Is Shirley Sherrod A Black Eye For The Obama Administration?

Something was said about her that was not true and which was clearly intended to cast her in a bad light. I

I have long been mystified by these events. Soon after the initial reports of the selected excerpts from her remarks to the NAACP were published, enough additional material was noted that put her whole remarks in context. There was certainly nothing in the story she told about her own journey from activism to her view of the common troubles affecting the poor of all backgrounds that would warrant the loss of her job- or any retaliation at all for that matter. On the contrary I found it to be a heartfelt story of a personal journey that could resonate with most people - even those who may disagree with her politics.

It appears that many reporters - on both sides of the political divide - got the excerpt wrong on initial reading. Hard for me to understand why the Agriculture Department was so eager to get rid of her based on something so easily self-explanatory as her speech. Just as hard for me to understand why no followup action has occurred to rectify the injustice done to her.

The Breitbart video was cunningly edited to make her seem like a real jerk.

Cycloptichorn

However, the Agriculture Dept had clear legal and moral responsibilities to get it right - and doing so was easy and readily done - and they failed to do so. Don't blame that on others.

But they never would have acted in the first place without Breitbart. The entire point of libel is it causes harm because people believe it and act on it even if it isn't true. The Ag department acted which makes Breitbart responsible for libel since he printed the lie. You can argue the Ag department should have not acted but that is not what happened. The court won't be interested in speculation about what should have been checked out. They will only care about what did happen and what led up to it. The firing leads back to Breitbart no matter how you want to parse it. You are only arguing they shouldn't have believed the lie which becomes prima facia evidence that Breitbart did lie.

You don't seem to understand that hawkeye but the courts will.

More to the point, do you think legal experts are fortune tellers?

You can argue that.

But they never would have acted in the first place without Breitbart. The entire point of libel is it causes harm because people believe it and act on it even if it isn't true. The Ag department acted which makes Breitbart responsible for libel since he printed the lie. You can argue the Ag department should have not acted but that is not what happened. The court won't be interested in speculation about what should have been checked out. They will only care about what did happen and what led up to it. The firing leads back to Breitbart no matter how you want to parse it. You are only arguing they shouldn't have believed the lie which becomes prima facia evidence that Breitbart did lie.

I still have a very hard time understanding why there has been no apology or action to correct this injustice from the Administration

WASHINGTON — Flooded with apologies from everywhere, Shirley Sherrod got the biggest "I'm sorry" of all Thursday – from a contrite President Barack Obama, who personally appealed to the ousted worker to come back.

Sherrod, who was forced to resign on Monday because of racial comments she made at an NAACP gathering, was asked by Obama to rejoin the federal government and transform "this misfortune" into a chance to use her life experiences to help people, said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

Obama had stayed out of the public brouhaha that followed Sherrod's ouster from the Agriculture Department after a conservative blog posted a clip of the black woman's comments and portrayed her as racist. Once it became clear that the speech in question was advocating racial reconciliation, not racism, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack apologized to her and offered her a new job Wednesday. Gibbs also apologized publicly "for the entire administration."

I like your reasoning...this means that I am not to blame for anything that I do wrong so long as I can locate a person with a screw loose who advocates or agitates for my wrong move..

Have you located even a single legal expert who claims that this suit has a likely chance of success if it goes to judgement?

I think Hawkeye has this one right. The whole report was readily available on the Media (even on Fox news) the following day.

Any manager or CEO in a business doing the equivalent of this would be held accountable by a court in a civil challenge, and would have paid dearly for his misdeed in comparable circumstances. That there were false or incomplete media reports wouldn't figure in the legal judgment at all: it was sufficent that the real record of what she actually said existed and was available to the Secretary. Slam dunk.