Just Say "No"

Charlie Pierce (who believes Ralph Northam should resign as governor of Virginia) points out

That the "revelation" of the yearbook photo is question has been a very successful ratfck by conservative oppo creeps who held onto it until the hue and cry over Northam's comments on a defeated abortion bill had been twisted far beyond what he actually said, and thereby weaponized fully.

When the photo of maybe-Ralph Northam, of Eastern Virginia Medical School, in blackface with an individual in a KKK hood, followed closely on the heels of the trumped-up GOP outrage over Governor Northam's remarksabout abortion, the timing seemed none-too-coincidental. Pierce evidently is aware that

Patrick Howley, editor in chief of the website Big League Politics, first reported Friday the existence of a photo on Northam’s page of his medical school yearbook depicting a figure in blackface standing next to another person in a Ku Klux Klan hood.

“It’s very easy to explain,” Howley, 29, said in an interview Saturday. “A concerned citizen, not a political opponent, came to us and pointed this out. I was very offended [by the photo] because I don’t like racism.”

The tip came after Northam’s comments on Wednesday about late-term abortions, he said. Howley declined to give any further information about his source, citing a confidentiality agreement. But he said it took him just a few hours to confirm that the photo was authentic.

The source of the tip appears to have been a medical school classmate or classmates of Northam who acted as a direct result of the abortion controversy that erupted earlier in the week, according to two people at Big League Politics, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

“The revelations about Ralph Northam’s racist past were absolutely driven by his medical school classmate’s anger over his recent very public support for infanticide,” one of the two said.

Pierce recognizes also

That the national Democratic Party, and national Democratic politicians, have learned nothing from the ACORN and Shirley Sherrod debacles and can be spooked into condemning one of their own with surpassing ease.

That the ratfck over Virginia Democratic politics is by no means over and the national Democratic Party better D up quickly against this kind of thing, because the only thing asymmetric in this particular asymmetric conflict is the way the Democrats still fight it.

But if the national Democratic Party wants to challenge this kind of thing, rushing to judge Governor Northam and pushing his resignation is not the way to do it.  However, it worked when ACORN was defunded, Shirley Sherrod fired by President Obama, and SenatorAl Franken persuaded by Democrats to resign. In each case, a pound of flesh was demanded, and  received.

This saga may not end whether Northam stays or goes because

Virginia’s lieutenant governor — who would replace Gov. Ralph Northam (D) if he decides to resign after admitting he once wore blackface — has denied allegations of sexual assault and threatened legal action against the conservative website that published the accusations.

In a statement released early Monday morning, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax’s office described the allegations as “unsubstantiated,” “defamatory and false.” He confirmed that the allegations of sexual assault were brought to the Washington Post “more than a year ago,” but the newspaper decided to ditch the story after it spent months investigating the claims, citing “the absence of any evidence.”

“The Lt. Governor will take appropriate legal action against those attempting to spread this defamatory and false allegation,” the statement said.

The allegations originated with Big League Politics.

With each incident in which the truth is either distorted or demolished, it becomes more difficult for Democrats to raise an objection. "Prostrate thyself" will be the order of the day and that is why- absent overwhelming evidence that Northam was in the offending photo- Governor Northam should resist calls for his resignation.

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Romney + Obama= One Backbone


Richard Grenell came to the Romney campaign as an adviser on foreign policy and in a blink of an eye was gone.     When President Obama recently annoyed Republicans by sharing credit with Navy SEALs for eliminating Osama binLaden,  Grenell was asked to stay in the closet keep a low profile.    But facing mounting pressure, Grenell decided to take one for the team and announced

I have decided to resign from the Romney campaign as the Foreign Policy and National Security Spokesman. While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama’s foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign. I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team.

Bryan Fischer, issue director at the American Family Association, understandably took the opportunity to crow, declaring on his radio show (video below)

So ladies and gentlemen, this is a huge win and it's a huge win for us in regard to Mitt Romney, because Mitt Romney has been forced to say 'Look, I overstepped my bounds here, I went outside my parameters her, I went off the reservation with this hire, the pro-famiy community has called me back to the table here, called me back inside the borders of the reservation....'   There is no way in the world that Mitt Romney is going to put a homosexual activist in any position of importance in this campaign.

Then a regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, Al Armandaez two years ago makes a comment reflecting a rational policy serving the public interest.     The video surfaces, the right wing complains, and he is dismissed by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.    But Armandaez is only the latest of Obama loyalists to get moved out (or, as the cliches have it, "tossed overboard" or "thrown under the bus"), as the video way below from The Young Turks explains.    At least two other names- Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod- come to mind.

