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The Spectacle Blog
So a member (unidentified) of the White House press corps yesterday asks this of press secretary Robert Gibbs during the Shirley Sherrod uproar:
Q: Okay. Now, you said that there is no truth to the idea that right-wing media spooks this administration. Yosi Sergant, Van Jones, now Shirley Sherrod have all come under attack from Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Andrew Breitbart — none of them are at this moment members of this administration. How do you explain those three departures? Do they really have nothing to do with the campaign that had been waged against them?
Let me help you out, Mr. Reporter. And you too, Robert.
Does the name Earl Butz ring a bell?
If the subject is attacks from the press that prompt presidential firings, this is nothing new. And it certainly existed long before the arrival of Messrs. Beck, O’Reilly and Breitbart.
In 1976, Earl Butz was, like Shirley Sherrod, working for the Agriculture Department. As a matter of fact, he was the Tom Vilsack of his day — Gerald Ford’s Secretary of Agriculture. A crusty white Indiana farmer, ex-Dean of Agriculture at Purdue University, an Eisenhower Assistant Secretary of Agriculture and delegate to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, Butz, like Shirley Sherrod today, was given to unfortunate expressions that indicated he appeared to see things through a racial lens.
But unlike Shirley Sherrod, he didn’t go around and give a public speech in which he discussed a farmer of a different race by referring to “his kind.” In fact, as it turned out, there was not a scintilla of evidence that whatever Butz’s racial thoughts were that they surfaced in his professional career in the Eisenhower administration, at the UN, or at Purdue or in his service to Ford and Richard Nixon as Agriculture Secretary. No, Mr. Butz’s problem appeared differently.
You see, Earl Butz told a racial joke. A joke that was both obscene and racist. In a private conversation to someone else, on a plane ride. Six weeks before it made news. One of the people who heard the joke was ex-White House Counsel John W. Dean, who eventually told the tale, without naming Mr. Butz, to…wait for it… General Stanley McChrystal’s favorite magazine, Rolling Stone. After six weeks, the fact that someone in the Ford Cabinet had told a racist private joke was out. Shortly, other liberal media, in this case New Times, a magazine of the day now long gone, linked Butz to the joke.
It was October, 1976. Ford and running mate Bob Dole were engaged in a tight race against Georgia ex-Governor Jimmy Carter and Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale. Suddenly, the Secretary of Agriculture’s private and clearly racist joke was not only front page news in the New York Times and the Washington Post, it was leading the three nightly newscasts of ABC, CBS and NBC.
Over and over and over again Butz and Ford and Dole were pounded by the liberal media of the day on Butz’s private joke. There was no Fox, no talk radio, no “other side” to the issue. Earl Butz was guilty, case closed. Republican candidates, likewise pounded now by the media, made it known they didn’t want Butz campaigning for them in their rural districts either.
Governor Carter said the remarks were “disgraceful” and he would never allow anyone who even hinted at racist feelings to serve in his government, conveniently skipping over his own racist appeals when running for the Georgia governorship. Miraculously neither the New York Times nor any liberal media outlet brought up Carter’s own behavior of only six years earlier.
When he had extensively courted Georgia political boss and segregationist Roy Harris for his support, Harris famous for saying, among other things, as reported by Carter biographer and ex-NY Timesman Jim Wooten: “N….s are n….s and no amount of crossbreeding is going to help them any. The tiniest drop of n….r blood will spoil a man. History shows that. Everybody knows that, and those who don’t know that have probably got some n…r blood in them, that’s all.”
Posh. Racism, schmacism. What’s the big deal? Mr. Harris was recruited personally by Jimmy Carter and so what? Carter avidly campaigned for the segregationist vote with people that made Butz look like Mary Poppins. But…not a whisper by liberal media in all of this flurry over racism.
Earl Butz was not a liberal. And the liberal media was in a fury. They wanted a scalp. So they went to Mondale, who right on cue said indignantly that expressing racist beliefs while serving in government “it’s like poison, cancer in the society.” There are, said Mr. Liberal to his approving Liberal Media audience, “certain things that decency and humanity require and one is respect for people of different races and background.” He demanded Butz be fired.
The Carter allies in the liberal media kept pounding. Daily, hourly not yet available for technology reasons. There was a New York Times reminder that Mr. Butz had once seemed to mock Italians by saying with a laugh in reference to Pope Paul VI’s opposition to birth control: “He no playa da game, he no maka da rules.”
