For those of you not familiar by now, a conservative blogger cut up a video, showed it on Fox News, and accused Ms. Sherrod of some warped form of racism. So the blogger (who clearly has an agenda) and Fox News (who never seems to just report a story) link up to call foul because the Tea Party was called racist lately. The problem? They doctored the video and ruined an African American woman's life to push their agenda. So they fought the charge of racism with a racist practice.

Racism is more than just insulting another person or making them drink from a separate water fountain. The Tea Party has a sizable racist element that attacks the President using racial imagery, slurs, and racist cultural references meant to demean him and an entire ethnicity. The Tea Party movement also refuses to distance themselves from what they consider a fringe element. This attack on Ms. Sherrod, claiming she is a racist when in fact she was telling a story of overcoming a racial bias, is patently racism. It's calling out an individual based on the color of their skin and totally warping their words to accuse her of something she did not do. 

By reacting to every news story without first investigating the source or the motivations of those breaking the story we allow this kind of warped "logic" to take over. It would be nice if a news source actually took the time to research and tell the entire story instead of everyone wanting to break it first.

The New York Times has some great stuff from a recent poll and some video blogging that highlights this. For those of you who don't like or trust statistics, I think the poll was conducted fairly well (I do this stuff professionally). What's more jarring is that when you look at the faces, not one of them is different. They're all older and white. Even their haircuts (across gender too) are similar!

When I read the poll article I'm more convinced that this is a group that dislikes the idea of helping anyone. I'm more convinced that there is some latent racism present. It's old thinking that deserves to go away. It's fear that tries to hide behind the Constitution (which they clearly don't understand) and name calling. It's sad really. 

After eight years in power we've all seen that the ideas the Right tried out didn't work. Their foreign policy, their economic policy, their environmental policy are all failures. They're responsible for the economic crisis we're in. It's time for a change. Even if you don't like Obama's policies, we need to do something else. The recent past was a disaster.