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Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Context! For We, But Not For Thee

Such is now demanded by the NAACP in the Shirley Sherrod matter.

You remember her. She's the Department of Agriculture person who, at an NAACP meeting in March, told a story about how 20 plus years ago she had discriminated against a white farmer because he was white, but over the years realized she was wrong to discriminate on the basis of race.

In context, Sherrod at worst was a former racist who had realized the error of her ways.

But the NAACP did not waste time in demanding that action be taken against Sherrod because the NAACP had not seen the full clip, only the part where Sherrod related her racist past. (It appears that Ben Jealous, the President of the NAACP, was at that meeting, so he really should have known the context.) [added: @0.45 of the video Sherrod states that the President of NAACP was present - h/t J.S.]

Now the NAACP is backtracking because of context.

Media Matters and Think Progress, the ultimate out-of-context word and phrase manipulators, are hot on the case because Shirley Sherrod was taken out of context.

So how about some context for the handful (out of many millions) of people who have attended Tea Party rallies carrying racist signs?

How about considering that some of the people were not really Tea Party supporters but plants by the opposition designed to create controversy? Or that some of the photos were not even at Tea Party rallies? Or that some of the people were kicked out of the Tea Party movement? Or that some of the accusations of racist words being shouted are denied and the videos show otherwise? Or that numerous blacks who are active in the Tea Party movement deny that there is widespread racism? Or that the Tea Party philosophy of limited government and free enterprise is completely race neutral?

"Context for we, but not for thee," seems to be the philosophy.

-------------------------------------------------
Related Posts:
Let's Help Think Progress Make Its Next Video
Shocked - Think Progress Misleading Anti-Tea Party Video
Saturday Night Card Game (Is This The Week The Dream Died?)

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24 comments:

  1. The thing I find most amusing about this story is the NAACP claim that they were "snookered" by Fox News and Breitbart because they did not have the full context....... of a speech made to the NAACP.

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  2. HOW exactly was she taken out of context? Looks pretty straightforward to me! She doesn't like Whites. Simple. And she's a black racist. And she gets laughs from the Liberal black racist corrupt crowd at the NAACP. Pretty hard to refute video.

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  3. I'm sure you're not surprised by this. The left has always been entirely immune to context when they deal with their political enemies, but exceptionally sensitive to it when the tables get turned. It's just one of the many millions of examples of leftist hypocrisy.

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  4. Where was the context for Judge Pickering?

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  5. The context doesn't change anything. Her first consideration about helping someone should not have been their race--period. Doesn't matter if it happened years ago or if this is a story of redemption and how she's changed her opinions. It brings into question other cases she's handled before or after. She was put into a position where most employers would have asked her before giving her that job whether she could deal fairly with someone of a different race. She would have failed an interview for any job had she told this story.

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  6. the entire 40+ minute video is now available ...
    seems she was trying to show how she changed from a racist to not one with this farmer ... then she goes on to claim Republicans are racist as well as the Tea Party ...

    seems like she still has some work to do on her racist feelings ...

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  7. Its quite obvious from the speech that Sherrod's mention of the "President" refers to the President of the Coffee County NAACP branch.

    Each NAACP branch has a "president;" for Coffee County its Eleanor Green.

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  8. I'm constantly taken out of context.

    I make investments on a security, and later I blame my broker for taking my original investment out of the context of its current lower value.

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  9. No doubt we are facing a contest of bigotry in this nation. False accusation, twisted media, and simple ignorance has come to smother any seeking of the Truth. Peddling lies, and obstructing voice, seems to be how this nation will end. Either in collapse of will and order, or via overt means such as Martial Law we face fatal disharmony.

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  10. Oddly enough, I began as an Assistant Professor exactly 24 years ago. I'm wondering what would happen if I recounted to a cheering white audience how an African American student had come to me in 1986 and I did the minimum to help him, sending him instead to 'one of his own kind'. About a microsecond, would be by estimate.

    Her speech is not as bad as it seemed based on the Breitbart excerpt, but it's hardly consistent with Federal employment. She bemoans the fact she can't hand out more federal largesse to her 'own kind', advises people to get a job in the Federal government because it's almost impossible to get fired, excoriates Republicans as racists, and presents the entire speech through a racial prism 'us vs. them'. And I'm not sure that her replacing her original racism with a class-warfare mentality is that much of an improvement.

    And when she rips into 'rich people', having just gotten $13 million from the Federal government in a dubious class-action settlement the previous year, one has to wonder who she means by the rich. Maybe she already sees $13 million in personal wealth as relative poverty.

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  11. I love how stories like this don't surface on the "AP news at the hour on the radio" level until there is an angle for the left, a way to accuse the right.

