The next time Rahm Emanuel decides to go on The PBS NewsHour, I hope Jim Lehrer’s line of questioning goes something like this:
So, Mr. Chief, pardon me if this comes across as outdated, but did the president order the firing of Shirley Sherrod over something that even an eighth-grade level of fact checking would have cleared up, or was he simply briefed on it? Are the Clintons now advising the Obamas on personnel issues? If you’re giving a speech and people laugh at bigoted remarks, should you leave the event before you get to the part of your story where you say you think that treating people based on their color is wrong? Is it possible that the laughter in that tape was among a group of people near the microphone who were having their own conversation, or is it assumed that everyone in a room is focused solely on the speaker? Who, at the White House, is minding the Tea Party? Is the Obama administration the chicken and is the NAACP the egg, or is it the other way around? How many hours per week, in terms of staff time, are spent at the White House reading blogs and then reacting to them? Does Obama watch Fox News or is he just briefed? Who drafted the statement the secretary of agriculture made on Wednesday? Barry? Michelle? Hillary? Maybe Joe! The secretary took full responsibility for the mishap, so does that mean the president didn’t order Shirley Sherrod’s termination? Or was he briefed on that? I guess it would make sense, come to think of it, that the secretary would have made this decision independent of input from the president. After all, surely the president wouldn’t meddle in an agency overseen by a member of his cabinet, especially not for purely political reasons. Did the president direct the secretary to offer Shirley Sherrod a new position with the USDA, or was he briefed on that? Does the president direct the staff on how much due diligence needs to take place before decisions are made and statements are issued? If not, who briefs him on these types of things? Does the president approach other situations with this same degree of uninformed haste, or are there people briefing him?
About Me
- Rotary
- Portland, Oregon, United States
- I'm in my mid 40s and long for the era when the main mode of communication was the rotary telephone. As I recall, people knew how to spell without spell check, they answered their phones unless they weren't home and twittering was something birds did on cartoons. All ironies aside, I really miss those days.