Shooting From The Hip Lip

Reality brief: get the facts, not the factoids. The meat, not the giblets. Act in haste, you know you'll be held to account when the facts emerge, and then publicly repent, with sulphur-odoured egg smeared all over your face. Makes you look like the dolts you don't want to resemble, the knee-jerky idiots who took a story, edited it to suit their purpose and cried 'reverse-racism!' because it made their day and headlines, as well.

Here was Shirley Sherrod, a fine upstanding American who understands well, through personal experience and keen observation of the passing scene what racial intolerance and hate-inspired isolation produces. And who did her utmost throughout an honourable service-career to help people survive catastrophic circumstances that would lead to a penuriously dismal failure.

Tasked by her position as an enabler, an administrator of rural development, she assisted hundreds of farmers, black and white, to sustain their livelihoods through joint interaction and shared potentials, surmounting the difficulties of economic difficulties in depressed farming markets. Sharing some signal moments in her past with the NAACP, her statements were videotaped and worked over with sinister intent.

Released on a super-heated right-wing blog and going viral in the news media who picked it up as the latest example of institutionalized racial intolerance in reverse, to stab the current administration with an example of one of their own shafting whites. Even the NAACP, whose conference gathering heard her complete speech, accepted the out-of-context accusations.

Not only leaving her to dangle high in the wind, alone and betrayed but supporting the contentions of those who were responsible for deliberately misreading and misinterpreting her story. "Racism is about the abuse of power. Sherrod had it in her position at USDA. According to her remarks, she mistreated a white farmer in need of assistance because of his race", the national president solemnly condemned.

They were appalled by her actions. No different than the abuse of power against people of colour. "I didn't discriminate", she begged to differ. "I didn't have to help that farmer. I could have sent him out the door without giving him any help at all. But in the end, we became very good friends, and that friendship lasted for some years."

The wife of the farmer in question, now 82, still considers Shirley Sherrod her "friend for life", who was singly responsible for helping her family avoid bankruptcy. "She's the one I give credit for helping us save our farm" (decades previously). The executive director of the nonprofit organization informed CNN: "I can't praise Shirley enough. She holds no malice in her heart."

But unfortunately Shirley Sherrod was urged, encouraged, then finally forced to leave her position as Georgia director of rural development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. By an Obama administration horrified that they might be conceived of being linked to someone who behaved so atrociously as was reported by Fox News, thanks to Tea Party activist Andrew Breitbart.

What a difference a day makes. The White House that was so anxiously determined to fire this woman, now agonizes over its rash reaction to a vicious, unproven accusation of racism. "Without a doubt, Ms. Sherrod is owed an apology. I would do so on behalf of this administration. Everybody involved made determinations without knowing all the facts and all the events." The White House regrets the "injustice".

You can bet they do. And an reinstated Shirley Sherrod will just go back to doing what she always did, representing the very best interests of her clients in an unbiased, empathetic and humane manner, a credit to her personally, and to the U.S. administration by default.