Was asked by a reader earlier today to post my thoughts on the whole Shirley Sherrod mess.
Wasn’t ready then.
Am now.
To begin with: To hell with Andrew Breitbart, the conservative blogger who, before today, I’d never heard of. To hell with this guy for being dishonest. To hell with this guy for being a scumbag. To hell with this guy being willing to ruin an innocent person’s career to make an invalid political point. And mostly, to hell with him for not apologizing. Dude, you were wrong. Indisputably wrong. You posted a misleading video; one that only told 1/100 of the story. You did so knowingly, and you were caught. But you happen to be a coward, and cowards never admit when they’re wrong. They stutter and pause and blame the liberal media and play victim. Andrew, you are a pathetic, unworthy wad of chunky diarrhea, and I hope these seven minutes of fame are worth the public demolition of your integrity.
That said, I’m not surprised. This is what too many in the so-called conservative media do. I obviously don’t have to list the names, but—what the hell?—I will. Drudge. Limbaugh. Malkin. Coulter. Hannity. Beck. Palin. They lie. They overstate. They exaggerate. They inflame. I don’t even include Bill O’Reilly in that grouping, because the man, by comparison, appears oddly fair and moderate. I know … I know—I’m now supposed to say, “This is a problem on the left and the right.” Well, to hell with that—because it’s not. You want me to give you Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow? Uhm … I won’t. Because both do their research, both are intelligent and neither one goes out of his/her way to actually make things up. Do they lean far left? Sure. But George Will and Joe Scarborough and even Pat Buchanan lean far right, and I have much respect for those men. Within the GOP-slanted media—especially talk radio and Fox—there is a willingness to be mean and cruel and completely full of shit. That’s why I’m hardly shocked by Breitbart. We’ve seen his breed of lizard before.
That said, to hell with the Obama Administration. A friggin’ lunatic conservative blog airs a selected segment of a speech … and you fire the woman before investigating? And then—to cap it all off—you blame Tom Vilsack when, oops, it turns out you made a mistake? Is this the change we can believe in? Is this a new era in politics.? Is this Yes We Can? I mean, why in the world was Shirley Sherrod canned in the first place? Because you feared Beck and Limbaugh teeing off? Is that how courageous y’all are?
I am sickened.
Absolutely sickened.
