One useful insight to emerge from the Shirley Sherrod episode is that it puts into high relief the endemic "negrophilia" of much of the Democratic Party. Essentially this is a form of reverse racism and "liberal white guilt" made into some kind of virtue. Personally, I am sick of it, am disgusted by it, and angry about it. There are other manifestations of the same thing which have effected me all along, like Rap so-called music, which is ubiquitous in some circles. But it can be seen in many other contexts, everything that can be called a form of affirmative action, including, or especially, in the mass media. Other ethnic groups do not receive this kind of treatment, and need to achieve things in life strictly on merit. This is true of Indian-Americans, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, and you name it. It was true for my dark skinned step-father, it was true for my sister's ex-husband who is Jewish. For that matter, a good number of black people do, indeed, make it to the top because of merit. Alas, a significant % become ":successes" because people in power want to look good , then promote the incompetent because they are black, and black people are the face of America's "sinful past" and should be compensated accordingly. What unmitigated crap. Especially since --and , believe me, I have known all too many-- a notable % of black people devalue education and devalue traditional American culture, and deliberately disdain achievement in school or civil society. And the rest of us are supposed to accept this sort of thing and regard it as perfectly OK ? Howard Dean called Fox TV "racist." Not exactly the first Lefty to do so. And, while I have little use for some Fox programs, Glenn Beck and Hannity come to mind with no trouble at all, and sometimes O'Reilly, the news show, "Special Report,"is the best news and analysis program on TV. Yet Dean characterizes Fox as racist. Special Report regularly features Juan Williams, as black as anyone gets, and as smart as anyone gets, also. It also features Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol, who are Jews, and Mara Liason, a white liberal woman, among others. Seems to me that the Howard Dean wing of the Democratic Party is pathological. Just my humble opinion. Billy Howard Dean: Fox News 'absolutely racist' in Sherrod flap
By Matt DeLong In a heated discussion on "Fox News Sunday," former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said that Fox's conduct during _the Shirley Sherrod firestorm last week_ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/21/AR2010072101460.html) was "absolutely racist." From the transcript: Let's just be blunt about this. I don't think Newt Gingrich is a racist, and you're certainly not a racist, but I think Fox News did something that was absolutely racist. They took a -- they had an obligation to find out what was really in the clip. They had -- they had been pushing a theme of black racism with this phony Black Panther crap and this business and Sotomayor and all this other stuff. You -- I think you've got to be very -- I think the -- look the Tea Party called out their racist fringe, and I think the Republican Party's got to stop appealing to its racist fringe. And Fox News is what did that. Host Chris Wallace shot back that Sherrod had already been forced to resign from her post at the U.S. Department of Agriculture before Fox News mentioned her name on the air, after a misleadingly edited videotape surfaced on a conservative website that appeared to show her telling an NAACP crowd in March that she withheld assistance from a white farmer because of his race. An unedited version of the tape later showed that Sherrod had actually used the anecdote to show how she had overcome her own racial biases in the mid-1980s. _Sherrod later received apologies from the White House_ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/21/AR2010072103871.html) was offered her old job back. Dean later appeared to cede that Fox had not aired the edited tape before Sherrod stepped down, but said it was irrelevant. I don't think it matters whether it was before or after. The question is you played it. You didn't do your job ... And there's been this ongoing theme about black racism in America. I agree with Newt [Gingrich] that racism has no place in America, whether it's black, white, Latino, or anything else. Fox has drawn criticism from the left for fueling racial tensions with its _heavy coverage of a voter intimidation case_ (http://mediamatters.org/research/201007160038) involving members of the New Black Panther Party in 2008. Critics of the Obama administration have pointed to the case as an example of the White House ignoring the civil rights of white voters. Appearing opposite Dean, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said the Sherrod incident demonstrated the White House's "continued incompetence." Gingrich deflected criticism of his own rush to judgment on the Sherrod affair, in which he called Sherrod's comments "viciously racist" before the unedited tape came to light, saying that he was "operating in the context of the secretary of agriculture having summarily fired her, and therefore there was no reason to disbelieve the clip." -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
