If you browse the political crannies of the Internet, you're probably already sick of reading about the bogus "scandal" that yesterday cost Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod her job. Basically, a video was disseminated by right-wing hatchet guy Andrew Breitbart that seemed to show her admitting that she, a black person, was actively (and currently) discriminating against white people. Turns out, of course, that the video was from a decade or two ago and that it had been edited to make it appear she'd actually done that when in fact, she was explaining why she hadn't.
It's rare when you see an issue like this where just about everyone has embarrassed themselves. The White House and the N.A.A.C.P. look bad for rushing to condemn/fire the lady without, obviously, waiting to see if Breitbart's reporting was, as it usually is, inaccurate. The folks who might ordinarily side with Breitbart (including Fox News, which yesterday thought this was The Story of the Century) are denouncing the story as inaccurate…but mostly in ways that don't fault their side for spreading it. And of course, Breitbart — who pounces on the media every chance he gets for slanting news and not accepting responsiblity for what they do — seems to think it's everyone's fault but his that he spread a lie so egregrious, even Glenn Beck couldn't endorse it.
The real sad part is what it shows about the playing of the race card in America. Lately, it seems to be used primarily to get white people rallied against minorities. Fox keeps flogging tales of the New Black Panthers — who as someone else said are about as threatening as the New Christy Minstrels…and smaller in number. There's also a big to-do about a Muslim mosque being planned for the vicinity of the old World Trade Center that has some folks hauling out their religious intolerance.
It all reminds me of a friend I lost once whose bigotry became so all-consuming that I was afraid to let him walk into my bedroom for fear he'd come out wearing the sheets. He officially denounced all racism but the only kind that really bothered him was any allegation, no matter how small, that some white guy (like him) might ever lose out on anything. He kept drawing these false equivalences between minorities being lynched or forced into poverty and the real and outrageous discrimination, which was that at this place of work, some Asian guy had been promoted over him. With the economy being what it is and some folks already paranoid about That Scary Black Man in the White House, I fear we're in for a lot of this.