Anyway, though…

Apparently when others were piling on Shirley Sherrod yesterday, or running away from her, Lizardoids and Johnson consistently stood up for her, without even knowing what the rest of the story was. They just knew Breitbart and his tactics and what a liar he is (my addition) and figured there WAS a rest of the story.

Cole seems to think they were just about the only ones, but I am not sure about that – I didn’t hear about any of this until this morning, so most of the (non-right wing) reactions I’ve found are to the proven Breitbart lies.

One thing I didn’t know, brought out by one of LGF’s commenters, teh mantis, last night:

The whole story is BS. Brietbart has conveniently edited out the context of this story, but he forgot one crucial detail. Notice where she says that the story took place just after Chapter 12 bankruptcy was established for family farms? Andrew really should have edited that out. You know why? Chapter 12 was so established in 1986. What was Shirley Sherrod doing in 1986? She was running the New Communities black farm coop in Georgia. She was not employed by the government in any way. Some white farmer called a black coop looking for help. She helped him, but not as much as she “could” if, you know, he were a black farmer and thus would have some interest in the coop. They also gave farmers help restructuring their loans and whatnot, so she referred him to a lawyer who could help him, despite his condescending attitude.

I should also note that the her coop and the associate RDLN recently won a $1 billion+ settlement for black farmers after they were systematically denied loans provided to white farmers in the early eighties, complements of Ronnie Reagan (Pigford v. Glickman). But we all know it was those black farmers banding together in their cooperative farming blackness that are the real racists.

I don’t know why this story hit me so badly. I guess because this woman could be any one of the older Black women I know, have known - the ones who have toiled for years, taken all the spit, all the insults, all the sexism, all the racism, all the people refusing to stand by them, all the comments about being “welfare queens”, or “lazy” or having 10 kids, and all the suspicious glances when *anything* at all goes wrong, and working daily with the knowledge that should something major go wrong, it’s likely you’ll be the first gone, last rehired  – and to get through all of that to a place where you are looked up to, where you are doing good, where are where you deserve to be because you paid your dues - only to have some lying cretin with a history of targeting relatively powerless Black folks swoop down and blithely pull everything you’ve worked for away from you in the effort to get that guy, over there…

Shame. Shame on Breitbart, his supporters, the dissiminators of this nonsense, limp pickle Vilsack and the Obama admin, too, if they don’t restore this woman’s life.

The full video and transcript, at TPM

TPM (emphasis mine)

Shirley Sherrod, an appointee to the USDA, was forced to resign yesterday after Big Government posted a video of a speech Sherrod gave in March. In the video, Sherrod, who is black, recounts how, 24 years ago, she didn’t help a white farmer as much as she could.

In the speech, given to a local Georgia chapter of the NAACP, Sherrod recounts a time when, while she was working for a land assistance fund, a white farmer came and asked her for help.

“What he didn’t know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was, I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him,” she said. “I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough.”

[...]

But Sherrod told first to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and then CNN that her comments were taken out of context. She says that the anecdote was part of a larger story, one in which she explains how she overcame her initial prejudice.”The story helped me realize that race is not the issue, it’s about the people who have and the people who don’t. When I speak to groups, I try to speak about getting beyond the issue of race,” she told the AJC, adding that she went on to help other white farmers.

Big Government has not posted the full speech.

[...]

Wilkerson also told us that the full speech is exactly as Sherrod described, and that she goes on to explain learning the error of her initial impression and helping the farmer keep his farm.

[...]

Sherrod identified the white farmer as Roger Spooner. CNN today interviewed his wife, Eloise Spooner, who said Sherrod had helped her and her husband save their farm.

“She’s a good friend … she helped save her farm,” Spooner said, adding that Sherrod did all she could to help them. “They have not treated her right.”

At first, the national NAACP released a statement supporting Sherrod’s resignation.

So this Breitbart cretin (part of the collective that also produced the falsely edited ACORN videos that not only got people fired, but were responsible for the demise of a nation-wide community organizing group), now is so stung by the NAACP asking teabaggers to repudiate the racists in their party that he has doctored a video in order to “prove” that the NAACP condones racism, too. Against whites.

I can just imagine how long and hard this woman worked, what she put up with in order to make it to the place where she was – only to have it all burned to the ground by in moments by the actions of some puny little man whose ethics apparently can only be spied with a magnifying glass. Disgusting. What kind of person do you have to be to just one day arbitrarily decide to ruin someone’s life? For a political victory? Though, hopefully, a very transient one as even political allies start to realize what a dishonest person you are.

Even more disgusting is wimpy Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack running her out of town on a rail (so to speak) before the full story is even known – even knowing the dubious reputation of Breitbart and his site. And the NAACP rushing in to condemn her as well (though they have now retracted that, promising to investigate.) And maybe, or maybe not, the Obama Administration. Even if they didn’t push for her firing, someone needs to restore this woman’s life.

I will probably clean this up later so that it makes more sense (and is grammatically correct and all that!) but right now I am just so angry I don’t even care what it looks like.

