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PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN
This entry was posted on 7/21/2010 8:17 AM and is filed under uncategorized.
(UPDATE at the end)
We all know the climactic scene in the Wizard of Oz, when the "great and powerful Oz," belching out smoke and thunderous pronouncements on terrified Dorothy and her companions, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow--is revealed by the little dog, Toto, when he pulls the curtain back to show a short little every day man, pulling levers and flipping switches and speaking into a megaphone--much to the chagrin of Dorothy and her crestfallen companions, who have traveled a great distance and endured many trials and tribulations in order to find the great and powerful Oz.
They realize that they have been hoodwinked. Bamboozled. You could even say, "snookered."
Even the faithful Munchkins had no idea that the great and powerful Oz was merely smoke and mirrors; illusion and magic. All this time they had believed in his powerful pronouncements, but now what are they going to do?
Well, that's up to the Munchkins to decide.
Unless you've been living in some kind of Fox-news world, where your exposure to truth and factual content is greatly restricted or otherwise blatantly manipulated, or you don't watch the news at all, then you have heard the story of Shirley Sherrod, the USDA employee who became the latest victim of the Fox News/Roger Ailes/Andrew Breitbart Wizard of Oz smoke-and-mirrors scam.
In a speech before the NAACP last March, she told a story about how, 24 years before, while working for a nonprofit agency, she had a case in which a white farmer, who stood to lose his farm, needed her help. She talked about how he "acted superior to me," and how she couldn't help thinking of all the black farmers who had lost their land, and because of that, she had a hard time sympathizing with the man. She set him up with a white attorney, thinking "one of his own would take care of him," but she did not help him as much as she admits she could have.
Talk about perfect fodder for the Wizard! This feeds right into the Fox News narrative--that not only is the NAACP racist just like the Tea Party, but that there is an ongoing pattern of racism in the Obama administration and you know WHY??
Because he's black, of course! Everybody knows that when a black becomes president, the first thing he is going to do is "get reparations" for slavery and proceed to punish white folks for perceived slights he's had to endure in his life! He's going to foster and tolerate a systematic racist philosophy in every branch of government that is designed to discriminate against whites! AND, he's going to redistribute all our hard-earned money to those lazy, shiftless minorities who didn't work for it!
THEY JUST WANT TO ENSLAVE US!!! It's all they've ever wanted to do ever since they got the vote, right?
So on his website, which I won't dignify with a link, the Fox News-feeder extraordinaire, Andrew Breitbart, who they love because they give him credit for bringing down ACORN with heavily edited, sliced-and-diced, cut-and-pasted videos so faulty that prosecutors studying them said there was no way any criminal activity could be proven because the tapes had been manipulated so egregiously--THAT Breitbart--he took that speech Sherrod had given back behind the curtain and he worked his magic on it, disappearing, for instance, the part where this all took place more than two decades ago, before she ever started working for the government.
Since Fox News gets all their big headlines from Breitbart, because he feeds their media narrative about the bigoted Obama administration, they jumped on it faster than a puppy on a chew toy, and ran the video, making certain that their commentators were properly outraged, screaming that if this was typical of the racist policies within the Obama administration then she needed to be fired! NOW! And this needs to stop! NOW!
The Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, saw the video, as did mainstream reporters, who love the Fox News/Breitbart scandals because they make such good video and instant controversy, which drives ratings. They raced to put up the video; Vilsack, who did not want to be tarred with the oil slick of racism in the USDA ranks, demanded that she be fired, and she was, immediately, RIGHT THEN, as she was driving down the road. (They did tell her to pull over first.)
The White House says they were not involved in this decision; and that may be literally true, but they are also hyper-sensitive to these bogus charges because they know that the news media LOVES them and a story like that will dominate the news cycle for WEEKS.
Right now, they just got benefits passed for the unemployed after weeks of battles. They just got a landmark piece of Wall Street reform legislation--a historic milestone not seen since the Great Depression--passed. The BP oil gusher just got capped and the 24-hour news monsters quit running the damaging video of the oil clouding out of the pipe at thousands of gallons a day--images the president often had to share on-screen whenever he appeared on TV.
Did they REALLY want to spend the next TWO WEEKS debating whether or not a USDA employee was racist? Did they REALLY want THAT to dominate the news coverage?
So, they caved.
Let's move right along, people. Nothing to see here.
But there WAS something to see, and Toto--in the form of ONE vigilant network, CNN, decided to do what NOBODY ELSE EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT DOING: They viewed the rest of the speech.
That's when the tragic truth came out.
Yes, she withheld some of her best help from the white farm family. AT FIRST. But when she saw that the white attorney she took them to could not be bothered to help them; when she saw that they were indeed every bit as desperate as any black family she'd ever known, "I realized it was not a matter of BLACK or WHITE. It was a matter of being POOR. It was about the haves and the have-nots," she told her audience.
After that, she said, she worked hard to help the couple.
CNN took it a step further--again, doing what ACTUAL JOURNALISTS ARE SUPPOSED TO DO.
They interviewed the white couple in question.
