Shirley Sherrod and the Left's discovery of "Context"

"Context, Context, Context!"  The Left wing news media today is like a child who has discovered a new rattle, and now won't stop shaking it!

As I hinted at the other day in my blog post on this subject, Shirley Sherrod is someone that can't decide what is more important - blacks standing up to whites, or the poor standing up to the rich.  Now it turns out that when you listen to her full speech, the story of her blatant discrimination against a white farmer is told in the context of her "revelation" that actually divisive race politics isn't as important as divisive class warfare.  So what she eventually "learns" is that the blacks and the whites should put their differences aside in order to fight the rich people - even using the phrase "rich versus poor" at one point.  Oh, well, that's much better then...

I will agree that the context adds something to the situation as presented the other day, and I will even go so far as to say the clip we were presented with is quite misleading - but this does not make Shirley Sherrod innocent.  Her discovery that dividing people by race isn't as important as dividing people by class and by wealth isn't exactly a conversion of soul like the alcoholic who discovers he no longer needs drink because he has found Jesus or whatever.  This is simply the replacement of one kind of hate for another.  So, excuse me if I don't cry a river for Shirley Sherrod.

Also, let's remember that Sherrod was fired, not by Fox News (who were actually the first to get her on their news channel on Megyn Kelly's show in order to hear her side of the story), but by the White House, who crapped themselves at the first sign of trouble and threw her under the bus.  It is this that makes this story a bit different.

Context is something we often find lacking in news stories, usually by stories reported by the left-wing media. For instance, Rush Limbaugh was smeared as a racist for calling Obama "Barack the Magic Negro" when he was actually parodying an LA Times article that uses that phrase.  In that case, as in many other Limbaugh stories (even the other day when he called George Steinbrenner a "cracker" only in the context of the New Black Panthers it was Limbaugh who was reported as the bigot) context is all important, and the mainstream media often "forget" it when it suits their agenda.  When the context is revealed, they are barely bothered to correct themselves (unlike what Fox has done, who immediately made an effort to seek context to the clip and to get both sides of the story).  Only with the Sherrod case have the MSM suddenly become interested in the "context" of the situation, and "responsible journalism" - funny that!

This double standard is made clearer by the fact that when Limbaugh, or Beck, or Sarah Palin or any right-winger is falsely accused of something by the mainstream media, their employers or fellow right-wingers usually find the context, present it to the public, and stand by the personality in question.  What is interesting here is how the NAACP and the White House threw this woman under the bus without even asking her for her story!  Even Fox had the courtesy to ask for her side!  With friends like that, who needs enemies?

This story has not, as so many on the left are trying to spin it, been an embarrasment for Fox.  Instead it has been a humiliation for the White House, and shown a glaring double standard in the MSM, who are suddenly concerned with "context", when usually they couldn't give two hoots for context.  Maybe next time they report a smear against a right-winger, they will pause to discover the "context."  I doubt it though...