What? No mainstream media covering this? Shocking!

[kandrathe]

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.

I think the reaction to this was highly disturbing. Some right-wing slime-monger releases an obviously edited tape, and moments later, she is condemned by the NAACP, fired by Vilsack, possibly even with the nod from the top? Has the noise machine become so fearsome that it can get someone fired just by hooting and hollering now?

Well, I agree to the disgusting nature of both sides of it. Attack, counter, over react, counter-counter, ad nauseam.

Yeah, I guess so was everyone, including Breitbart.

Oh, so you're apologizing for Breitbart now? You really think this was good faith on his part gone wrong? Yeah, you sure are cynical... about everyone who isn't from the right.

No. I think he should reveal his source, or get the brunt of the outrage over some editing clearly out of context. But, if the NAACP gets to claim snookering, then why not everyone? Most everyone else who over reacted has issued a mea culpa, but I don't think he has. It reveals the nature of his character, and those of his ilk. Truly, I really despise the whole blogger slime on the internet whether it be right or left. It's a cesspool of unsubstantiated rumor, and manufactured news.

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.

Um, the full story was debunked, on CNN, within what, a couple days?

Shirley Sherrod fought back against Roland Martin on CNN.

Vilsack didn't do his job - and that is both sad and frightening. But the media did a fine enough job of seeing through Breitbart's horsecrap.

Not really. They ate it, then upchucked it. No wonder we're disgusted... upchucked horsecrap...

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?

It tells me the noise machine works, and that the administration is more careful about its perceived image than about fairness. The first angers me greatly, the second is just downright depressing.

What you call noise machine, I call propaganda war.

Now, do you see the connection?

There is no connection, unless we're wiling to Kevin Bacon this thing.

No need to drag bacon into this. There is an avoided national conversation on race, and race baiting. I'd say there is a pretty clear strategy to use division as a political weapon, whether it be race, gender, class, or age. Political strategists on both sides pander and create incendiary dialog with the sole purpose of retaining power, and feigned concern about the actual well being of the electorate in general, or even that subsection.

But, the NAACP convicts them without a fair hearing regarding the facts.

See? Breitbart wins. Now it's about the NAACP - their problem. Hey everyone, look how unfair the left is! Nevermind that we only got there because he hacked a video apart and released it to destroy this woman's career in the first place.

Why don't we agree to call it all bull crap? The flimsy allegations against the tea party resulting in comparisons to Stormfront and the Klan are equally incendiary and ridiculous.

The Arizona Law was branded as racist, and falsely characterized as allowing cops to stop any person and ask for papers.

That doesn't sound very false to me. There are a hundred reasons a cop might have for stopping someone, of having "reasonable" suspicion of something or another. But if we want to talk Arizona law, that should probably be another thread.

Granted.

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.

As I've said about a dozen times now, Jornolist is nothing but an e-mail server. It is a discussion amongst liberal journalists, bloggers, columnists, and other opinion makers. Your own links show perfectly well that, while some on the list advocated accusing the right of being racially motivated (Which, for what it's worth, still seems correct to me), and others, that they should avoid that tactic and stick to the issues, which they saw as Obama's advantage.

In general yes, although, if the notion of race baiting were so repugnant and reprehensible shouldn't there be more outrage and backlash? But, there are actually many examples where the message was received, loud and clear for both sides. Race baiting is a political weapon of mass destruction used by both major parties. It's our old friend fear mongering rearing it's ugly head. Fear the cracker, and fear the black man.

"Collusion" is a dirty word, if you're businesses "colluding" to fix prices, nations "colluding" to sign secret treaties. But if a bunch of liberal columnists (not owners... there is no Rupert Murdoch giving marching orders here...) talk to each other about how they think they should react? How is this even news?

They should act professionally? Some content got leaked into the public domain, and it is embarrassing for the entire group associated for it's lack of filters. You don't think they should be held accountable for something unethical like contemplating the tactics of race baiting to derail the JW story?

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.