And they said, on-camera, flat-out, that Ms. Sherrod had SAVED THEIR FARM; that they considered her a friend, and that she should not be fired but should get her job back.
FOLKS, I'M HERE TO TELL YOU, THIS IS A WATERSHED MOMENT FOR FOX NEWS AND THE MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA, AS WELL AS FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
When Toto pulled back the curtain, he revealed a HUCKSTER, a FRAUD.
What Breitbart had done to this woman was a malicious lie.
There is no other way to describe it. He set out to destroy her just to make a point, and he knew FULL WELL what he was doing when he sliced-and-diced, cut-and-pasted, and heavily edited her speech to make her appear racist.
But there is a deeper truth here.
This is hardly an isolated incident, but a clear PATTERN of how Fox "News" pushes a narrative onto the public in such a way that they demand the mainstream media pay attention, as Media Matters so skillfully points out::
"The New Black Pantherstory is in the middle stages of the Fox Cycle -- the process by whichthefalse, ridiculous ramblings of right-wing bloggers and partisan mediahacks can,with a generous assist from Fox News, make it to the front pages ofthe New York Times.
"Put simply, the FoxCycle begins with the blogosphere. Conservative bloggers seize on astory andstart twisting it and injecting falsehoods. Before long, Fox Newscatches onand, usually with Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity playing the lead role,devotesobscene amounts of coverage to the bogus story. The bloggers take FoxNews'heavy coverage as validation of the story's veracity, and before longthey joinwith the conservative network in carping that the rest of the media areignoringit. Soon after, the rest of the media relent and start covering thestory, atwhich point it becomes a mini-frenzy. Then the pundits chime in,crediting FoxNews for giving the story legs and being ahead of the rest of media.Finally,long after the damage has been done and the media have largely moved on,thefacts emerge and the story is confirmed to be junk.
"It's a cycle that'sbeen repeated over and over in the past, with varying degrees ofsuccess. TheACORN videos, Obama's "relationship" with William Ayers, and the"Climategate"non-scandal managed to make it all the way through the cycle, inflictingirreparable and unjustified damage to the community organizing movementand thereputations of respected climate scientists, not to mention thePresident of theUnited States, who was at one point accused of "palling around withterrorists."
When President Obama first started standing up to Fox News and pointing out--rightly so--that they are not a serious news organization but rather a partisan political arm of the Right wing, he was attacked for it by the mainstream press, who stood up for and defended their Fox News colleagues. Much was made of whether or not it was politically savvy for a sitting president to take on a news network. Many pundits stated that it made him look petty and small. Most said it would backfire on him.
So Fox was given a pass by the very people who should have known better--real journalists.
But this. This is different. This is such an egregious case of personally attacking an innocent woman for the purpose of a political hatchet-job by doctoring video YET AGAIN--and the mainstream media was caught out this time, standing there like some Frankensteinian combination of the Cowardly Lion (no courage) and the Scarecrow (no brain)--gawking wide-eyed at the Great and Powerful Oz as he belched smoke and thunder.
Probably the densist denizen of that establishment is George Stephanopoulous, who still seems to think Breitbart deserves a "fair and balanced" interview alongside Eric Boehlert of Media Matters on Good Morning, America .
While Stephanopoulous sat weak and defenseless before him, Breitbart dominated the interview, spewing out his spin-bile, stating, flat-out, that Shirley Sherrod "doesn't matter," that he would not apologize for destroying her life because "it's not about her." It was about, he insisted, the "racism in the NAACP."
Ahhh yes. Fox News does like to go after anyone they perceive has having called them out on their lies. It starts with heavily doctored videos and wide-eyed alarmist news reports about made-up crises, and it goes straight up the food chain to their hacks and hellstars--Hannity, O'Reilly, and Beck.
And as soon as the NAACP pointed out the obvious, that the Tea Party has racists in its ranks, which is obvious to anybody NOT WATCHING Fox news because, Fox News never shows the videos depicting the righteous rednecks spewing their hatred of a black president, undocumented aliens, or anyone NOT a white Anglo Saxon Protestant--then they became the Number One Enemy of Fox News, and from then on, it was their avowed purpose in life to dig up and find examples of racism in the ranks.
Because Stephanoupolous gave him free rein for virtually the entire four minutes, Breitbart dredged up every grievance the Right wing has about the perceived racist slights about them, insisting, for example, that there are "four videos, FOUR VIDEOS" (holding up four fingers)--to show that Rep. Lewis did not get spat upon or called the n-word during the health care reform vote as he was on his way through the Tea Party crowd.
And he insisted that the video of Ms. Sherrod "shows the audience applauding" (holding up his hands in front of Stephanopoulous's face and clapping for demonstrable effect) her racist remarks.
I won't get into Media Matters' calm pointing-out that the applause did not take place when she was making racist statements but later, when she was talking about overcoming her prejudices and helping the poor.
I want to talk about the applause.
This was a black audience. An NAACP audience. She was talking to "my people" as she called them.
AND I WANT TO MAKE SOMETHING PERFECTLY CLEAR TO PRIVILEGED WHITE SOFT-HANDED ASSHOLES LIKE ANDREW BRIETBART AND ALL HIS WHITE FRIENDS AT FOX NEWS, RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW.