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  12. We need to stop playing the left's game of making this about Sherrod. It is not, it is about the audience. She may (or may not) have been unfairly punished, but we need to keep the focus where the focus belongs--the audience, for which the tape gave all necessary context.

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  13. There is much more to this story than what Mrs Sherrod said at that meeting. There was a government class action lawsuit settlement, the Pigford Case, that granted $1 billion to black farmers of which she and her husband were the biggest benefactors through pre-settlement land deals. American Thinker has the story.

    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/07/forty_acres_a_mule_sherrod_sty.html

    Her quick dismissal may not be about what she said but that the administration just does not want her in the news at all. We seem to be missing the big story.

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  14. No there is even more to be amused about. Not just that the speech was made to the NAACP, but that they have a complete copy of this speech.

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  15. How 'bout some context for Robert Bork. Or Miguel Estrada. Or Clarence Thomas. Or Condi Rice. How 'bout some context for George Bush, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Paul Wolfowitz, Don Rumsfeld, or [insert name of person who dares express an opinion other than ideologically pure Leftism].

    Or how 'bout some plain-old common courtesy for any conservative law student or the Campus Republicans or the Federalist Society or pretty much anyone who dares disagree with the Lefto-Fascist oligarchy that dominates America's campuses.

    Yeah, pretty much until then the left can cry me a river.

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  16. What was Franken's book? "Lying liars and the lies they tell"?

    Seems he was talking about Leftists...

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  17. Shirley Sherrod pleads for "context". Then she turns around and falsely accuses those she disagrees with of being racists.

    Par for the course.

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  18. Great observation and analysis. The only nitpick I'd have is the title. ("We" is first person plural nominative, "thee" is second person singular objective. "Ye" would be the appropriate archaic word, as it is second person plural nominative.)

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  19. As much as I agree with the general sentiment, the issues are separate. Breitbart screwed up by posting an edited tape that, in context, shows the opposite of what the edited tape seemed to reveal. Commentators on the right, yours truly included, screwed up by running with it without having seen the whole tape. We on the right are the adults in the room, and we should fall on our swords on this one.

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  20. The good news is "conservative" David Frum has weighted in. Not surprisingly, he excoriates the conservative media. As far as I know, he hasn't weighed in on how Think Progress edited clips out of context to falsely depict Tea Partiers as racists. I'm sure it's just an honest oversight on his part.

    But the even better news it is only Wednesday. That means fellow "conservatives" David Brooks and Kathleen Parker still have time to write columns for the Sunday paper condemning Breitbart/Tea Partiers/conservative blogs that will at least rival whatever Count Frankula has in mind.

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  21. Seriously, one more time. The right should stop playing the left's game. Ms. Sherrod may have been taken out of context, but the audience was not. This tape was about the audience.

    The liberal talking point is to make it about Sherrod. And it is nauseating to see how many conservatives are falling in line for the liberal spin.

    Is an apology owed to Ms. Sherrod? Arguably (though not definitively). But Breitbart's point is that the audience was fine with her story of racism and discrimination. And Breitbart is right. The rest is misdirection.

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  22. Have he complete tapes of the Couric-Palin interview ever been released? Would the context of the complete interview change the perceptions that CBS conveyed in their editing? Or does context an issue on the Left only when they are on the receiving end?

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  23. If you go back and read what Breitbart WROTE, he said that he didn't have the complete tape. He also said that it sounded like the woman had perhaps come to an epiphany after that incident. He said that the takeaway should not be about what she was saying specifically - although he wasn't happy with it - but rather with the audience's reaction to it; their seemingly tacit agreement with her decision to stick it to a white farmer because he wasn't "her kind".

    Remember, this was released because the NAACP was accusing conservatives of being racist. Breitbart was showing people that liberals are racist, too - in most cases, more so than most conservatives. We need to remember that - AB's intent was NEVER to cause personal problems for Ms. Sherrod. It is the White House and the NAACP who pressured Ms. Sherrod to resign.

    THAT is the most interesting part of all of this - the speed with which Obama moved to cover his rear end. So we know that he can make decisions quickly WHEN HE WANTS TO. If it personally affects him or his cronies or his narrative, he is Johnny-on-the-spot. When it's our soldiers needing reinforcements half a world away, an oil spill that needs to be taken care of, an economy that needs tending too, or something minor like that, he can't be bothered.

    It's also interesting that the White House and the NAACP are so scared of FOX News and the Tea Party. That needs to be our focus from now on - applying pressure whenever possible to keep them constantly looking over their shoulder.

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  24. In "context" she is someone who is a racist and who is perfectly willing to play the race card with no justification whatsoever--who claims to be slightly less racist than she used to be.

    Not really much of an improvement, if you ask me . . .

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