Raaaaaaacist!

There I said it. The word has no meaning any more thanks to the numerous nimrods on the left that have used it willy-nilly to beat down Conservatives or anyone that disagrees with them. This couldn't have been more illustrated by the two stories dominating the narrative on the blogosphere (BTW I'd like to petition to change that term, how about..."blogoverse" or "blogoplanet"?...nope they suck too), the Shirley Sherrod story and JournoList.

Couple thoughts about Shirley now that we have had a couple of days to digest this story. She got a raw deal not only from the NAACP but from her employers and the WH. The knee jerk reaction was to can her before it did become a story,even if they didn't have the whole story. BEFORE it even aired on Fox (quite the contrary, ironically it was Glenn Beck and Charles Krauthammer coming to her defense almost immediately) or ANY other news outlet reported on the tape, she was told to pull over and write her resignation on her Blackberry as she was driving to work that morning. Pretty ridiculous if you ask me. I do hope she retains some sort of employment at the USDA. The lighter side as written by Nathan Wurtzel yesterday is that the administration can "claim another job created or saved". I also linked to Shannen Coffin's reaction on NRO yesterday right here on this blog. He does a nice job of breaking it down in a few paragraphs and acknowledging that she is due an apology from more than one source.

Breitbart does not emerge unscathed in this, but his intention of putting the tape up was not to fire this woman. Don't they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions? It does not excuse that he shouldn't have put it up without knowing the whole context. In this case his embrace of leftist Alinsky tactics that he has used successfully against leftists kind of backfired here (different take on that here). He had this piece of tape for months and was waiting to release it as a counter to any NAACP race baiting (which they are known to engage in....um all the time). I saw the original posting and its intention was to drag out the double standard of the NAACP after they had just issued a proclamation declaring the Tea Party as Raaaaacists. He commented about the cheering and overall acceptance of this woman's prejudice in the crowd reactions. He will now become the MSM punching bag for a few days for this lack of oversight. They are good at diversionary tactics. What was not known at the time was that the speech continued and it was her telling how she overcame these prejudices, truly a redemptive story. Although at this point she should quit while she is ahead, talking about suing everyone...ugh.

For the other story continuing to have legs, and will for a while I suspect, is JournoList. I mentioned it yesterday and below linked is Fred Barnes' take. He was mentioned by Spencer Ackerman in the listserv as a Conservative to label as racist for no reason except to put him/us on the defensive. A good read:

Fred Barnes: The Vast Left-Wing Media Conspiracy - WSJ.com