No Is The Answer

There's a lot of negativity going on in Washington these days. . . .

House Republican leader John Boehner was home in Ohio addressing the City Club of Cleveland (well, he represents a district in the Cincinnati area, but never mind), calling on President Obama to fire his economic advisers, keep the Bush tax cuts in place, and repeal the health care law passed in March. Just as Mitch McConnell intimated that he will tell Obama what to do by demanding that he adopt a center-right agenda if the Republicans win control of the Senate in November, Boehner pretty much said he'll tell Obama what not to do if the Republicans win the House in November. He's already telling Obama that now, in fact. So, no to Obama's economic plans, no to tax increases on the wealthiest Americans, and no to health care reform, even if it doesn't go as far as the Canadian system. Vice President Joe Biden says that he still doesn't know what the Republicans are for. Does Boehner have a positive agenda for a Republican House - or even a set of policy proposals like Newt Gingrich's Contract With America from 1994?

Boehner can't give an honest answer, because the answer would be no.

Meanwhile, Shirley Sherrod said no to a new job at the Agriculture Department involving civil rights-related "outreach" work after Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack forced her to resign from the agency for statements about race taken out of context. She may do some consulting work for the department. I admire her stand on principle - telling the government agency who forced her out to give the precious outreach job offered to her out of guilt to someone else - but I hope she has something to fall back in the middle of a severe recession.

A lot of people are looking for work. But prospective employers keep telling them no.

A Teachable Moment

I was really ticked off with the PBS NewsHour's regular Friday night political analysis from Mark Shields and David Brooks last night. After spending so much oxygen on Democratic party ennui and other Washington insider stuff, they addressed the Shirley Sherrod controversy - for ten seconds!

This was the biggest story of the week, and quite possibly a turning point for a presidential administration that may have finally learned it has to fight back harder against their conservative enemies in the media. It exposed right-wing newscasting as a fraud. Yet Shields, Brooks and Jim Lehrer reduced it to sound-bite analysis. In those ten seconds, Shields and Brooks agreed that President Obama showed poor loyalty in allowing Sherrod's dismissal, as if he were the only one fooled by the nonstory of her nonracism. Though Fox News was the biggest villain in this defamation of a capable and devoted public servant, the words "fox" and "news" never passed Shields's or Brooks's lips.

The PBS NewsHour brags that it doesn't entertain, it informs. What I found entertaining was how little attention PBS even chose to bother paying to a story that calls an entire cable news channel's being into question. Because PBS isn't driven by ratings as much as Fox News's Roger Ailes is ("Ratings! Ratings!" was an answer he gave to explain his programming on Fox News), I expected more from public television.

But then, maybe I shouldn't have. After all, PBS is beholden to corporate interests who "fund" them and who would just as soon see a thoughtful discussion on race and journalistic integrity not happen.

Coincidentally, journalism icon Daniel Schorr died yesterday at 93.

Shirley They Can't Be Serious!

They are serious. And don't call her Shirley. That's Ms. Sherrod, dig?

The big storm in Washington this week involves a clip of Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod, who is black, giving a speech in which she admitted to giving white farmers in Georgia less of an effort to help save their farms than to black farmers. This is a nasty, vicious, racist comment and is mean in spirit. The Agriculture Department was right to fire such a woman and the NAACP was correct to condemn Ms. Sherrod's cold remarks.

Except for one thing. The tape - discovered by right-wing stooge Andrew Breitbart and broadcast by Fox News - was edited and doctored to make it look like that's all that Ms. Sherrod said. She actually went on to say that dealing with white farmers allowed her to see beyond race and give her all into helping them, and she counts many of the white families she's assisted among her friends. That part didn't make it into Fox's broadcast, and everyone from the Obama administration to the NAACP reacted before Ms. Sherrod had the opportunity to explain the tape and Fox had the opportunity to be revealed as a bunch of lying bastards who put out misleading news reports like soft ice cream.

Fox has been pulling stunts like this since virtually the day President Obama assumed office, trying every trick in the book to discredit and in some cases destroy anyone who champions an environmentalist economy (Van Jones) to people helping the poor and the lower middle class (ACORN) to minority empowerment (Shirley Sherrod), lest they get in the way of thwarting their mean-spirited anti-poor, anti-minority, anti-progressive agenda. The American right enjoys a position of privilege and power after thirty years of supply-side economics, and they're not going to give it up without a fight.

What's disconcerting about this is that the Obama administration (and most Washington Democrats)let Van Jones and ACORN's Bertha Lewis hang out to dry and distanced themselves from them. (Jones, as you recall, unwittingly signed an anti-Bush petition blaming the forty-third President for being behind 9/11; Lewis's ACORN was caught in an Abscam-style sting operation by a conservative blogger posing as a pimp trying to get ACORN money to start a brothel.) White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was visibly embarrassed, as was Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Both apologized to Ms, Sherrod, and Vilsack offered her a better job; she's "considering" it.

And she's in a very good position to get a raise for this one.

Having been burned thrice by such dirty tricks, pundits insist that Obama won't be so quick to cave to Fox News anymore. So, this would be a "turning point." Right, this White House has had more turning points than the war in Afghanistan. But if the administration is wise enough to call out Fox and take them on next time something like this happens (and it will, possibly next week), that can only be a good thing.