..But It’s Tougher If You’re Stupid

Let’s say I bully an employer into hiring me for a lucrative salary. Let’s say further that I work with a group of people that I have just run through the wringer via class action lawsuits. In the process of doing this, I succeed in helping some of my friends force this organization to pay out three times as many claims as there are legitimate plaintiffs who may or may not have valid status to sue. After that, I go speak at some organization and brag about how I use my position at this organization to racially discriminate against people.

So if I were to do that, what would be my rational expectation for career advancement? FIRED!!! Perhaps…., if SO KFUCING FIRED there’s nothing but a smoking crater left in your office cube is not on the available list of options. Ladies and Germs, I give you the curious case of the lovely and talented Shirley Sherrod.

The official reason for her “resigning” from the USDA involves her being videotaped talking about how she refused to work with “One of Them” as an official part of her professional responsibilities. This was captured by Andrew Breitbart, who collects the worst dirt he can find on liberals and will soon be able to fill a sandbox the size of an Olympics-class swimming pool. The video depicts a speech she gave at an NAACP awards banquet.

Breitbart describes the context of her speech below.

Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn’t do everything she can for him, because he is white. Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer. Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement.

MSNBC printed some of the quotes that have led to her professional demise.

“I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with helping a white person save their land,” Sherrod said. Initially, she said, “I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do” and only gave him enough help to keep his case progressing.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack cut her loose from the Federal pay roll with lightning speed. He condemned her behavior in very stark and direct language. The Washington Examiner quotes Vilsack’s statement on her “resignation” below.

(“We are appalled by her actions … Her actions were shameful … she gave no indication she had attempted to right the wrong she had done to this man”).

Of course, this isn’t the first time she has worked the system at USDA. The examiner describes her legal work against USDA on behalf of an activist group New Communities.

RDLN Graduate and Board Vice Chair Shirley Sherrod was appointed Georgia Director for Rural Development by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on July 25. Only days earlier, she learned that New Communities, a group she founded with her husband and other families (see below) has won a thirteen million dollar settlement in the minority farmers law suit Pigford vs Vilsack.

The lawsuit in question Pigford Vs. Vilsack resulted in $13Million worth of awards to Shirley Sherrod and her spouse. Additional awards have gone or will be paid to 96,000 African American “farmers”. I put the word farmers in quotes, because there were, according to the USDA, approximately 27,500 total African-American owned farms in the entire United States in operation in 1977. This will cost taxpayers over $1B by the time these pay-outs are completed.

What puts the icing on the cake, is how Shirley Sherrod and the NAACP both react to this entire episode. Remember, this woman is a parasite, who publically brags to an appreciative audience, that she used her official position to racially discriminate. If I did that, I would already have my next job lined up. I would expect to need that escape route for engaging in such unprofessional conduct.

Shirley Sherrod apparently can’t figure out why “sending him to one of his own” was such a bad thing. Should she not have done that? She feels put upon by the USDA. Sorry, if you spit the caffeinated beverage onto the pixilated computer monitor, but she really feels aggrieved. She offers up the following rationale for not being sure she would want her job back if she were offered reinstatement.

“I am just not sure how I would be treated there,”

It reminds me off an article Charles Cianfrocca wrote yesterday at New Ledger. He described how members of our ruling class view ordinary Americans.

Meanwhile, the ruling class simply don’t believe in achieving success by hard work. Part of this comes from a sense of innate nobility and entitlement that they feel in themselves, often as a result of having gotten accepted to a top university. They think of themselves as the cool kids, and their angst comes from a nagging suspicion that this might not be enough in itself to give their lives meaning and value.

Shirley Sherrod could only wonder how her coworkers would treat her if she believed she were owed employment as some sort of a right. She really thinks that the people in the cubes across from wouldn’t secretly cheer if she popped an artery and slumped over her PC. She wouldn’t get it if we explained it to her patiently, in 3rd Grade English.

Even with her $13M, I envision her life being difficult. Her story reminds me of one of the great John Wayne quotes of all time. ”Life is tough, but it’s tougher if you’re stupid.”