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RACISM AND * PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.*
Repeated hidden camera investigations by such programs as 60 Minutes and Dateline have proven time and time again: If an equally qualified black and white person try to do such simple things as take a vacant apartment, apply for an available job, flag down a cab in an urban area after dark, drive through an affluent area late at night, or even go shopping in an upscale department store, THEY ARE TREATED DIFFERENTLY by the whites who hold the power over them.
Repeatedly, the white person is favored over the black, or the black is suspected of shoplifting or theft or of some other potential crime.
This is life for people of color. It is the very reason their unemployment figures stand at double what they are for whites.
Oh yeah, I know all you people who watch Fox News like to think it's because they are LAZY AND SHIFTLESS but the truth is that THEIR DAY TO DAY REALITY IS DIFFERENT FROM OURS.
So when she said that "he was acting like he was superior to me," and audience members yelled out "Right!"--something the white folks down at Fox news find offensive--they were simply giving a black-church AMEN to a situation every single person sitting in that audience has EXPERIENCED.
THIS IS NOT RACISM. IT IS PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
This whole ginned-up frenzy about racism in an administration overseen by a black president is crazy. And it is, in itself, racist.
It's based on a deep-seated fear of empowered blacks and other minorities. I've seen it myself in the backlash following major gains by the women's movement--any time you, as a minority, encroach on a white male power establishment, it scares the shit out of them and they will punish you.
But I digress.
HERE IS MY POINT.
The curtain has been pulled back to reveal the Fox News hysteri-cycle. It has been shown NOT to be REAL JOURNALISM.
IT HAS BEEN SHOWN TO BE LIES, BASED ON LIES, USED AS PROPAGANDA TO PRESS A POLITICAL NARRATIVE.
Already, they are blaming the Obama administration for "believing" the video THEY THEMSELVES HYPED.
I'm not proud of this chapter in the Obama saga--and I make no excuses for the ridiculous treatment of a faithful employee, who, at the very LEAST, deserved a fair hearing before being asked to pull over on the side of the road and quit a job after decades of service.
But watch as Fox News dodges responsibility and accountability for their own lies. Watch as they blame Obama for what THEY caused.
And furthermore, watch at the mainstream media, AT LAST, begins to wake up to the fact that THERE IS NO GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ.
That all this hysterical crap ranted and raved on Fox news is so much CRAP THEY MAKE UP.
In the final ten seconds of the interview, as Brietbart was holding up his four fingers about the "four videos" proving Representative Lewis a liar, Stephanopoulous asked Media Matters' Boehlert (who was waaay more quiet than I'd like to see), if he believed those videos were "accurate."
"NO!" he cried just before the commercial break. "NOT ACCURATE."
You see, THIS is what Stephanopoulous SHOULD have said during the Brietbart lie-rade. He should have interrupted and demanded, ''HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO TRUST ANY VIDEOS YOU OFFER AS EVIDENCE WHEN YOU HAVE BEEN PROVEN REPEATEDLY TO DOCTOR VIDEOS INTO VIRAL LIES?"
He didn't, though.
I'm not worried about it. Other journalists will.
This was a turning point for the Munchkins, now that the Great and Powerful Oz has been revealed to be a fraud.
The media outcry will not be where Fox News wants it to be--that Vilsack acted too quickly to fire her--and the NAACP to condemn her.
The spotlight will be on how it is that NOBODY BOTHERED TO DO THEIR JOBS IN THE FIRST PLACE, WHICH IS FIND OUT THE TRUTH, AND THAT LIARS CANNOT BE TRUSTED.
Nobody, that is, but actual journalists, working at a real news network.
So that, maybe the next time Fox "News" hypes a super-breaking hot story...the other networks will shrug, say, Oh, it's only Fox, and go on about their business of gathering real news.
UPDATE: According to Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post, Fox News did NOT cover the Sherood story during the day it broke; rather, it was mentioned on O'Reilly and on Beck. However, Kurtz is reporting strictly on the on-air coverage of the days events. In fact, according to Media Matters , who keeps a close and vigilant eye on these things:
"In fact, FoxNews.com published a story based on the deceptively edited
video before Sherrod resigned; indeed, a subsequent FoxNews.com article
reported that she resigned "shortly after FoxNews.com published its
initial report on the video."
Further, Media Matters quotes extensively from Right-wing media outlets who, originally, had great praise for Brietbart for doing "great work." Furthermore, they give an extensive collection and back-list of Andrew Brietbart's Greatest Hits- of character assassination, slice-and-dice video editing and fact-manipulation-and keep in mind, his work is respected and frequently lauded by Fox News, where he is regarded as a "journalist."
Consequently, although Fox did not trumpet the story on-air until their pundits got hold of it, they did do so online, even taking credit for the administration's reaction later to fire Sherood, so therefore, I STAND BY MY PREMISE, that the constant, constant witch-hunt harping and other egregious Fox New manipulations and castrations of news events has contributed to this whole scandal; both in the administration's over-reaction and in the media hothouse firestorm that responded.
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