Long story short, after days on end of pounding by the liberal media — there was no such thing as a “conservative media” to ponder whether Butz was actually good at his job, whether he was genuine racist or just a guy who liked jokes and told them all no matter who they offended — Earl Butz was fired.
Although they did not involve race, pre-conservative media there were similar liberal media firestorms over Eisenhower running mate Richard Nixon in 1952, Ike’s chief of staff Sherman Adams, Reagan national security adviser Richard Allen, Bush 41 chief of staff John Sununu , Bush 43 Labor Secretary-designate Linda Chavez, etc., etc., etc. The list is long.
In other words, having made this sort of thing an art form, now that there is a serious conservative media, liberals in the media object. They are, well, horrified don’t you know. Not apologetic. Not concerned about double-standards. Just angry.
Poor Yuri. Poor Van. Poor Shirley.
Memories are either short — or short for a reason.
View all comments (25) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Jeffrey Lord
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/07/22/if-shirley-sherrod-were-earl-b
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Nate| 7.22.10 @ 1:28PM
Mr. Lord,
I think you offer a weak misreading of Sherrod's comments, particularly of the "his kind" reference.
In the speech, she's telling a STORY. In order to interpret the story effectively, you have to keep in mind that when she says that phrase she's reproducing the state of mind she was in AT THE TIME of the event narrated, NOT at the time she's telling the story.
You seem to miss the whole point of the very simple story she tells, and I'm afraid there's some willful blindness at work. This woman -- whose father was evidently murdered by a white racist -- was telling a story about a time when she thought of poor blacks differently than poor whites. But she CHANGED, and that's the point of the story, that's the thing that the people in the room cheered. Why is all of this so difficult to take in? (This all happened, by the way, 25 years ago -- a fact that never managed to get communicated on Fox News....)
Look. Once a boy demanded his inheritance of his father and went off to another land to live his life. But he squandered the wealth, going to parties and making contributions to Republican causes, and finally he wound up feeding pigs at a trough. My father, he thought, would be disgusted by me, but maybe he'd hire me on as one of his servants -- they live better than I do now. And so the boy returned home, and much to his surprise, he father rejoiced and ordered his servants to slaughter the fatted calf in celebration of his son's homecoming. For once you were dead, his father said, but now you are alive. Once you were lost, but now you're found.
John D| 7.22.10 @ 4:01PM
Nate,
I think that your metaphor is fairly ironic. From your story we can infer that his father was in fact conservative, and very likely a Republican! Had he been a liberal, he would have sent him the the unemployment and welfare line for his handouts.
Also, if the father would have been a liberal, I'm sure he would have practiced what he preached and given all of the rest of his wealth to the poor, because they obviously don't have the same opportunities as the rest of us and need to be sustained by teat instead of by encouragement and assistance in finding work.
This is totally off topic to this story, but relevant to your comment.
Also, I'm very much in favor of private charity, not government handouts. There is this strange phenomena going on, though. In the past five weeks(approximately) I have been asked for money 2 times. The first time, I admit that I judge the person by the stench of alcohol on them and told them that I had no cash on me. It bugged me though, that I had lied. The second time was outside of Hastings, and asked me for spare cash or change. I told him that I needed my lawn mowed, that it's a normal city lot, and I would pay him 30$ for it. He walked off, after telling me that it was too hot and I was crazy. Yes, it was hot and that was exactly the reason that my lawn needed mowing! The third time killed me though. Two men and a woman were sitting outside of the grocery with a car that had the hood up. The woman had a 3-4 year old. They asked me for 100$ for a towards an alternator. I told them I'd give them 9$ each an hour to primer my house so that I can paint it, and that when they had enough for their alternator I would buy it for them.
All of a sudden, they couldn't understand english very well.
Así, le pregunté.. (pero en Espanol) Inesperadamente, suyo camioneta estaba arreglado. ¡Qué milagro!
That's why your metaphor is not terribly pertinent to political parties. There are a lot of people out here that want to provide a hand up, not a hand out, but handouts are all this administration believes in.
John D| 7.22.10 @ 4:10PM
Wait! I forgot to add witch hunts! They believe in witch hunts too!
Darn, that was supposed to be the part of my conclusion that was relevant to this blog post.
Sorry.
Jeffrey Lord| 7.22.10 @ 1:35PM
Nate....
