Thursday, July 22, 2010

Obama administration apologizes for firing Shirley Sherrod

McClatchy: "WASHINGTON — Despite his hopes of ushering in a new post-racial era for the country, President Barack Obama's administration is struggling to recover from a self-inflicted wound that threatens once again to cloak the White House in the politics of race.

Snip

Sigh, do the words "train wreck" come to mind here?

This time, his administration was forced to apologize Wednesday to a black woman it had fired the day before after hastily accepting a smear from a conservative website that used selectively edited video to accuse her of racism against a white farmer.

Apparently fearing conservative attacks that it was anti-white, the administration of the nation's first black president rushed to dismiss her without asking to see the rest of the video or waiting to learn other facts about her.

The embarrassing mishandling of the case is the second time that Obama has been caught up in a high-profile, race-related brouhaha since he took office.

Last July, he said that Sgt. James Crowley, a white police officer in Cambridge, Mass., had acted 'stupidly' when he arrested African-American college professor Henry Louis Gates inside Gates' own home.

Under fire for talking without knowing all the facts, Obama later retreated from the characteriza"

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