...and the home of the BRAAAVE!

The Honest Man was having a conversation the other day with his conscience the Reverend Doctor. We were talking about the whole Shirley Sherrod-USDA "controversy" that has kept America captivated this week. But captivated in the wrong way. This literally has to be one of the worst fuckups in the history of fuckups. And I'm talking how the situation was handled.

I'm hoping my readers are up to speed on this but if you're not, here's the cliff notes version of what happened. Black woman works for the government. Black woman speaks at a NAACP function. Black woman is videotaped. Someone posts an edited version of the video online on their blog. The edited version focuses on the Black woman's past dealings with a White farmar some 25 years ago. Black woman is then publicly crucified by the White House, NAACP, Tea Party, and ultimately her job fires her. Someone comes to Black woman's aid. That someone plays the entire video. The entire video shows Black woman not saying anything supposedly controversial. All people who threw stones at her look like major assholes. Did you follow that?

As you can imagine, there's a lot of egg on many people's faces. We live in an age now where unfortunately when you are speaking in a public forum, no matter how large or small an audience, someone is normally taping the event. And thanks to evil doers like photoshop and video edit software, it empowers stupid people to do stupid things like post a video without completely showing all the facts.

I could easily play the race card and say how much more I am disappointed in my President and the NAACP for falling for a trap. But nope I'm an equal opportunist and everyone gets the gas face. Folks have been so happy slinging mud at one another, they wanted to throw dirt on someone else. And now Mrs Sherrod is having the last laugh. Got her former employer offering her job back to her. Got CNN in her grill like the bread on the meat of my sandwich. Got the President talking that "In hindsight" stuff on ABC. Yea, it's not good America, not a good look at all.

I'm literally speechless at the stupidity exhibited by a lot of people. Regardless of my opinion of all the parties that jumped on the "Let's teach this black girl a lesson" bandwagon, I do recognize these are educated people that led this witchhunt. And it makes me wonder at one point did they major in dumb ass decisions or I'm with stupid degrees. We've become a culture that now believes guilty until proven innocent instead of getting our facts right first. And then shit like this happens....

Today's Lesson

But you know how this could have been avoided? If the Honest Man had posted his Race Relations blog on July 17 instead of July 23 :-)