It is almost comical the outbreak of apologies being made to former U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod after a misleading video snippet got her fired, then recruited back to her government position. Now a media sensation, Sherrod is using her newly acquired clout to request a conversation with President Barack Obama and to speak up on behalf of black farmers.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who is being blasted for forcing Sherrod to tender her resignation, has now offered his former employee a position within the same department, this time with the USDA’s Office of Civil Rights and Community Outreach. But Sherrod’s inclined to decline the offer.
“I would not be that individual that the department, everyone is looking to to solve the issue of racism in USDA. It takes a lot more to get that job done,” she said, noting that other USDA officials have not lost their jobs for discriminating against minority or women farmers.
President Obama has also apologized to Sherrod through White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.
Meanwhile, the NAACP’s Ben Jealous and CNN’s Roland Martin offered feeble and humble apologies under a cloud of humiliation for stomping on the very type of person they have vowed to fight for.
U.S. Agriculture Department Secretary Tom Vilsack has apologized profusely for this massive blunder. “I did not think before I acted and for that this poor woman has gone through a very hard time,” he said.
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly surprised some when he tendered his formal apology to Sherrod on the show. Fox News used the story to drag Sherrod and Obama through the mud. They also used the faulty video as a way to blunt the NAACP’s critique of the right-wing Tea Party for housing and recruiting rabid racists into its fold.
But most of all, Sherrod is using this intense but temporary spotlight to put Obama on the spot and request that he act on the cause of the nation’s black farmers who fight discrimination on a variety of fronts.
“I can’t say that the president is fully behind me,” Sherrod told ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Thursday morning. “I would hope that he is … I’d like to talk to him about the experiences of people like me, people at the grassroots level, people who live out here in rural America people, who live in the South. I know he does not have that kind of experience.”
–terry shropshire
