Obama tries to retrieve Shirley Sherrod from under the bus

A day after Tom Vilsack, with Obama's approval, demanded and received the resignation of Shirley Sherrod after Fox News posted a video that had been intentionally edited to give a false impression of her revealing a racist streak, Robert Gibbs reported they have offered Sherrod an apology and not just her old job back but a promotion.

Gibbs went on to say at a press briefing dominated by the Sherrod resignation, that he wasn't trying to make excuses for the Obama Administration's knee jerk response in firing her, but as he was peppered with questions on how it could have happened in the first place, he proceeded to make excuses.

The Obama administration has been doing a lot of apologizing lately. They've been apologizing for Robert Gibbs politically inept remarks about the Democrats fortunes in the fall elections and now, after an ill advised decision to take Fox News at face value, they fired Sherrod for what Fox News was touting as an example of a black racist in the Obama administration.

The problem is Fox News once again been proved to be the most journalistically corrupt organization since the enacting of the first amendment. A full viewing of the video Fox edited proved Sherrod did not do what Fox was accusing her of doing and in fact did the opposite in an incident that occurred more than 20 years ago that she was reciting as a moment of enlightenment.. Fox News and its anchors and commentators committed an act of deception.

The general criticism of Obama has been that when conservatives yell he jumps and in the words of one TV reporter, " Obama let's conservatives call the tune". But that's not true in only this case. Its been true since Obama took office. During the healthcare debate he let conservatives define the debate for a year, paralyzed the Democratic congress while he went begging for a Republican vote and botched the entire health care issue while letting Republicans set and define the agenda. The Republicans complained that you cant fool around with something that is 1/6th of the economy. Obama kept reiterating the Republican talking point instead of stating and reforming the real problem which was, what is healthcare doing being 1/6th of the economy? That was the problem that the public option would have solved.

But as we saw during the healthcare town halls, the conservative crazies made Obama's knees buckle over the public option and after their ranting and raving and Hitler signs and swastikas, Obama bravely sent his HHS secretary out on the Sunday talk shows saying that the public option was "only a sliver" of healthcare reform and Obama could live without it. It took an outraged response from congressional Democrats to Obama's attempts to throw in the towel that forced him back into the ring on the public option. But it didn't last long. Eventually he caved in. As Nancy Pelosi said at the time the tepid healthcare bill was signed, there was no public option because Obama "didn't fight for it and didn't support it".

The reaction of the White House to the Fox News video and how quick Obama was to give his seal of approval to Sherrod's firing without checking the facts and then have to apologize later is Obama's entire term in office in microcosm.

Now we are hearing the usual suspects in the news media tell us this was some how a "teachable moment" about racism. Like the last "teachable moment" regarding Obama's uninformed wrong headed comments about the officer who arrested professor Gates, the only one who really needs to be taught anything is president Obama. Unfortunately based on his past grades he is not likely to learn.