Posted on 07/30/2010 4:19:13 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As an Arab American, I can empathise with Shirley Sherrod, the Georgia Department of Agriculture official who, last week, after being falsely accused of making anti-white racist comments, was forced to resign from her post.
For those who don't know the story, on 19 July a rightwing blogger posted a video excerpt of a speech Sherrod gave to a Georgia NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) dinner in which she related an event that had occurred 24 years ago. A poor white farmer had come to Sherrod asking for assistance and she told her audience how she had dismissed his appeal thinking, "His own kind would take care of him."
The video excerpt became a sensation and was highlighted by commentators on the Fox News Channel as evidence of the reverse racism tolerated by the Obama administration. Within hours of enduring these attacks, the US secretary of agriculture, concerned that this would politically harm the Obama administration, forced Sherrod to resign.
Only then did the entire story come to light. When the full speech was aired, it became clear that Sherrod had only told her audience about this episode as part of a confession of a painful mistake she had made that had caused her to re-examine her behaviour and recognise her responsibility to all who were poor and in need. In fact, she had helped that poor farmer, who came forward to tell the national media of the gratitude he and his family felt towards Sherrod.
By week's end, President Obama personally called Sherrod to apologise as did the secretary of agriculture, who offered her an elevated position.
In the midst of this crisis, I wrote a number of short pieces on a few websites charging that Sherrod had been "lynched" and was a victim of a hysterical mob spurred on by lies and cowards in authority who, out of fear or political calculation, had sacrificed her to a mob refusing her right to a fair hearing.
I understood her plight because I, and many other Arab Americans and American Muslims, had endured similar treatment. Over the years a veritable industry has developed of anti-Arab groups and individuals whose job it has been to track our progress and to challenge our every advance with smear campaigns. Taking our quotes out of context, making patently false and sometimes bizarre claims that fabricate connections with terror groups and extremists, these characters and the websites and rightwing publications who use their work have directed their attacks against many prominent Arab and Muslim Americans and those in government or business who work with us.
This is what happened to my son more than a decade ago, when he worked for a time at the State Department. The same types of attacks have followed my every move for decades. When in 1993, vice-president Al Gore asked me to head up a project he was launching to support economic development in the West Bank and Gaza, one of the professional Arab bashers wrote a piece suggesting I had been supportive of terrorists. Using this material, a prominent liberal magazine editorialised that Gore should remove me from the post.
To his credit, Gore defended me and arranged a meeting with the magazine's editor. When the editor produced the quote I was alleged to have made and I shared with him the full text of what I had said, he recognised his error and apologised. But the attacks never stopped. When I was invited last year to deliver the closing remarks at a Department of Justice conference, a right wing researcher published an article describing me as "[Attorney-General Eric] Holder's Hizbullah buddy" and when I addressed last year's Pentagon Iftar dinner, another of these anti-Arab hatchet men wrote a piece in a conservative magazine noting that a "well known Wahhabi supporter" spoke at the Pentagon.
Much the same has been experienced by others in my community. An Arab American state legislator in Michigan and even the newly crowned Miss USA were falsely accused of Hizbullah ties. Young attorney Mazin Asbahi was forced to resign from the Obama campaign over similar fabricated charges.
Even now a new storm is brewing. A new mosque is being planned in an area near Ground Zero, the site of the terrorist attack that killed 3,000 innocents on 11 September 2001. Some local groups have objected and have been supported by the likes of 2012 presidential aspirants Sarah Palin, who called the mosque a "stab in the heart", and Newt Gingrich, who saw the mosque as part of a larger challenge, arguing that "America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilisation."
A conservative magazine accelerated the assault with a personal attack on the mosque project's leader, Imam Faisal Abdel-Raouf -- a truly honourable man with a long record of promoting peace and reconciliation. Using the now familiar tools of half quotes, fabricated connections (described by another writer as: "his wife has an uncle who used to be "a leader" of a mosque that now has a website that links to the website of an allegedly radical organisation") and innuendo, the article attempts to portray Imam Faisal as a suspicious and even dangerous threat. And now Congressman Peter King, the Republican ranking member of House Homeland Security Committee, has called for an investigation into Faisal Abdel-Raouf.
And so I understand Shirley Sherrod. I know what she has endured and while I celebrate her vindication, I know we, as Americans, are not yet out of the woods. Something is fundamentally rotten in our "gotcha" political culture, where groups seeking political advantage can so easily make victims of innocents and cowards will let good people pay the price rather than defend their rights to a fair hearing.
An Arab in Foggy Bottom -- he should've felt right at home.
I will resolve all disputes by Rochambeau before I tolerate these tactics one more day.
