Saturday, July 24, 2010

Shirley Sherrod, the Disdainful Press, and the Fumbling Obama Team

Shirley Sherrod has obviously been selected by some great invisible being to make a statement that is so important that it MUST be made.  And she - and it - have made that statement.  I wonder if that great being could have been the ghost of Shakespeare?  This is an epic story reflecting great depth, incomprehensible interactions and innumerable dimensions of fact, emotion, honor, deceit and stupidity.

Trying to honor her murdered father, who died from a  gunshot in the back by a white farmer many years ago, and then her mother and she watched crosses burn on their lawn three nights later, now she tried to reach a slightly larger audience with that story than she ever had before.  It was the 20th Annual Meeting of the NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet in Douglas, Ga, on March 27, 2010.   And she must have thought that would be the ultimate tribute ever made to her father.  But no.  Thanks largely  to other unintended victims in this tornadic twist of publicity, her story is now being reported by the entire country, in print, TV, on internet and in all the major cities of the world in a hundred different languages.  You can’t get an audience like that.  The Pope can’t, the president usually can’t,  the Queen of England can’t but Shirley Sherrod did.  She didn’t intend to get that much attention but  the press woke up to what they thought was a nasty little story, and lambasted it all over the country, then watched in amazement as it “developed” - much like a photographic print in its tray of chemicals (lets call those chemicals a reactive mixture of Research, Investigation and Analysis) - into a totally different story.  Wow.  Everybody was amazed.  And still are.  The press is now pretending they may have done something good, but that  really was only because they screwed it up so badly they're still not sure what really happened.

There’s an even darker side though.  That is the Obama presidency.  Its decision- making process and its organizational structure have had a veil ripped away in a scene not seen since the Revelations of Alice in another foggy wonderland.  We see now the American presidential administration making decisions much like that great marble ball in a pinball machine as it works it way down past all the dinging dingbells, rollovers, bumper caps and flippers, back up again and down again racking up great numbers of points, flashing a lot of light, and making a lot of exciting noise, all of which are only useful to the degree they obscure reality .

Ms. Sherrod resigned from her position as State Director of the USDA Rural Development in Georgia on Monday, July 19,2010,  after the far-right side of the Yellow Press, including Beck and Limbaugh, published a truncated recording of her presentation.  The NAACP then attacked Ms. Sherrod, believing taking the side of the Limbaughs and Becks - well, if they had found and watched the ENTIRE video that would have taken a few more minutes.  The mail stream press, attempting to disdainfully ignore these bad-boys, dutifully reported the skeleton of the mess.  THEN, here comes the other side of the Yellow Press,  Olberman and Maddow leading the gleeful charge with their side of the story. Well, the last guys win this time because the story was on their side to begin with.  Now the main stream press and the administration are still trying to appear well above the fray when they both have been trampled into ridicule by it.   The president has called Ms. Sherrod to express his regret along with everybody else, except of course for those who are holding their sides as they roll in laughter.

Let's face it, the problems shown by the press and the administration reflect a vacuum in the middle of their chains of command.  Somehow the sergeants and the young officers have been lost.  Too many shots are being called by the top-dogs in both organizations and that’s always a checklist for disaster.  The top-dogs are always out of the Loop of Facts because they live in the Loop of Pretend.  

If neither the press or the Obama administration can build a strong structure (that’s the old hierarchy, remember?) of workers who live and work in the Fact Loop, and know what’s going on, and who have the authority to make and enforce decisions, then things will get worse.  I predict they will.

Wanta place any bets?