(Update to add links to people who say it much better than I do)

What Willis said: Barack Obama Cedes Presidency To Glenn Beck

Surprise! Sherrod Video Was Heavily Edited [Fox Update]

The WH’s reward for caving to a Fox smear

Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.

First, I burned my hand making breakfast this morning and had to do the rest of it (and everything else) carrying around a styrofoam cup full of ice water for my fingers to soak in.

Then, when trying to clean up I knocked a full glass of red koolaid off of the counter and onto the white floor. After which I dropped an ice tray (yes, some of us still use those) full of half frozen water onto that same floor.

The floor needed mopping anyway so, still carrying my cup full of ice water, I grabbed the mop and some of those floor cleaning pads.

The mop broke.

I tried to find the other mop head I bought recently, but with a 2 year old in the house very few things are where they used to be. The replacement mop head thingy was nowhere to be found.

My daughter ran out of gas on the other side of town, so she had to wait for someone to bring her some, so she wasn’t around and the kids were going bonkers.

When the day finally calmed down and air outside cooled, I decided to take some time to myself and go out for a nice quiet walk.

And got stung by a bee.

I take that back. Whosever day it was today, it wasn’t mine.

We did that! they say, pointing to the structures whose construction has baffled engineers and builders for ages. And that! with a wholly unaccountable desire to take credit for the Black Plague.

See? Proof! apparently lies in the pictures on the walls of these ancient and dusty buildings that could, maybe, might, show their round-headed astronaut suits and flying saucers.

Who else could it have been? they query, while we stare, goggle-eyed, at the mechanical and architectural wonders created by… well, Them, of course, it couldn’t have been the ancient people who lived there and inhabited the buildings with all the space age graffiti on them who designed and built all these things.

Could it?

 Protesters gather to speak out against stricter immigration laws, such as one passed recently in Arizona, at a May Day rally in Lafayette Square Park near the White House in Washington, May 1, 2010. Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

And I don’t mean personally – for once, things here are actually okay. I just, for some reason, took the month off from being online more than a few minutes at a time. In fact, when I did sit down to write something, I seriously couldn’t remember what blogging software I use or where I kept it. Sigh… age.

Anyway, the explosion and oil spill! Tragedy all around, there. 11 people losing their lives and now what looks like a major, long term environmental disaster in the making. How many more of these do we have to have before we learn?

Too many, I fear.

The kicker (and kick in the teeth) for the month , and far beyond, sadly -  Arizona’s scramble back to the 1930’s and 40’s. Germany.

I don’t think that’s hyperbole or an overreach. It all has to start somewhere and with some internal “enemy”, no? Anti-immigrant/anti-Latino forces have already set the stage with the persistent dehumanization of people by referring to them as simply “illegals”.

That’s not a  child you see playing there, that’s an “illegal”. See how easy that is? It’s okay that you don’t feel any sympathy for people dying of thirst in the desert or drowning while crossing a river – they are not people, they are “illegals.”

Even if Arizona rescinds this law I doubt I’ll ever be rid of that whiff of disgust that I get now whenever I hear the state’s name.

I really like Ta-Nehisi Coates and James Fallows, but it’s their writing that draws me in – not their headlines or post titles. I might not even plan to stop and read, but (with the old format) invariably something will catch my eye and I’ll have to finish reading the entire article, and sometimes most of the comments. It is less likely I’ll read so many of the articles now that I have to click through to every post.

It’s annoying. They should just let blogs be blogs, sigh.

Okay, so maybe that’s not so inspirational, but it is pretty funny! Um, unless  you are a morning jogger, I guess.  Really, though, I am only truly annoyed by the ones jogging along with big, bright smiles on their faces. That, somehow, just seems unnatural.

And, yes, I am lacking my first cup of coffee, sigh.

So, I decided to start dipping my toes back into poliblogging – very reluctantly, which is why there is next to nothing on here to reflect that decision – and part of that is also beginning to visit some of the bigger white feminist sites again as, of course, for me as a woman they are a large part of the political landscape.

Sigh. I bet you know where this is going, yeah?

One of my stops today was Shakesville, which is usually not quite that bad but today there is a post titled “ Obama Gives Choice A Pass”, that is just a study in interesting (or maybe infuriating) privilege.

Deeky says:

Here’s an intersting (meaning "infuriating") bit of analysis from the Guttmacher Institute. President Obama’s new budget fails to address any of the current anti-choice policies currently in place, including the Hyde Amendment.

On abortion rights, however, the president is taking a pass. There can be little doubt that the fact that health care reform legislation remains in limbo has something to do with that—with the options on an ultimate compromise on abortion coverage ranging from terrible to horrible. Also tied up in health care reform is the fate of two other key provisions: one to make it easier for states to expand eligibility for family planning under Medicaid and a second to establish new funding for home visiting programs for low-income first-time mothers. [Emphasis mine.]

More here.
Remember how we were all told we just had to vote Dem, because who else was going to protect Roe v Wade? Yeah, okay.

Well, taking the last bit first, I think the main argument used for voting Dem was that Republicans are freaking nuts and destructive, but I guess everyone had their own reasons for voting however they did.