She was lynched alright, by the NAACP and the White House. I have to laugh at Zogby, who was born in Utica, NY to Lebanese parents, and whose relatives still live live in Utica. I worked with his cousin, who looked upon James as a joke...a huckster. James Zogby found a money-making gimmick based on the fact that he was of Lebanese descent, and ran with the Arabic rights crap. His brother has found his own niche running his polling business. If I recall, the cousin I worked with was Catholic, as more than likely are the rest of the Zogby’s. In fact, Wikipedia says James is a Maronite Catholic. They have a large family in this area.
yes, you are correct...and there were lynchings that were white on white....I know of one in about 1938-9 in Montana....where a father and son were lynched from a jail and hung by some locals....(The father and son had murdered a family and buried their remains in a manure pile on the farm)
I am pissed. I am just an American. Why can I not be a X-American? I think I will name myself a Tiger Woods-American, he has many races in his blood, plus he likes good looking loose women and money. His choices are sometimes bad, sometimes very bad, he loses money that he should not have lost if he were just an American, he has a mansion in Hawaii, a huge yacht, a house near Disney World, all things I want and identify with... I am a Tiger Woods-American.
She wasn't falsely accused and she's still making racist comments.
The video excerpt became a sensation and was highlighted by commentators on the Fox News Channel as evidence of the reverse racism tolerated by the Obama administration. Within hours of enduring these attacks, the US secretary of agriculture, concerned that this would politically harm the Obama administration, forced Sherrod to resign.
She was forced to resign before anything EVER was said on Fox.
Racists and racist sympathizers always play fast and loose with facts. I didn't even bother reading the rest of it.
First, she was fired before Fox aired the story, and second, if she was "lynched" it was by the White House.
No one on the right demanded her ouster; she was ousted before anyone knew about it other than Breitbart and he didn't demand her ouster at all.
the mosque project's leader, Imam Faisal Abdel-Raouf -- a truly honourable man with a long record of promoting peace and reconciliation.
Wow. So Zogby is going to try and hide the 911 mosque behind Sherrod's skirts. Thats really shameless if you ask me.
In fact I think the whole point of this dishonest little diatribe is his effort to attach the 911 mosque issue to hers. Establish that somehow the “right” lynched her, which they didn’t, the White House did, but then claim that opposition to the mosque is the very same kind of supposed race hatred.
Thats some really slippery propaganda. He’s a pro.
” When the full speech was aired, it became clear that Sherrod had only told her audience about this episode as part of a confession of a painful mistake ....”
Blah, blah,blah.
Did Zogby actually bother to listen to Shirley’s entire bigoted speech ??
Like this:
“ You know, I haven’t seen such a mean-spirited people as I’ve seen lately over this issue of health care.
Some of the racism we thought was buried.
Didn’t it surface?
Now, we endured eight years of the Bush’s and we didn’t do the stuff these Republicans
are doing because you have a black President. “
Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator did some research on Sherrod’s wild claims of family lynchings
and found that either she lied or exaggerated.
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/26/sherrod-story-false
Lynched means criticizing king obuma, questioning the thievery of any black fascist bureaucrat, denying a black child a purple heart and $3,500 a month disability veteran’s benefits for surviving the evil white man’s bombardment of black society and not providing free ribeye steak, corn biscuits and grits to every black soul standing, sitting, lying down or dead and buried in racist American.
Did I miss anyone?
I am an Ollie North fan. I think "I'm a North-American" on shirts and hats would sell like all-you-can-drink-refill beer steins at Sturgis. That idea is so smart it must be twenty years old.
“Look at me, I’m a victim! I’m a victim, too!!! Give me money!”
She was “lynched”...by the White House.
>> Something is fundamentally rotten in our “gotcha” political culture
No thanks to victimization-baiters like James Zogby.
Why is Liberty such a foreign concept to this idiot?
Remember this the next time you see his brother’s polling data.
LLS
You would think you'd understand and acknowledge the same kind of smear tactics against the Tea Party.
Hypocrite.
“You know, I haven’t seen such a mean-spirited people as I’ve seen lately over this issue of health care. Some of the racism we thought was buried. Didn’t it surface?”___ Shirley Sherrod
I remember reading about some Italian immigrants who were lynched in Louisiana for being too friendly to the local black people—either they didn’t understand the “rules” or refused to go along with them. I think that was in the late 19th century.
“She was lynched alright, by the NAACP and the White House.”
I’d be surprised if that weren’t the case. It’s my understanding that most lynchings in the U.S. have been well attended by Democrats.
Even with video documentation of her racialist comments, she’s still given a pass. I must hand it to this administration, how quickly they deflected the story away from her comments and the NAACP’s reaction.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.