Mitt Romney caved to the far right of the Repub Party; Barack Obama caves in to the right wing of the Republican Party.     Meanwhile, the wolves are not satisfied by the latest departure under pressure of the Obama administration as

President Barack Obama’s critics won’t rest with the resignation of Al Armendariz, the EPA regional chief ousted Sunday after a 2010 video surfaced last week of him pledging to “crucify” lawbreaking oil and gas companies.

From Austin, Texas, to Washington, D.C., Republicans and energy industry officials amplified their calls for an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement record in the energy-rich five-state region that Armendariz oversaw.

“This isn’t just one person, this is an entire, agencywide philosophy,” said Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. “He stepped down, but unfortunately the agency is still there and that whole mind-set is still there.”

Scalp in hand after drawing public attention to Armendariz’s remarks, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Monday that he planned to continue using his perch as top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee to probe EPA’s policing of oil and gas companies.

“We will get to the bottom of this,” Inhofe said, adding that he would monitor Obama’s next appointment to the Dallas-based job “very closely.”

Republicans, operating under a grand sense of entitlement, figure they have a right to run the nation.     Unfortunately, President Obama isn't sure he disagrees with them.















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A Senator Opens The Discussion

Bloggers Melissa McEwan, John Cole, and Barbara O'Brien have responded swiftly to the op-ed, "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege," written by Senator James Webb (D-Va) and appearing in the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

Former Senator Bill Bradley, Eric Holder, Barack Obama, and numerous figures in the mainstream media have told us for over a decade now that "a national conversation on race" needs to begin in the U.S. Webb, at least, is trying.

One caveat needs to be established: one of the Virginia Senator's remarks is puzzling. He contends

Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs.

To Webb's credit, he obviously is not trying to pit one minority group- blacks- against other minority groups, those whose individuals hail from Asia and Latin America. But as one apparent Asian-American commenting on Cole's piece noted

It’s not a bad piece insofar as his points about blacks vs. poor whites go; it’s, er, odd where Asians are concerned because, AFAIK, we haven’t ever been beneficiaries of affirmative action policy. I have never been considered a “minority” for purposes of university or graduate or professional school admissions or any activity related thereto, and in fact there’s plenty of evidence (cf. California university system) to the effect that Asians are disadvantaged by such policies.

But Webb's central point is "policy makers ignored such disparities within America's white clultrues when, in advancing minority diversity programs, they treated whites as a fungible monolith." Webb, who himself is a (non-denominational) Protestant of Scotch-Irish background, explained that as of 1938

Of the South's 1.8 million sharecroppers, 1.2 million were white (a mirror of the population, which was 71% white). The illiteracy rate was five times that of the North-Central states and more than twice that of New England and the Middle Atlantic (despite the waves of European immigrants then flowing to those regions). The total endowments of all the colleges and universities in the South were less than the endowments of Harvard and Yale alone. The average schoolchild in the South had $25 a year spent on his or her education, compared to $141 for children in New York.

Generations of such deficiencies do not disappear overnight, and they affect the momentum of a culture. In 1974, a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of white ethnic groups showed that white Baptists nationwide averaged only 10.7 years of education, a level almost identical to blacks' average of 10.6 years, and well below that of most other white groups. A recent NORC Social Survey of white adults born after World War II showed that in the years 1980-2000, only 18.4% of white Baptists and 21.8% of Irish Protestants—the principal ethnic group that settled the South—had obtained college degrees, compared to a national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.

While acknowledging "the need for inclusiveness in our society is undeniable and irreversible," Webb argues "our government should be in the business of enabling opportunity for all.... by ensuring that artificial distinctions such as race do not determine outcomes."

This was too much for McEwan, who claims Webb's "race-baiting argument that white people are being treated unfairly" "isn't about white people; it's about privileged white men."

Well, no. It isn't about privileged white men, and, arguably, not even about men. It is about people who are not privileged because, shockingly, not all Caucasians (or even white men) are wealthy.... or even middle-class. Though Cole declines "to defend the entire thing" (i.e., Webb's argument), he notes

Webb comes from a portion of Appalachia where poverty is so deep, so ingrained, that the idea in those regions that there is some sort of “white privilege” is in fact laughable. To them, the privilege of chronic unemployment, life in a tarpaper shack with no medical care, food stamps but no grocery store, and not much of a future doesn’t look like that great of a deal. And you need to understand, there are a LOT of people in this situation. I regret the way the piece read, and I hate the title, but Webb is talking about addressing the deep-rooted poverty he’s seen his entire life in the back hills of VA, WVA, Kentucky, and elsewhere.

