Listen to the entire program<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/p>\n![\"sherrod\"](\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_arhIY5qWBRE\/StyjcQzr2HI\/AAAAAAAABrE\/3I60Ro-3ZAU\/s320\/Shirley+Sherrod+-+FLAG+Family+Farm+Champion-mini.JPG\")
House representative Barbara Lee said yesterday that the government was being “held hostage” by right wing shock jocks and Fox News. The chair of the Congressional Black Caucus was adding her views to the frenzy over the recent firing of Shirley Sherrod, director of rural development in Georgia for the USDA. The scandal began when right wing blogger Andrew Breitbart posted an edited video of a speech Sherrod made at an NAACP dinner this March about an event that took place more than 20 years ago. His post was apparently a response to a resolution passed by the NAACP calling on Tea Party leaders to repudiate racist elements in their ranks. The video of Sherrod implied that she had discriminated against a white farmer, when in fact she was trying to illustrate her view that class is more important than race. Sherrod went on to help save the white farmers’ land. But Breitbart’s edited video of the talk and his accompanying blog was taken seriously enough by the Obama Administration that Tom Vilsack head of the USDA immediately demanded her resignation. Even the NAACP themselves rebuked Sherrod. Only when the entire video and the context of Sherrod’s remarks were made public did the government admit their mea culpa and apologize to her. The NAACP also backtracked, claiming they were “snookered.” Only Andrew Breitbart has remained adamant, refusing to apologize, saying the story is about the NAACP and their assertions of racism in the Tea Party, not Sherrod herself. Sherrod sees it differently – she is considering suing Breitbart. <\/p>\n
GUEST: Kevin Alexander Gray, author of “The Decline of Black Politics: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama” and “Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics.” <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"House representative Barbara Lee said yesterday that the government was being “held hostage” by right wing shock jocks and Fox News. The chair of the Congressional Black Caucus was adding her views to the frenzy over the recent firing of Shirley Sherrod, director of rural development in Georgia for the USDA. The scandal began when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}