Alas she also says on this tapes that Republicans oppose Obama because he's black. Which is both flatly untrue....and indicates a tendency to think racially right this minute. No colorblind America for her, it seems. And her father's (in listening to the tape I thought she said 45 years ago) murder came about because of racism that was carefully nurtured over 200 years by precisely the philosophy she is championing.
Nate....I'm glad she has a tale of redemption. But is it really? She immediately replaces the race war mentality - with class warfare. This is an improvement?
Nate| 7.22.10 @ 2:48PM
Mr Lord,
I'm not sure how working at a non-profit that finds loans to help poor farmers keep their farms is class warfare. Mr. and Mrs. Spooner seem happy with the results.
So you're saying a black woman whose father was murdered by a white racist retains hints of resentment or a "tendency to think racially"?
That's not all that surprising to me, and it bolsters the sense that people willing to interpret with some generosity and understanding of basic human foibles have to her larger story. After all, she gets up in public and says that her initial reaction was to think racially, but she thought better of it and acted to help the farmer. All evidence suggests she DID the right thing, as it were, even if her thoughts and words are sometimes less than ideal. You seem to expect a great deal more moral purity in others than I can.
Jeffrey Lord| 7.22.10 @ 3:21PM
Nate...
So question, Nate.
When does all this race resentment business end?
Next Tuesday at 4pm? How about January 20, 2009 at noon? Next year? Five years from now? Ten?
I say...how about this second? Never again? How about understanding the objective is a colorblind America and the best way to bring that about after instituting the same legal rights for all - is treat Shirley the way you or I would treat anybody else? And expect her to do the same. There's a big difference between saying "I support Obama on Health Care" and saying "Republicans don't support Obama on health care because he's black." That kind of stuff leaves me speechless.
After being a strong supporter of civil rights, having a detailed understanding of our history and how we got here and who got us here...I say its time to move on together. I don't have that sense, sadly, from her. Or from liberals generally. And that's after listening to her talk before all this happened.
Nate| 7.22.10 @ 3:36PM
Mr. Lord,
I think that you make good points but that you aren't giving enough weight to what decades -- centuries -- of affirmative action did to blacks.
Affirmative action? you ask.
Yes. The racist system in this country was a white affirmative action program. It was designed to humiliate blacks and exploit their labor.
That system was more than just a system of laws; it was more than just a system of consciously held beliefs. In addition to being these things, it was a system knitted into the deep fabric of the culture, and it is very hard to eradicate -- as Sherrod's story illustrates.
I think a color blind society is the ideal, but I don't think it should be brought about by piling on every black person that wants to discuss racial inequalities. An idea has taken hold on the right that virtually ANY claim of racism made by a black is illegitimate and -- what's more -- itself an act of racism. At the same time, the theory goes, REAL racism is being directed at whites by blacks and that, if he could walk among the living again, is somehow what MLK would be concerned about today. This is madness.
John D| 7.22.10 @ 4:20PM
Centuries of affirmative action? I'm scratching my head a little bit here.
As I recall from my history classes, affirmative action came out in the 1960s. I guess you can round up after 50 years, but make it century, not plural.
Also, regarding the last paragraph of your comment above, in my personal experience, this not just an idea, but a reality. Not EVERY occurrence, as you state, but it does happen, and more often by the "leaders of the civil rights brigade" than by most ordinary people.
Also, if MLK were alive today, our administration would take some highly circumstantial and/or edited comments that he made and demand that he resign from his position!
Jeffrey Lord| 7.22.10 @ 4:26PM
Nate...
I'm part Irish. Should I be demanding of the English special treatment because of the centuries of serious discrimination by the English to the Irish? Oops! I'm also part English? Now what?
We can go on and on and on and on and on with this forever. Not just with blacks and whites in America. The Irish and the English. The Muslims and the Hindus. The French and the Germans. The South Africans and the Dutch. The Jews and the Arabs. And so on.
Unlike every other country in the world, America is an idea. It is not about race. Some 600,000 Americans died to end slavery. It's over. Democrats and progressives fought like tigers to extend a racial system in some form for another 100 years - and succeeded. But we have finally put an end to it.
I make it a rule never to suggest what some deceased soul would do today, MLK being a case in point. We all get to speak for ourselves when alive, high profile leaders more than most. MLK was dead on right in 1963. His further thoughts on today are unknown to anyone. We have to take him at his word on judging people not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. He was 100% right. And trying to yank this meaning around to fit some new-fangled interpretation that serves some political interest of today won't fly.
