Lesson Learned After Sherrod Case? Probably Not
Experts say political culture will not change after USDA racial flap.
July 22, 2010 — -- With pretty much everyone involved in the Shirley Sherrod case apologizing -- from President Obama and the NAACP on the left, to Bill O'Reilly on the right -- the question remains: Will this episode tamp down America's warp-speed, hair-trigger political culture?
Not if you listen to Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow for Media Matters for America, a left-wing media monitoring group.
He didn't think the incident -- where Sherrod, a USDA official, was forced to resign after a racial flap and then urged to return to her job a day later by President Obama -- would bring about change.
"Frankly, the right wing and the right-wing mob is committed to this stuff," he said. "Whether it stops other people from taking it seriously, I think, is the more important question."
Sherrod, who is black, grabbed national headlines after conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted a video clip of her from a March NAACP event talking about her dilemma in helping a white farmer 24 years ago.
She later was asked to step down from her position in Georgia. The move was supported by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and the NAACP.
Vilsack later flipped from his initial decision after the NAACP released the full video of Sherrod's remarks, which supported her argument that her speech had been taken out of context and, in fact, she'd been preaching against racism.
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