The latest political story dominating the news the last couple of days has been the smearing of Shirley Sherrod, the United States Department of Agriculture director of Rural Development in Georgia who was forced to resign from her job thanks to a heavily edited video of a speech she gave to an NAACP gathering in March. The video was released by Andrew Breitbart, a right-wing political operative, and was intended to highlight apparent reverse racism on the part of Sherrod and the NAACP. Sherrod was fired by USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack at the urging of the White House (if not directly by Obama, definitely with his knowledge through his staff)). It turned out the full, unedited video was not so much about racism as it was about overcoming individual and societal bias.

Enough has been said about this unjust firing in the Corporate Media, online media, and in independent blogs and news sites that I’m not going to do a full dissection of all the issues here. You can do that yourself, with Google and some extra time to spare. Instead, I’m going to quickly point out what I see as a couple of glaring flaws, then concentrate on what I think we should take away from this sorry, sordid incident. While my thoughts on the overall situation are relatively brief, my analysis of what we should learn from this are rather long, so I’m splitting this into two parts.

First, I’m disgusted by the Obama administration’s willingness to credulously trust information from the Internet without fully investigating first, and their equal willingness to throw their own employees under the bus, all because of shrill voices from the right. If Obama is willing to give credence to extreme right-wingers and their attacks and fantasies, it validates what they say. Unfortunately, a lot of what they have to say is built on innuendoes, half-truths, outright lies, and fantasies. Most of them are bullies, and the Obama administration’s apparent capitulation is pathetic, to say the least.

The second flaw is the Corporate Media’s insistence on continuing to treat Breitbart as an equal. He is not an equal, he has violated journalistic and social ethics, and should be ostracized and consigned to oblivion. He knowingly passed on false material and lied about Sherrod. Even if he did not himself edit the tape, his “source” and whoever edited and passed on the tape is not entitled to anonymity. Breitbart purposely ruined an innocent person’s career and expects to continue to receive deference and attention. I’m appalled he’s apparently getting a pass from most quarters, and it is not only a dark blot on his own integrity, but now the Corporate Media’s integrity as well. The fact that no one, except a handful of bloggers, independent journalists, and Shirley Sherrod herself, intends to try to hold Breitbart to task. Instead, most of the Corporate Media and their conservative colleagues only plan to point fingers at Obama and the NAACP, and not at the original source of this falsehood (Fox News shouldn’t get off scot-free here, either, but it’s pretty obvious to everyone with half a brain and a spine that Fox is the propaganda organ of the Republican Party– this is just par for the course for them, sad to say).  For a pointed take on this, check David Frum’s comments on the kid gloves treatment of Breitbart (and I love Frum’s comparison of what the media did to Dan Rather and their current slap on the wrist for Breitbart. Don’t you just love double standards?).

As of now, Obama has talked to Sherrod, but instead of being a big boy and taking responsibility, he’s blaming Vilsack, saying Vilsack “jumped the gun.” I call b.s. Vilsack may be a sorry sack and a coward, but someone, President Obama, someone told him to axe Sherrod. That someone most likely checked with the top dog first, and you just happen to be the top of the heap at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This reflects poorly on you, so instead of playing the blame game and pointing and shouting, “he did it, he did it” like a five year old, try taking a page from Harry Truman: “The Buck Stops Here.” Look at JFK after the Bay of Pigs– he assumed responsibility for that mess (although he did try to dodge it at first). We used to have leaders in the White House, now we just have a bunch of junior high schoolers. You can play the blame game all you want, but the way I see it, there’s plenty of blame to go around.

What’s lost in all of this finger-pointing endgame is Sherrod’s original point. I’ll come back to that soon.