It is not possible, now or ever, to construct Utopia. Will there always be racists? Yes. So too sexists, alcoholics, drug addicts, womanizers, murderers, thieves and nuts. But Western Civilization is about a careful, hard earned heritage of learning, moving forward. Too many people are living in the past. Its over. Done. The President is black. A Supreme Court Justice. My Dad helped elect the man who become the first black Senator of the 20th century - Ed Brooke . I've had black friends, neighbors, colleagues....Stop already! Stop! Stop! Stop! At a certain point people like me, who are in fact well read and lived on the subject, understand what we are seeing....linking race to Big Government is an old, very old game. Only the race is changed.
And I refuse to play the game.
Jeffrey Lord| 7.22.10 @ 6:31PM
Nya....
The question is, did their respective racial sentiments affect their job performance. Self-evidently, after seeing Shirley Sherrod give a speech in her official capacity attacking Republicans because the President is black...the answer is yes. There was, that I could find, no allegation that Butz's private - and indefensible - joke influenced his professional behavior as was true of Sherrod. Yes I can compare the two. A public professional speech in an official government capacity playing the race card is unacceptable. Period. That's what she did. It's right there on the unedited tape. Do you not agree?
Missy| 7.22.10 @ 7:09PM
Nate's a race-hustler like many Liberals: Why should a Liberal like Nate change his/her race-hustling ways when it works for him?
On cue...Nate will call me a racist!
Nya| 7.23.10 @ 9:06AM
Two words for you: Birther Movement. There were several republicans that signed on with that movement and kept it going with the support of their leadership (yeah, this "movement" even got money from House GOP Leadership). They took it and ran with it. You're telling me that would happen with any other president?
I am not defending her comments at all, but can you understand how she could come to her conclusion? I wish people could look beyond a person's skin color and see them for who they are, but until the race card is put away BY EVERYONE then it's, sadly, going to remain in play.
Wally| 7.23.10 @ 2:52PM
Two words for you: Truther Movement. Members of Obama's administration signed on to this loony conspiracy movement and ran with it.
You telling me this would happen with any other president?
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Nya | 7.23.10 @ 4:22PM
I'm not throwing stones. I am just pointing out that all the finger pointing goes both ways. And yes, the truther movement happened under another president...George Bush-and yes I consider this movement to be ridiculous. Was the Truther Movement funded by The DNC Leadership, and with members raising the issue on the floor of the House? The point I was trying to make was when had an elected president's citizenship been called into question? I know it happened to McCain during his campaign and to Barry Goldwater and another person as well, but none had been elected.
Wally| 7.23.10 @ 4:30PM
28% of Republicans subscribe to the illegitimacy of Obama's birth status and 35% of Democrats believe GWB knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks.
No one in GWB's administration signed a Birther petition.
It cuts both ways, Nya.
Nick| 7.22.10 @ 5:19PM
Mr. Lord,
Excellent sentiments. I agree totally.
I, also, am part English. Although, my ancestors came to Canada at the turn of the last century. My grandpa didn't move the family to the U.S. until '52. So, my English part is not as culpable for slavery, as are others. I may owe the Irish, though.
I am mostly Polish. Which means all you people of German and Russian extraction owe me big time!
I'm also Croatian.
"Then you owe Jews," some of you might say.
Alas, no I don't, because we were the good Croatians, not the nazi Croatians. Plus, my Croatian great-grandfathers came to the U.S., again, at the turn of the last century.
Lastly, I'm a Native American, since I was born IN America.
Oh no! The English part of me owes reparations to the Native American part of me!
What will I do, Mr. Lord? Do you know a good lawyer?
Jeffrey Lord| 7.22.10 @ 6:32PM
Hmmm...
Try Chicago....Under the O's.
Obama, B.
Gerald| 7.23.10 @ 2:44AM
The main problem here is that both sides are far more willing to accept racism from their own side than others. Conservatives find white racism acceptable and come up with all sorts of justifications (opposition to crime, welfare, civil rights leaders, multiculturalism, political correctness, support for "traditional values and culture") for it. Liberals do the same. And both sides, when confronted with arguments inconvenient to their side state "I am not playing this game" or "get over it."
Take John D.'s response "Also, regarding the last paragraph of your comment above, in my personal experience, this not just an idea, but a reality." So according to John D., blacks have never experienced racism. So ... Jim Crow didn't exist? Ah, but Jim Crow was ended after Brown versus Board of Education and the civil rights act. So ... you expect that the people who had grown up under a discriminatory system just stopped being discriminatory?