O'Brien responds to McEwan by agreeing with Cole. While critical of Webb because impoverished white areas "were dirt poor before there was such a thing as affirmative action programs," she reminds us "let’s not forget that people can be left behind for reasons other than race."

Webb over-emphasizes affirmative action as a hindrance to achievement by poor and working class whites, his reference to Asians is misguided, and he does not directly address programs intended to assist handicapped individuals. But he understands what McEwan makes clear she does not- that individuals can in fact be disadvantaged by factors other than race, even if they're not female, gay, or trans-gender. (And referring to an affirmative-action critic as an "unabashed misogyist" pushing a "race-baiting argument" may not be conducive to starting that national conversation on race.) As Cole observes, Webb's primary message is not "much different from the lesson Shirley Sherrod was trying to pass on regarding class v. race. In many regards, I bet Sherrod and Webb would agree."

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Wouldn't Want To Question Obama

There really is a good reason cable news programs frequently feature someone from the left and someone from the right or a Democrat and a Republican. When an unsubstantiated and counter-intuitive (much more polite than saying "idiotic") statement is made, it usually is rebutted.

Otherwise, Chuck Todd can play the role of a bobble head doll and nod as he did Thursday evenig on Hardball with journalist E. Steven Collins and former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown discussing the Breitbart/Sherrod affair (while Andrew Breitbart's role is completely ignored). One portion of the exchange (transcript here, video below, from Firedoglake)):

BROWN: She sued them. And, believe me, I think it`s worth at least President Barack Obama checking his Agriculture Department to see whether or not they are frankly responding to getting rid of her as requested by the bureaucrats and as advocated by the bureaucrats because she`s such an effective person on behalf of the downtrodden and the have-nots.

I think that`s the real story.

COLLINS: Mayor Brown is right, I mean, if you consider, Chuck, the fact that her father was killed by a Caucasian and was never prosecuted --

TODD: Right.

Willie Brown makes a charge against federal employees- pardon me, "bureaucrats"- fails to provide any evidence, and Collins agrees with him while Todd fails to follow up. (Presumably, Todd's "right" comment referred to Mr. Sherrod's murder by a white man which resulted in no prosecution.)

Collins and Sherrod couldn't praise Sherrod enough, but

the former Georgia director of Rural Development said she received a phone call from the USDA's deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook on Monday while she was in a car. Cook told her that the White House wanted her to call it quits.

"They called me twice," Sherrod told the Associated Press. "The last time they asked me to pull over the side of the road and submit my resignation on my Blackberry, and that's what I did."

This hardly sounds like the Agriculture Department "responding to getting rid of her as requested by the bureaucrats and as advocated by the bureaucrats because she`s such an effective person on behalf of the downtrodden and the have-nots." It sounds a lot more like a political appointee acting in the manner her boss expected, and thereby asking for a bureaucrat's resignation. And it seems like a department undersecretary and a department secretary understanding if not the will, at least the sensibilities, of the department secretary's boss. That would be the President of the United States.

And that is the same President about whom Obamaphile Eugene Robinson yesterday wrote

The Sherrod case has fully exposed the right-wing campaign to use racial fear to destroy Obama's presidency, and I hope the effect is to finally stiffen some spines in the administration. The way to deal with bullies is to confront them, not run away. Yet Sherrod was fired before even being allowed to tell her side of the story. She said the official who carried out the execution explained that she had to resign immediately because the story was going to be on Glenn Beck's show that evening. Ironically, Beck was the only Fox host who, upon hearing the rest of Sherrod's speech, promptly called for her to be reinstated. On Wednesday, Vilsack offered to rehire her.

Shirley Sherrod stuck to her principles and stood her ground. I hope the White House learns a lesson.

Then, perhaps, Collins, Brown, and others can stop making excuses for this president's acquiescence to his enemies on the right.

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Like Walsh Said


Posting at 9:01 p.m. eastern time last night about the disreputable Andrew Breitbart and Tucker Carlson, Salon's Joan Walsh summed up:

Shirley Sherrod is right: A lot of people are spending a lot of energy to get folks like the Spooners and Sherrod to think they should be enemies, when the real issue is class. The left should remember that lesson, because the right is invested in making sure no one learns it.

Despite offering Sherrod her job- or a job, probably a promotion- back, it's unclear whether the Obama Administration has learned the lesson. It may have taken a fan to remind Rush Limbaugh, but today he confirmed Walsh's observation that the right is working hard to get blacks and middle class blacks "to think they should be enemies." One of Rush's callers said Sherrod "realized that her real discrimination was for those who "have" versus those who "have not." Doesn't that mean she's the perfect employee for this administration --" A moment later, Limbaugh commented

Well, they are talking about it in a way because "the haves versus the have-nots" is a great moral crusade for the left. The haves versus have-nots, class warfare, is a great moral crusade. So she's now a moral crusader.

