All right, this is very hard to believe … in fact, my very bosom is trembling. The intercourse between what is acceptable and what’s inappropriate has gone down on a slippery slope. I’m going to slip you something that will blow your mind … you’re going to have your socks rocked, baby.
Frank Rozanski of William T. Dwyer High School in Palm Beach Gardens was teaching a lesson on social psychology and perceptions. The questions each had a non-sexual answer but …
If you follow the news at all, you’ve more likely than not heard the name Shirley Sherrod. While you’re probably aware of the veritable circus being made out of comments she made at an NAACP event, you might be a little foggy on the whole story. I know I was.
Basically, Shirley Sherrod was the USDA Director of Rural Development for the state of Georgia until she quit abruptly last week just before a media storm of epic proportions. Her resignation came about after conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted excerpts on July 19 of a video taken of Sherrod speaking about the importance of overcoming personal prejudices.
Sherrod’s comments, which were pretty obviously taken out of context in an edited two minute clip, come off as sounding about as racist as they come when speaking about her laissez faire attitude in helping white farmers because of their skin color. Sherrod was pressured to resign and ultimately did so via an e-mail sent from her BlackBerry on the side of a road.
Sherrod made headlines Tuesday morning after a video clip surfaced from a speech she made in March to an NAACP forum recounting her meeting with a struggling white farmer who came to her for help in 1986.
“Here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land,” Sherrod said about her feelings 24 years ago. “So, I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough so that when he (went to state or federal officials) he needed to go back and report that I did try to help him.”
Sherrod told CNN on Tuesday that the clip was taken out of context. She said she described the decades-old incident with the white farmer because she has since come to realize her mistake. “Working with him helped me realize the issue is not about race, it’s about those who have and those who have not,” she said.
And now the backlash has begun.
Howard Dean, former Democratic National Committee Chairman (and former presidential candidate), is making strong racist claims against Fox News, whose Bill O’Reilly led the charge in smearing Sherrod’s name.
Director Gigi Gaston has put together a documentary alleging that there was some funny business at the polls in the last presidential election. Specifically, Gaston’s clear message is that Hillary Clinton should have been the Democrat’s candidate. Oh, and that Obama totally stole the election.
Amidst recent charges that the New Black Panther Party intimidated voters outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008, a new documentary called We Will Not Be Silenced charges that this was not an isolated incident. The film’s director Gigi Gaston appeared on Fox and Friends this weekend and was introduced by host Alyson Camerota who claimed that “the 2008 primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was rife with stories of voter intimidation and voting violations.”
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that this all came out on the infamously conservative Fox News Channel. They are ridiculously anti-Obama (which is, of course, their prerogative … and I do realize that he’s given perhaps more benefit of the doubt on other news networks than another candidate would), but it seems to me that this might cross a line into propaganda when you put Camerota’s clearly biased introduction into the mix.
But Obama must be really bad if the anti-Clinton Fox is on Hillary’s side about anything.
Dude, these lists just keep on coming. Maybe I’ll have to get original and write my own one of these days (any ideas for an angle on a very original list?). In the meantime, though, The Daily Beast is following up their list of divorce predictors (entitled “15 Ways to Predict Divorce”) with—surprise!—“15 Signs You’ll Get Divorced”. Really funny part? Same author, I shit you not (Anneli Rufus, in case you’re wondering).
Let’s see what Ms. Rufus had to say this time around … noteworthy is that she footnoted documentation for each sign—not to be confused with predictor—which you can check out, if you’re interested, on The Daily Beast.
Anyway …
1. If you’re a woman who got married before the age of eighteen, your marriage faces a 48 percent likelihood of divorce within ten years.
Agreed. There are obviously some exceptions, but I don’t think most eighteen-year-olds are ready for the degree of commitment necessary for marriage. A young woman watching her peers major in Bud Lite go to college or travel or whatever while the magic of marriage at a young age turns to drudgery … resentment would be huge, I would think.
2. If you’re a woman who wants a child—either a first child or an additional child—much more strongly than your spouse does, your marriage is more than twice as likely to end in divorce as the marriages of couples who agree on how much they do or don’t want a child.
Agreed. Choosing whether or not to have children is pretty monumental. If a couple disagrees on major decisions like this, it seems obvious that their core values are pretty different.
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