The Latest Person Under the Administration Bus?
by GREGORY D. LEE
July 27, 2010
Last week, Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod received a career-ending cell phone call from her department while driving home from work. After several failed attempts to contact Ms. Sherrod, the caller, presumably Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack himself, finally reached her because he asked Georgia state troopers to issue an Amber Alert on electronic road signs asking her to call the office immediately!
Make room for one more!
She was told to pull over to the curb and asked to resign or be fired before the six o’clock news cycle began, because of a soon-to-be-aired videotape of her giving a speech last March at an NAACP meeting.
During this speech, she allegedly boasted about not giving as much assistance to a distressed white farmer as she could, simply because he was white. Because the speech was for an NAACP gathering, and a few days later the organization accused the Tea Party of having racial tendencies, the White House didn’t want to be a part of the controversy.
It obviously felt that the videotape was clear evidence the NAACP was racist or it wouldn’t have reacted the way it did. The White House went into crisis mode when it learned that Fox News had the videotape. After Ms. Sherrod resigned, the White House staffers were high fiving each other because the administration had dodged a large bullet.
I hardly think Sec. Vilsack knew anything about the existence of the videotape. He obviously received a phone call from a skittish White House that wanted to distance itself from Sherrod as soon as possible. Had anybody taken the time to look into her background, they would have learned that her father had been murdered by a white man during the heat of the civil rights movement. The timing of the videotape was too close to the NAACP’s accusations that the Tea Party was a racist organization, and something had to be done immediately – namely firing her before the videotape aired so Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary, could claim the White House took immediate action to remove racists from the ranks of its administration.
This kind of White House response to a “crisis” is generally reserved for a national security situation, like when nuclear missiles are detected heading in our direction over the polar ice caps, and are estimated to arrive in Washington, D.C. within 33 minutes. But that’s impossible with this administration. The president took months to decide on troop increases in Afghanistan. After agonizing over it for months, he finally decided to give Gen. McChrystal 75 percent of the manpower strength he requested, and later fired him for complaining publicly.
Of course, this administration would never jump to conclusions and make a mistake about Ms. Sherrod. It would never take sides without knowing all the facts. Remember President Obama saying the Cambridge, Massachusetts police “acted stupidly” when a sergeant arrested Professor Henry Gates on his porch for disorderly conduct? Gates acted like a fool when police responded to a burglary call at his home and asked him to produce identification to prove he lived there.
As luck would have it for the Obama Administration, it turns out that the videotape was edited to leave the indelible impression Ms. Sherrod was a racist. To the contrary, as she mentioned in the unedited version of the speech, the incident occurred 24 years ago, and after reflection, she realized that distressed poor white farmers need help as much as distressed poor black farmers. She encouraged her listeners to help both blacks and whites equally.
When the truth of the real purpose of her speech was finally realized, the White House started backpedaling. Staffers had to admit to the president they had overreacted. Naturally, the White House blamed Fox News, even though it did not show the video until after Ms. Sherrod had been fired.
That’s when Secretary Vilsack got the call to un-fire her, but it was too late. The president called her and asked her to come back to government; but she still felt the sting of this White House overreacting again to bad political news. She had been thrown under the bus, and wouldn’t commit to accepting her old job or another one at the Department of Agriculture.
Ms. Sherrod immediately became a media darling and portrayed as a victim of Fox News. By the end of next week, CNN will probably offer her a chance to host her own talk show. Once again, no one at the White House will be held accountable for their actions.
Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Gregory D. Lee is a retired Supervisory Special Agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the author of three criminal justice textbooks. While on DEA diplomatic assignment in Pakistan, he was involved in the investigation of several notable terrorism events and arrests. He recently retired after more than 39 years of active and reserve service from the U.S. Army Reserve as a Chief Warrant Officer Five Special Agent for the Criminal Investigation Division Command, better known as CID. In 2011 he completed a combat tour of duty in Afghanistan while on special assignment to the Special Operations Command Europe. Visit his website at http://www.gregorydlee.com/ and contact him at info@gregorydlee.com.
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