For many years one of my favorite sayings has been "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." I never really thought about what happens when the two collide -- but that's definitely a capsule description of the Sherrod mess. A reich wing activist motivated by malice and paranoia collided with an administration staffed by idiots who quake in fear of allowing any controversy to develop.
I'd love to see someone at USDA fired, but we all know that's not going to happen. If the bureaucracy functions as usual, Cheryl Cook, the dipshit who bullied Shirley Sherrod into pulling over on I-20 and texting in her resignation via Blackberry, is probably going to get a promotion, Secretary Vilsack will keep right on being a shill for Monsanto and Cargill, and next week the main stream medium will fall for another of Andrew Breitbart's scams.
The truly ironic part, of course, is that Cheryl Cook told Ms. Sherrod that she had to resign because she was going to be on Glenn Beck otherwise. As events unfolded, yes, Ms. Sherrod did indeed get mentioned on Beck's show -- as an example of the utter incompetence of the Obama administration because they fired her before bothering to do any fact-checking.
There has also been (as there always is) a tinfoil hat theme emerging over the week. Having had a day or two in which to regroup, the extreme right wing has once again found a conspiracy: the Obama administration and the NAACP planned the whole thing just to bring down poor Andrew Breitbart. I've never understood this fantasy life the right wing leads. They refuse to believe the current administration is capable of ordinary governance, the above-board out in the open management of various agencies and policies, but they are willing to believe conspiracy theories that are as convoluted and unlikely as a 1960s spy novel?
What a mess.
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