Conservatives want us to avert our eyes and ignore what is happening to the middle class (of whatever race). It's a simple matter of numbers: more whites than blacks, so focus the attention of the American people on the differences between the races. That "great moral crusade" the left largely avoids (while the right fights on behalf of the rich and powerful) is highlighted by data (graphs, below)from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, whose report noted

Between 1979 and 2007, average after-tax incomes for the top 1 percent rose by 281 percent after adjusting for inflation -- an increase in income of $973,100 per household -- compared to increases of 25 percent ($11,200 per household) for the middle fifth of households and 16 percent ($2,400 per household) for the bottom fifth.

As of 2007 (the gap having been exacerbated since then)

the share of after-tax income going to the top 1 percent hit its highest level (17.1 percent) since 1979, while the share going to the middle one-fifth of Americans shrank to its lowest level during this period (14.1 percent).

Nothing to see here, folks. Move right along.

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Not Only Race

Digby describes the Administration's characteristic "cowardice" reflected yesterday in the dismissal of Shirley Sherrod from the USDA:

They are telling wingnuts everywhere that all they have to do is gin up a phony controversy (especially about a black person, apparently) and the administration will fire them so as not to shake confidence that they are "fair service providers."

The President is encouraging "wingnuts" (not my term; they are not "nuts" but cold, calculating, and malicious); it is a phony controversy; and "the administration will fire them" so that it can avoid controversy.

But I don't think it must be a black person. In this instance, of course, being black was almost a prerequisite- it's tougher to accuse a Caucasian of being "racist," or discriminating, against whites. And, admittedly, Van Jones was (still is) black; but it doesn't have to be a black.

When Glenn Beck addressed the issue on GOP TV Tuesday evening, he declared (after having viewed only an edited, abridged video) "Those are obviously racist comments that deserved to be condemned;" equated the incident to the Henry Louis Gates/Cambridge Police confrontation; and referred to the Reverend Jeremiah
Wright scandal. Admittedly, Beck is confident his audience is filled with racial animosity and never misses an opportunity to exacerbate racial tension.

But there may be a greater factor at play. But as Beck himself hinted, Sherrod did not emphasize the factor of race in her work. In her speech to the local NAACP group, she explained

When I made that commitment (at age 17 years old to remain in Georgia and help people), I was making that commitment to black people, and to black people only. But you know, God will ... put things in your path so that you realize that the struggle was really about poor people.

She added

It’s not just about black people, it’s about poor people. We have to get to the point where race exists but it doesn’t matter.

Beck and the rest of the Fox News gang probably would be distraught that an employee of an administration they loathe would long for a "point where race exists but it doesn't matter"- but that was in the longer and unedited version, which they had not viewed. But Beck did play the video clip of Sherrod recognizing "that's when it was revealed to me that it's about the poor versus those who have not..." and commented

So, it's about rich vs. poor. Based on that belief, Shirley shouldn't be fired, she should be promoted in this administration. Make her green jobs "czar." Make her the regulatory "czar" or manufacturing "czar" or the energy "czar" or director of Medicare/Medicaid. She fits right in with nearly all of Obama's appointments. Why didn't the USDA and Barack Obama wait until they knew all of the facts?

While taking a cheap shot at the "czars" in the Obama administration (ignoring the greater number in the Bush 43 administration), Beck knocks the idea that "it's about rich vs. poor." I would not suggest that Beck doesn't have a grudge against black people; he has made that prejudice all too obvious. But what really bugs him (and to at least as great an extent, Rush Limbaugh, who will weigh in on this on Wednesday) more is the idea that one of those dreaded "progressives" recognizes that the real struggle is one of class. Beck is, after all, tied to the hip of Dick Armey's corporate lobbying group, FreedomWorks. Take race out of the equation, and Glenn Beck is left with a lot of white listeners who cannot be manipulated by race-baiting, and will start to re-evaluate their allegiances.

Unfortunately, trying to sell the Administration, with Vilsack at Agriculture, Emanuel as Chief of Staff, and Barack Obama as President, on the need to look out for the needy apart from race is a very tough task. Good luck to her on that; and to the President, who must make the right, and courageous, move by rehiring Sherrod for the Department of Agriculture.

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A Question For Barack Obama

Really, this is getting kind of old.