And again, that points to a major problem with the right. Conservatives do acknowledge that segregation, racism and discrimination went on. However, they are loathe to admit that blacks were actually harmed by it, and are even more hesitant to admit that whites benefited from it. The reason is that the conservative presupposition is that whites deserve everything that they get, and that short of slavery itself blacks benefit no matter how badly they are treated because of the privileges of living in a mostly white country. Thus, it is OK for whites to resent and be suspicious of blacks, to always challenge their morals and merits. But for a black person to do the same to whites? Appalling! Blacks are required to unconditionally love and accept whites, while whites get the privilege of using conservative politics to contextualize and justify their disdain for blacks.
For instance, so many conservatives are using Sherrod's disdain for Republicans and Bush as an excuse to claim that the woman is still a racist. Yet Steve King, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck can claim that Barack Obama is a racist, that he hates white people and culture, and that he caused the recession to pay white people back for discrimination, and no one says a peep. On another issue: Limbaugh got fired from ESPN for saying that Donovan McNabb was overrated, remember that? With me, the issue isn't so much that Limbaugh stated that McNabb was overrated because he was black. Instead, it is that the pigs will fly before Limbaugh ever states that any QB was overrated because he was white, or that any white person in this country ever got anything that he or she didn't deserve because of their race. That type of thinking is either white privilege or either white presumptuousness. Conservatives not only minimize the fact that blacks were harmed by racism - and are going to be naturally resentful as a result - but that whites benefited from it, and that not only are blacks going to also resent that - being human - but whites are going to do all they can to protect their benefits and privileges, and get angry and resentful whenever they lose it.
Any way you slice it, white conservatives attempt to hold blacks to higher standards than they themselves would accept, which is inferior, shabby treatment without complaining about it. It's perfectly fine for conservative whites to be bitter about affirmative action and political correctness (and spin all these yarns about all these jobs and college spots and promotions lost to people who only constitute 13% of the population and can't possibly have displaced all the whites who claim to have been displaced), but blacks just need to get over their own experiences and accept that there will never be a fair, perfect society. Again, white privilege. Especially when conservatives claim that every black person seeking opportunity or justice is "asking for a handout." As if whites don't whine, complain or ask for handouts. If you need any evidence of that, there are the Social Security and MediCare programs, which are politically untouchable because they aren't associated with race the way that the Great Society programs (long gutted despite costing a fraction of what the New Deal programs do) are. Not defending the Great Society programs, but pointing out that the only difference between the Great Society and the New Deal is that whites view the former as handouts to undeserving blacks, and the latter to deserving whites. Even the Tea Party members came out and stated in that notorious poll that they want their MediCare and Social Security. (The next conservative that spends much time analyzing this fact will be the first.) They just want to cut the programs that they believe that Obama's black supporters are getting. Again, white privilege.
John D| 7.23.10 @ 11:44AM
Just a moment, sir. You applied my statement in a manner that I did not mean to imply. I meant that the reality was that many times today, racism is implied just because of the direction of the wrong that is done. I never implied(or meant to imply) that racism doesn't exist.
Thank you though, for picking one small part of my statement and making such a broad generalization about it, that racism doesn't exist.
In my perspective, if I don't like someone, and they happen to be a different color than I am, than it's racism. This is an exaggeration, but it feels like that before too long, if I have a car accident and get hit by a minority, it will be reported in the media as a hate crime.
Also, as a conservative, I don't believe that there is a such thing as white privilege. It's American Privilege. Anyone, and everyone, deserves what they are willing to work for.
Nick| 7.23.10 @ 2:08PM
Oh no!
Gerald has found us out!
Conservative "opposition to crime" is just cover for "white racism?"
What a ridiculous statement.
Wally| 7.23.10 @ 2:55PM
Democrat race baiters and race hustlers--what's new? As long as we allow these Leftist freaks to grab power and control by using their nefarious Identity Politics as political weapons, their outrageous, disingenuous behavior will continue.
Adam | 7.26.10 @ 1:09PM
"Shortly, other liberal media, in this case New Times, a magazine of the day now long gone, linked Butz to the joke." If the joke was originally told in "a private conversation to someone else, on a plane ride," how exactly did they do that? Assuming a New Times reporter or other liberal source wasn't there on the plane, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that one of Butz' listeners scapegoated him?