What? No mainstream media covering this? Shocking!

[kandrathe]

Somehow, despite my best efforts, the two wings of this thread are getting squashed together.

Well, they are related. In the JournOList, reporters discussed the strategy of playing the race card. And, here is a case of the NAACP playing the race card on the Tea Party, when every instance that Ben Jealous has identified has been dealt with. Could it be that Ben Jealous really sees the millions of people affiliated with the Tea Party movement as the rise of a White Supremacist organization worthy of comparing to Stormfront, and the Klan, or is it possible he is playing the race card as a coordinated, calculated political move to drive black voters to the polls here in November? I'm pretty cynical, and I'd guess the latter.

The issue of racism is from the Sherrod wing. What she said was public. (It also wasn't racist, it's abundantly clear that she did her job just fine, and that this whole thing was extremely stupid, even by Breitbart's barrel-scraping standards.) She has no reasonable expectation of privacy, and as it turns out, needed none.

To me this is a bigger story now than an injustice of character assassination. You have NAACP denouncing her based on their own video tape, and responded by saying, "The reaction from many in the audience is disturbing. We will be looking into the behavior of NAACP representatives at this local event and take any appropriate action." Then hours later, after viewing the entire tape (in their possession) retracted their position claiming they were snookered. Yeah, I guess so was everyone, including Breitbart. The biggest share of the blame goes to the head of the chain, but... Hardly any news organization waited even an hour or a day to do even cursory fact checking before reacting. Yesterday, the self-flagellation began, as the "journalists" again decry the rush of a 24 hour news cycle.

"Asked why Cheryl Cook, the Agriculture Department official who repeatedly called Sherrod on Monday on Vilsack's behalf, told Sherrod that the White House wanted her gone, Vilsack said there may have been a misunderstanding." So, is Vilsack covering for someone, or was Cheryl wrong? Who did she talk to? This is a long time employee that has worked at USDA for like 15 years, and within hours without any due process, she gets pressured into quitting. Doesn't she have the right to at least a meeting with her boss to figure out what happened here? What does it say about our Nation, when convictions come before hearings due to appearances?

Now, do you see the connection? Ben Jealous knows of three examples from all the millions of Tea Party people attending events for the past two years, and all three incidents have been dealt with by their organizations. But, the NAACP convicts them without a fair hearing regarding the facts. The Arizona Law was branded as racist, and falsely characterized as allowing cops to stop any person and ask for papers. There is a rush to judgment, and conviction by the court of public opinion before they can get the facts. This was the essence of the Jeremiah Wright case in the first place (tainting Obama with his associations), and in the Journolist's collusion on how to deal with it. Race bait. Now, how can you take anyone who plays the race card seriously, when it is clearly a political weapon of last resort on the left? Whenever they cannot argue on substance, they resort to defamation. Wright was thrown under the bus, just as Shirley Sherrod was thrown under the bus for political expediancy. But, the story is not about them. If you falsely accuse someone of something heinous – especially something repugnant like racism – they are going to explode. Train derailed, bomb plot success, career ruined perhaps. And to the accusor, and the bulk of the media, it rarely matters that the rage is righteous. Because all they want is the story to move on to the angry person, and away from what they were talking about in the first place. The democrat reaction to the tea party movement is not to counter, or support it's principles, but rather to attempt to discredit and destroy it. Why worry about having a debate with your opponent, when you can get your opponent disqualified from even attending. It's obviously worked on you, as you characterize the movement as a collection of misfits. Huzzah propaganda.

The issue of privacy is from the Journolist wing. What was said on that e-mail list was private.

I agree with you to a point. Every place where I've worked, and that is many, we give people notice that what they do on their computers will be stored in logs, and may become public knowledge. Consider every e-mail that you write as maybe someday being posted on the hallway bulletin board. If you really need a private conversation, do it face to face, or over the phone. Transcripts of E-mail's and backups are frequently used as evidence in lawsuits, not to mention the risk of having hackers dump the contents out onto a website (Hadley CRU, cough). Not to mention the very real possibility that an e-mail may be accidentally forwarded. But... This was even more public than that... This was a albeit closed listserv, but still, you are posting an e-mail to a group of about 400 people. Each person represents a risk in keeping your secrets, secret.

I belong to lots of listservs and have for along time. I always represent myself and the organizations I represent in a positive manner. We discuss items of substance, and there isn't the kind of casual backstabbing, and "gossip" I observed on JournoList. But, then, I'm not a journalist, so maybe their profession is less professional.

There is no accusation there of anyone being racist. Salty language about political opponents was widely employed.

Well, not quite true;

"If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us,” Ackerman wrote on the Journolist listserv in April 2008. “Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

While many members of the group voiced concerns about Ackerman on strategic grounds, there seemed to be no clear disagreement with the substance. The strongest repudiation came from Mark Schmitt, now at the liberal magazine the American Prospect, who said the tactic of calling conservatives racist would do nothing to advance the argument."

Dave Wiegel said some rude things about the Tea Party members, whom he was covering. I think they deserved every word. But even if they didn't, that should not be grounds for firing, especially when the person writing them was communicating among friends and colleagues, and not in the public sphere.

Here is what was said. Let's see, Matt Drudge should set himself on fire, trash talking a colleague Byron York, the Washington Examiner’s chief political correspondent, and calling Ron Paul supporters Paultards. Nope, nothing racist there. Just dumb.

Then, after he resigned/gotfired, he added,

“There’s also the fact that neither the pundits, nor possibly the Republicans, will be punished for their crazy outbursts of racism. Newt Gingrich is an amoral blowhard who resigned in disgrace, and Pat Buchanan is an anti-Semite who was drummed out of the movement by William F. Buckley. Both are now polluting my inbox and TV with their bellowing and minority-bashing. They’re never going to go away or be deprived of their soapboxes,” Weigel wrote.

Of Matt Drudge, Weigel remarked, “It’s really a disgrace that an amoral shut-in like Drudge maintains the influence he does on the news cycle while gay-baiting, lying, and flubbing facts to this degree.”

And... This was the guy hired to cover conservatives. What? The proverbial self inflicted shot to the foot. Granted, he probably thought his secret loathing of the subjects of his job were safely hidden in the Journolist.

Had he said racist things, that would be different. But he didn't, and neither did anyone else on Journolist. But nonetheless, their private communications were made public by their opponents (and yes, by Mickey Kaus, who is a complete lunatic), and used to wreck their careers - for their speech, not for their actions.

Again, looking specifically at Dave, he was destroyed by those on Journolist left of him, because he was not liberal enough. Racist, no, but dumb moves, yes. Race baiting, you betcha. If he hated conservatives so much, then getting booted from the job of covering them day after day was an act of liberation. I think this is a classic case of venting the wrong stuff in the wrong place, and trusting acquaintances too much. He should have vented into his daily journal and saved it for his memoirs.

What we are not talking about is the rational approach. Rather than call each other names, like racist, how about we elevate the national dialog to a discussion, rather than a propaganda war.