First They Slimed Sherrod. Then Obama. Then the Jews. You Expected Otherwise?
J.J. Goldberg July 26, 2010
Well, well. I seem to have a missed a rather busy news week. I was cut off for a few days and didn’t have time to blog or follow the news, first because I was busy saying goodbye to a friend and second because I was sitting in a hotel in Portugal attending a United Nations seminar on the media and the Middle East (more about this in my Good Fences column later in the week). When I resurfaced I found the world had gotten even stranger than I remembered it.
I got back home and discovered that President Obama is in trouble because a mid-level administration official named Shirley Sherrod got slimed in the right-wing blogosphere and her boss, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, fired her before getting the facts. I suppose everybody but me has heard all about it by now, and I know these things shouldn’t shock me anymore, but they do.
Then there’s the other bizarro scandal that I missed, which I’m still trying to figure out: the Journolist flap. More slime from the right — this time, it seems, smeared onto an Internet group of liberal journalists who had the unspeakable gall to discuss their feelings with each other.
What’s not surprising is my other discovery, as I try to pursue these things to their beginnings, that the Jews are at fault. More on this later, but first, a quick summary of what I’ve found out:
Sherrod, I’m finding out, is a veteran crusader for racial harmony who was addressing an NAACP meeting and few months back and recalled a moment a quarter-century ago when she briefly felt racial resentment and didn’t want to help a poor white farmer — until she came to her senses, did the right thing and helped him save his farm. A quarter-century ago. A right-wing crank grabs her speech and lifts a few words to make it sound like she is currently opposed to helping poor whites. And his slime gains traction and she gets fired by a panicked Democrat , Vilsack, who’s worried that the administration will have this new albatross hung around its neck (why would anyone worry about a thing like that?).
And when it turns out the facts were the opposite and the administration apologizes and offers to re-hire her, the administration gets blamed for her troubles (here, here) while right-wingers continue piling more slime on Sherrod.
Then I move on to this Journolist scandal, which I’m still trying to figure out. As near as I can tell, Washington Post policy-wonk Ezra Klein started a listserv a few years back where liberal-leaning journalists can vent and share their frustrations and hash out ethical dilemmas about how to do your job and write the news down the middle when it feels like the world is burning around you and you want to scream. So another right-wing crank comes along and publishes the list’s posts as though they were a conspiracy to join hands and do the things that the writers are fantasizing and agonizing about while they’re off-duty.
Here’s the man who bravely blew the whistle on Journolist, Jonathan Strong of the right-wing Daily Caller, explaining why the liberal chat-group is so insidious:
On Journolist, there was rarely such thing as an honorable political disagreement between the left and right, though there were many disagreements on the left. In the view of many who’ve posted to the list-serv, conservatives aren’t simply wrong, they are evil. And while journalists are trained never to presume motive, Journolist members tend to assume that the other side is acting out of the darkest and most dishonorable motives.
That’s right. These liberal journalists assume the worst about liberals and make unfair assumptions about their motives. Unlike conservative journalists, like Ann Coulter, author of the best-selling “Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism” (no presumed evil motives there, is there?) and frequent Fox News guest, or Laura Ingraham, author of “Shut Up & Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the U.N. are Subverting America” (no presumed evil there, either) and regular Fox News guest host, or, for that matter, Sean Hannity, Fox News staff journalist and author of “Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism, Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism” (no presumed evil or turning opponents into enemies there, right?).
The difference is that while the liberal journalists of Journolist try to work through their personal struggles in private (more or less) and among friends, sticking to business when they’re in public, the conservatives of Fox trot their hatred out in public for all to see. They raise bigotry and demonization as banners for followers to salute and rally around. Their goal isn’t to identify prejudice or foul play so they can avoid it — they openly seek to write their opponents out of legitimate public discourse.
E.J. Dionne, the normally temperate, understated Washington Post columnist, got it right today in his response to the Sherrod debacle:
The mainstream media and the Obama administration must stop cowering before a right wing that has persistently forced its propaganda to be accepted as news by convincing traditional journalists that “fairness” requires treating extremist rants as “one side of the story.” And there can be no more shilly-shallying about the fact that racial backlash politics is becoming an important component of the campaign against President Obama and against progressives in this year’s election.
And a note to those Jewish conservatives who think the right is your friend — here’s a thread on the Media Matters blog responding to the Sherrod-NAACP flap. It’s one of many that fixes the blame for black racism and the victimization of the downtrodden whites squarely where it belongs, on those scheming Jews:
by blk-in-alabam (July 23, 2010 9:39 pm ET)
Certain Jewish people need to get out of the racism promotion business.It would bring about positive results.If you promote the race game this makes you fair game.I will leave it at that.The end result wil not be what they expect.In the long in will omly unite black,white,and hispanic people against Jewish people having nothing to do with this.Nobody wants to take the blame so an uninvolved party will be the easiest ones to blame.If you get involved in a married couple,or family fight,when they make-up they will blame you for starting the fight. People in the USA blood is mixed all kinds of waysby bluhawk7398 (July 25, 2010 5:01 pm ET)
Curious… how in the heck does this become a “world against the Jew” argument???! Sherrod’s story(yes folks… it was a story to illustrate that she had advanced beyond race-themed thinking) was hardly racist and undeserving of termination. Now everyone is scrambling to be on the right side of public opinion….makes me sick!!! Vote everyone out and demand term limits and the end to congressionial pensions and we can fix the ills in this country.(namely the exclusivity of the two-party system)by blk-in-alabam (July 25, 2010 5:28 pm ET)
John Boehner,Eric Cantor
That’s right. Jews like John Boehner are ruining our country. You heard it here first.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