Okay, “More here”, the post says. I clicked. I’m glad I did, because there is more there. A lot more. For example: preceding the paragraph Deeky quotes is this (my emphasis throughout):

On the domestic front, the administration’s top priority for reproductive health and rights is teen pregnancy prevention, for which the administration is recommending a significant boost in funding. With the abstinence-only-until-marriage approach of the bygone era defeated, the new initiative will emphasize an evidence-based approach to reducing teenage pregnancy and the underlying factors that put teens at risk.

Okay, so this may not be that big a deal for some people, particularly those who don’t have teens, or who live in communities where kids have many options or whatever.

However, here is the next paragraph:

On the international front, the administration has unveiled the outlines of the Global Health Initiative that the president first announced last year. Family planning and reproductive health programs and maternal and child health programs figure prominently, and the administration is recommending significant increases in both areas.

Well, that sure sounds like Obama is abandoning choice and women and is NO DIFFERENT THAN A REPUBLICAN!  to me.

Next comes the paragraph Deeky highlighted, then a few programs that are improved modestly or significantly with more funding or support (and the one that is stagnant, with no current challenge to the Hyde Amendment), but then there is this – to me, the biggie:

Maternal and Child Health Globally: A Big Leap Forward

Efforts to reduce maternal mortality and improve maternal health would gain significantly under the president’s proposal, with its new focus on maternal and newborn health. By recommending a 28% increase in funding, administration officials say they want to make up for lost time in this neglected area, especially in light of the looming deadlines to meet Millennium Development Goal 5, which calls for measurable improvements in maternal health by 2015. The budget proposal notes that the maternal and child health program “will also actively invest in integrating across all health programs, particularly family planning, nutrition and infectious diseases.” A 2009 study by Guttmacher and UNFPA found that maternal deaths in developing countries could be slashed by 70% and newborn deaths cut nearly in half if the world doubled investment in family planning and pregnancy-related care.

Tell me again why we wasted our time voting for Democrats?

Yeah, yeah, I know… these are not Americans and, most likely, the vast majority of them are poor women of color in some far off (or close by) land, and their babies are not snowflakes and sure it’ll just reduce incidents of complications of pregnancy (or rape) which have been eliminated in Western nations, like fistula, and give women much needed access to family planning strategies (including abortion), and health and nutritional programs, but ….

But…. what?

You know – I understand that people are frustrated with Obama, that some can’t stand him and are even regretting their votes (if they voted for him) and all that – I certainly have issues with him myself – but this whole bit of some white feminists (many of whom know better intellectually, or at least how to mouth that they do) reverting to (stereo)type, clinging to the top of the tree of white feminism (abortion) in, apparently, the need to deny any good thing done by Obama, while ignoring everything going on below (broad, integrated family planning and health, nutrition, small and large gains for non-white, non-middle class women, stuff that can make serious, dramatic differences in women’s lives) is seriously annoying. And depressing.

Melissa says, in the comments to Deeky’s post:

“And this is exactly what I meant when I said, over and over and over again, that Roe being overturned wasn’t as serious a concern as the steady erosion of abortion rights which will ultimately render Roe an empty statute.
Sure, Obama will technically protect Roe — even as he’ll still "take a pass" on abortion rights.”

No, no, no. Actions like these are not a “steady erosion of abortion rights”. It’s acts like these, the shoring up of rights and women globally and locally, that are attempting to rebuild the eroded abortion and family planning rights. Slowly, maybe, sure. But it all goes toward it. Did he “take a pass” on Hyde? Sure, for now at least, and particularly with the health care bill on the balance as it is. But is he passing, wholesale, on abortion rights or reproductive justice? No.

Remember, to get to you, they come through us first (the “they” mainly being the Republicans, the religious right, the removers of personal rights, so on and the “us” being the non-white, non-middle class, non-Americans, non-privileged). We are not a separate, boutique issue. To get to you, they come through us first. With laws regulating privacy, allowing for the arrest of pregnant women who don’t conform to an expected set of behaviors, forced contraception, limited access to family planning or family health centers and so on.

I think the fix has to come through us as well. Primarily. There are a lot of building blocks which formerly shored up Roe – some seemingly having no connection at all – which have been being assiduously chipped away at, that need attention.

I don’t expect perfection from Obama, or anything close to it – I never have. He’s far too conservative to make me happy politically – I am basically a socialist and, despite all the howling of the Republibaggers, Obama is very far from that. But to look at that list of proposed changes in funding and only take from it that he’s “taking a pass on abortion rights” says to me that… well, might be time to check few knapsacks or something.

[Illustration of a Woman on the Top of a Mountain by Charles Courtney Curran from here]

So, shoot. It’s the grandkids, of course. One is in kindergarten and brings home whatever is floating around there, gives it to his little brother who in turn gives it to me, and I give it back to the kindergartener to take back and redistribute around the school and no doubt, after that, the entire process starts over again.

I don’t know whether to thoroughly disinfect the house or invite the kid’s entire class in to make it super germy so that we can all build up an immunity.

Sniff.

[photo from here]