidate.” Look it up. Unlike the emails going around about Obama, these are facts, this really happened.


Now John McCain has allowed those same elements in the party to take over his campaign, eight years later. What kind of character does that show, anyway? To knowingly use scummy tactics, after they were used on you and your family, because you’re so desperate to win office.

Any way, the point is, they do this election after election. They did it to John Kerry, they did it even in congressional races, such as the despicable attacks on the character of Max Cleland, a man who sacrificed three limbs – three limbs! – in service to our country. But that didn’t stop these slime-dwellers from questioning his patriotism in the 2002 race, trying to link him with Saddam Hussein, of all things.

Invariably, once these baseless charges, rumors, lies and deceptions are investigated, they are found to be untrue. Quotes are taken completely out of context, records are distorted by playing numbers games, lies are created to “explain” events and associations, racial tensions are fanned, and the smears are repeated ad nauseam. And it’s all aimed at making you afraid.

Yes, it happens every four years, and yet you keep falling for it. Wake up! See the pattern, don’t let yourself get played so easily! They are trying to scare you, and like third graders at a summer camp, you’re letting the scout master scare the bejeezes out of you by the campfire with his monster stories!

And the farther they fall behind in the polls, the more vicious they get – and the more shrill you sound when you try to explain why you just hate the other candidate. It can’t just be that you disagree with his point of view or his policies or his record, even, no – he’s evil!

Wow. Listen to yourself! Don’t you feel silly? Evil? Come on.

Do you really think he could fool this many people if Obama were as wicked as Ms. Palin seems to be saying he is? Could he really fool all those admirals and generals if he was secretly a terrorist? Ya think? Really?


C’mon, let’s stop the pretense. Yeah, I know it must be hard. You were riding high for years, the Republican banner held proudly aloft, as the stock market soared and we went off to spread democracy and freedom. How deflating it must be to realize how badly you had been fooled. The war was based on lies, and the prosperity turned out to be an illusion. Worse, an illusion that got some greedy people stinking rich, while leaving you with deteriorating portfolios, home values and egos.

Life can be a bitch. You know what? I don’t feel sorry for you. You laughed at us when we tried to show you these people were not acting in your best interests. We tried to get your attention, to warn you the country was being sold a bill of goods, and the bill would come due. And it has. Now we’re left with a stinking rubble pile of an economy, and shriveled net worths.

Somebody made off like bandits, but it wasn’t you. So why do you continue to stick up for these clowns? They’re either clowns, or they’re in with the thieves, you decide. The only people they were working for all this time were the rich slobs who ended up profiting from the war and the economic upheaval. So why continue to listen to them? They did you wrong. They continue to do you wrong. And they are lying to you – again – this time about Barack Obama.


Hey, you bet on the wrong horse. The horse has now gone limp. You’re not going to bet on it again, are you? Whaddaya say we try another team – nobody can possibly screw it up any worse than the last team. Maybe we can try using nimble smarts rather than arrogant brawn, just for a while. Who knows, the new guys might even be able to improve things. For you, and for me – rather than for the fat cats this time. Wouldn’t that be nice, for a change?

You asked for it, Sarah Palin, you got it

"Show me where I have ever said that there's absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change," Palin told ABC News in an interview broadcast Thursday and Friday. "I have not said that."

Show you? Since you can't remember anything you've said, and are always contradicting yourself (like on the 'bridge to nowhere' thing), I'm here to help:

"When a species' habitat (in this case, sea ice) is declining due to climate change, but there are no discrete human activities that can be regulated or modified to effect change, what do you do?" -- you wrote this (my emphasis) in a letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne in December 2006 about listing the polar bear as a threatened species.

"A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location... I'm not one, though, who would attribute it to being man-made." -- Yup, that's you, Guv, on the Internet news site Newsmax just last month!

"I'm not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity." -- Yep, you again, Ms. Palin, in an interview with the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner this year.

There are many more lies you have already been caught on in the short time the press has begun to check you out, and I'm sure there will be many more. But since this was the only one you asked about, I'll stop there for now, out of deference. After all, you're an expert on the Russians, since your state is so close to a remote region of their country, so I'm sure you must be an expert on all foreign policy, and everything else!