Last year, it was Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. He was so radical that he was determined to coordinate efforts to train and employ low-income people in green, private sector jobs. After Glenn Beck's crusade on Fox News, Jones was fired by the White House.

Then it was ACORN. After Andrew Breitbart released a video purporting to show a young man dressed as a pimp and a young woman as a prostitute convincing ACORN workers to help smuggle illegal immigrants into the country, Fox News led Beck and most of the American right on a crusade agains ACORN. All government funding was stopped and ACORN eventually disbanded. Investigations since then determined the video was doctored, the man (James O'Keefe) and the woman (Hannah Giles) were dressed normally and were rebuffed by the community organization. It was a scam, cooked up by Breitbart and promulgated by Fox News. Too late, though: Glenn Beck already had his scalp.

And now, Shirley Sherrod, a state director of rural development for the United States Department of Agriculture. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has accepted the resignation he demanded of Ms. Sherrod, a black woman, following release of a video produced anonymously but first appearng on BigGovernment.com, a website run by Andrew Breitbart- that Andrew Breitbart. In the short video (in some context, below)- released without context- Sherrod admits, to an NAACP audience, not giving a white farmer (and his wife) "the full force of what I could do" because "I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land." As if according to script, Fox News prime-time conservative hosts Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity enthusiastically attacked Sherrod Monday.

It may seem simple but it isn't:

1) The video released was only a snippet. The full video (way below, the relevant part beginning approximately 16:40) was obtained by the NAACP and became available only tonight, on YouTube. (The NAACP's national director, Ben Jealous, initially had vociferously condemned Sherrod's remarks but retracted the statement and personally apologized to Sherrod.)

2) Notwithstanding the clear implication of the video when it was released and of the right-wing attacks on Sherrod, the incident which Sherrod described did not occur since she was appointed to the USDA in January, 2009. Instead, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which interviewed her today, reported

Sherrod noted that few news reports have mentioned that the story she told happened 24 years ago -- before she got the USDA job -- when she worked with the Georgia field office for the Federation of Southern Cooperative/Land Assistance Fund.

"And I went on to work with many more white farmers," she said. "The story helped me realize that race is not the issue, it's about the people who have and the people who don't. When I speak to groups, I try to speak about getting beyond the issue of race."

3) While the right seems to believe that Sherrod is a racist, the white couple at issue, Roger and Eloise Spooner, need some convincing according to The Washington Post:

"I don't know what brought up the racist mess," Roger Spooner told CNN's "Rick's List." "They just want to stir up some trouble, it sounds to me in my opinion."

Spooner says Sherrod accompanied him and his wife to a lawyer in Americus, Georgia, who was able to help them file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which ultimately saved their farm.

"If it hadn't been for her, we would've never known who to see or what to do," he said. "She led us right to our success."

Spooner's wife, Eloise, remembered Sherrod as "nice-mannered, thoughtful, friendly; a good person."

She said that when she saw the story of the tape and Sherrod's resignation on television, "I said, 'That ain't right. They have not treated her right.' "

But this was not another dismissed government employee or unemployment statistic. Mother Jones notes

Sherrod told CNN on Tuesday that she was told repeatedly to resign Monday afternoon after the clip surfaced. "They harassed me," she said. "I got three calls from the White House. At one point they asked me to pull over to the side of the road and do it because you are going to be on Glenn Beck tonight."

Sherrod said the calls came from Cheryl Cook, USDA deputy undersecretary for rural development. "The administration was not interested in hearing the truth. They didn't want to hear the truth," she said.

In his statement Monday accepting his employee's resignation over an incident occurring 24 years earlier working for a non-profit organization, Vilsack self-righteously proclaimed "I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person." On Tuesday, Vilsack cryptically told CNN that he "didn't speak to anyone at the White House. ... I made this decision, it's my decision. Nobody from the White House contacted me about this at all."

So the President of the United States, who does not officially relieve of duty any one below cabinet level, did not fire Shirley Sherrod. Vilsack says he wasn't contacted "about this," leaving open the possibility he was contacted about firing Sherrod. (She actually resigned, though not voluntarily.) And perhaps he "didn't speak to anyone at the White House"- Rahm or another official may not have been at the White House at the time.

Whether or not someone representing the White House encouraged Vilasck to sack Sherrod, President Obama, supporting the Agriculture Secretary's decision, must be held accountable. The President yet again demonstrates cowardice. Panic is not an effective strategy against a media bully like GOP TV, which smells ever more blood with each instance of capitulation. Economic stimulus, health care "reform," financial "reform"; Van Jones, ACORN, Shirley Sherrod: when, Mr. President, are you going to stand up to the right and show some backbone?

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