Welcome to the Wednesday edition of your open thread. Don’t forget – Drinking Liberally tomorrow in Rehoboth. Mark your calendars!
Do you know who the real victim of the Shirley Sherrod fiasco is? Fox News! It’s so mean for people to call them racist, just because they showed a video meant to ruin a woman’s reputation – because she’s black.
Fox News’ Brit Hume delivered a commentary on Special Report with Bret Baier, where demanded that the media apologize to Fox News for calling them racist. Fox wants an apology from the NAACP, Howard Dean, and Shirley Sherrod. Hume said, “You might think all this would be the stuff of further apologies.”
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Hume said, “As victims of unfair media treatment go, Shirley Sherrod got off easy. Within 24 hours or so from her forced resignation from the agriculture department, she’s been apologized to, offered a new job, and later even got a call from the president himself. All of this the result of a truncated Internet videotape that made it appear she had once done less than her best for a white farmer because of his race. It was unfair, and the apologies were deserved, but the initial rush to judge Sherrod was not the only rush to judgment in this affair.”
Hume then went in circles trying to spin away FNC’s responsibility for this, “Consider, Sherrod herself said she was ordered last Monday to resign immediately by a senior Agriculture official who said Sherrod was going to be on Glenn Beck’s Fox program that night. In fact, Beck did not say a word about Sherrod until the next night when he defended her. Bill O’Reilly called for her to step down on Monday, but by her account she had already quit before he spoke, and O’Reilly apologized the next night. Indeed, Shirley Sherrod was not mentioned on Fox News Channel or Foxnews.com either until after the Obama administration had forced her out, and no news as opposed to opinion broadcast on Fox ever accused Sherrod of racism, but she blamed Fox and accused the network of racism, so did numerous others including the NAACP, and former Democratic Chairman Howard Dean on Fox News Sunday though it became clear from Chris Wallace’s question that Dean had no idea what the facts were. You might think all this would be the stuff of further apologies. Somehow, I’m not holding my breath.”
By the way, Glenn Beck apologized to Shirley Sherrod by calling her a Marxist
I feel their pain. 🙄
I can’t believe I missed this story. Some county officials in California were paying themselves 6-figure salaries but asking residents to take service cuts.
City Council members in Bell unanimously agreed Monday to give up their controversial $96,000-a-year salaries and instead draw $673 a month — a 90% decrease.
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A Times report revealed that the city’s top officials received some of the highest municipal wages in the nation. City Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo made $787,637 a year, almost twice the salary of President Obama; Police Chief Randy Adams made $457,000, 50% more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck; and Assistant City Manager Spaccia made $376,288, more than the top administrator for Los Angeles County.
All three resigned last week.
In agreeing to sweep back their salaries, Councilmen Luis Artiga and George Mirabal put themselves on par with Lorenzo Velez, who has been paid $673 a month since he was appointed to the council last summer. Velez said he was unaware his colleagues were making so much.
The scam was that they would supplement their pay by serving on “boards.” California AG Jerry Brown is investigating. I doubt this is the end of this story.