What Keith Said

but I just spent 12 minutes viewing his “Special Comment” video that you have provided.

I was struck most by KO’s ‘let Obama be Obama’ comment, as if it were everyone else in the administration that fucks up, but not the president. I believe that KO still has a few candles burning in the window, but they’re getting closer to extinguishing.

The Shirley Sherrod debacle is not so much about Fox News or Breitbart, as they are not operating any differently than they have in the past. What made this story surge is the administration’s handling of Ms Sherrod. I don’t believe for one minute that the decision to release Ms Sherrod was done without Obama himself having prior knowledge: politically, and especially for this president, it was a high profile issue (racism) in which he was not inclined to engage.

KO’s plea to the President to stand up to the instigators of this travesty and to all of the other attacks from the right reminds me of this exchange that then candidate Obama had with Rachel Maddow  five days before the election in 2008

MADDOW: Now, they do that to you the same way. When they talk — when John McCain calls you a socialist —

OBAMA: Right.

MADDOW: This redistribute the wealth idea. He goe — he calls you soft on national security.

OBAMA: Yes.

MADDOW: That’s not just an anti-Barack Obama script.

OBAMA: No.

MADDOW: That is — he’s reading from an anti-Democrat, and specifically an anti-liberal stance.

OBAMA: Absolutely.

MADDOW: And so, you have the opportunity to say John McCain, George Bush, you’re wrong. You also have the opportunity to say, conservatism has been bad for America. But, you haven’t gone there either.

OBAMA: I tell you what though, Rachel. You notice, I think we’re winning right now so —

I’m not holding my breath

karoli has a good overall analysis of the entire Breitbart/Fox affair

Robert Gibbs Apologizes to Shirley Sherrod on Behalf of the Administration

There’s no question that the administration walks out of this one with the taint of a Breitbart/Fox punking on them, and while many argue that this instance is no different than others, I would say it very much is. Looking at the circumstances that led up to today’s crescendo carefully, themes emerge:

   * Breitbart and Fox timed their lies precisely to deflect attention from racist elements inside the Tea Party. In typical form, they took aim at the NAACP, which had been under fire for a week for stepping up and pushing the Tea Party to renounce racism. Breitbart releases a snippet of a relatively low-ranking official’s speech that appears to prove she’s racist, and BAM! No more tea party talk. It’s all about the Administration. (see digby’s post here for more evidence of that)

   * The Administration was punked, yes. But so was the mainstream press. Like it or not, the reason Breitbart’s video got any traction was because everyone in the mainstream press jumped on it. They owe the apology right alongside Gibbs and the administration.

   * No one really wants to deal with the elephant in the room. As Joan Walsh and digby both point out, the message in Sherrod’s story is not about race. It’s about class.

   

Walsh:

         Shirley Sherrod is right: A lot of people are spending a lot of energy to get folks like the Spooners and Sherrod to think they should be enemies, when the real issue is class. The left should remember that lesson, because the right is invested in making sure no one learns it.

Greg Sargent steps up with a volley for his peers:

 

Gibbs then described the media process. “You all see it, you all want reaction, we get reaction,” Gibbs said. He lamented that news orgs then aired the two and a half minute snippet, as well as the White House reaction based on that snippet, without seeking fuller context themselves.

   Gibbs then suggested that media orgs, too, should ask themselves if they handled this properly: “I dont think there’s anybody involved in that chain that wouldn’t think, from start to finish, that this shoudn’t have been handled differently.”

   Translation: Maybe you all should stop using Breitbart as your assignment editor.