... They're doing so because they believe that the Jeremiah Wright controversy, like this one, is dog whistle politics - that the whole point of both scandals is a big "wink wink don't you see how black people are really scary and they're taking yer jerbs and raising yer taxes and blargetyblarg". They saw what was happening as racially motivated, and thought the correct tactic was to shout that from every rooftop. I agree with their conclusion, but disagree with their tactic, as did many on the list.

Or, misperception, or outright deception. My take on it is; Obama claimed Wright was his pastor for over a decade, he was part of the family, and baptized his children. Obama brought Wright into the conversation. So, we imagine Obama, sitting in the pew, listening to Wrights Marxist, anti-American, racially divisive diatribes. Asking Obama how Wright's views influenced his own beliefs is a valid question. Obama never came out to describe his experience, or how he assimilated Wright's views. He first tried to shrug it off as crazy uncle Jeremiah, and eventually tossed him under the bus. It wasn't about Wright, or Obama's color. It was about Wright's world view, and how close Obama's view was to Wright's (or Father Pfleger). What if Wright had been a white liberation theologist? I remember writing about Wright's liberation theological views on this very site at that time, and I actually studied Gustavo Gutiérrez's book, "A Theology of Liberation (1971)". You made charges of racism, and I said no, it was about discovering Obama's world view, and that his church was not like a main stream church, or even a southern black baptist church. This brand of protestantism/catholicism is distinctly different.

I have no idea what gets discussed on listservs you are a part of. Maybe they could fall into the hands of your worst enemies, and yield absolutely nothing. But it's amazing what drops of blood you can squeeze from a stone, if you're looking to smear someone.

Mostly questions on policy... How do you deal with X at your organization.

I don't agree with Ackerman's tactical suggestion, and neither did many on JournoList. What he is advocating is related to what Breitbart did here - throw mud to change the topic to something that hurts your opponents, not you. But again - not everyone agreed with him.

And, no one told him it was despicable either.

What substance are you accusing them of agreeing upon? That the attacks on Wright were motivated by a desire to reinforce the "black is scary" subtext? That sounds correct to me. That the pick of Sarah Palin was a cynical and insulting grab for female voters? It was. And so on, and so forth.

See above. Perhaps they saw it as "black is scary", but that is a jaded and distorted view. If the President of the US is an adherent to a theology twisted by Marxism, then that is news worthy.

These are his personal opinions, no doubt saltier than he would express them in public, but Dave Weigel was not a shrinking violet. If he believed the opposition to gay rights was motivated by bigotry (I agree), then he'd say so. If he believed Matt Drudge was a bucket of slime who should be thrown into the fires of Mt. Doom (I agree), then he'd say so.

So, in his job, if he lives by the sword, he dies by the sword. According to his employers, he stepped too far out of line, brought too much heat to the organization, and got what he deserved.

If you're looking to provide examples of how Dave Weigel is a clear-sighted judge of character, then great! Truth is a defense against slander. Matt Drudge *is* slime who uses the media exactly like Breitbart, with race baiting, gay baiting, outright slander and whatever else he can find to warp the discussion to serve his ends. Pat Buchanan *is* an anti-semite who *was* drummed out by Buckley. Newt Gingrich *is* an amoral blowhard, who *did* resign in disgrace.

Obviously, you are on the lunatic fringe. I despise Drudge, and find Buchanan a boor, but I think Gingrich is redeemable.

And... This was the guy hired to cover conservatives.

Do you not want someone reporting on conservatives who is not afraid to call hypocrites hypocrites and assholes assholes? I know I do. It's not like Dave Weigel was a raging leftist. He was a wonky libertarian type who had idiosyncratic opinions and spoke his mind.

If you want to get invited to the events where you can do your job, you keep you mouth shut and play along. It's not a job you or I could probably do, without having our souls removed.

Do we know who sent them to him?

Nope. There's a mole in the leftist underground!

If he hated conservatives so much, then getting booted from the job of covering them day after day was an act of liberation.

Yeah, and I'm sure that Woodward and Bernstein would have been so pleased to have been taken off the Nixon beat. Journalists are not (repeat: not, not, NOT) required to like their subjects.

Sure. Rain on my bright side.