No lessons learned at beer summit

Didn't the president learn anything from the incident that led to the Louis Gates-Jim Crowley beer summit? President Obama has gone from one extreme to the other. He defended Gates hastily, presuming someone had discriminated against him. And recently he hastily fired a black government employee, presuming she had discriminated against someone.

This time, President Obama was outsmarted by a bigoted maneuver. This time, he became the linchpin of a racially charged political con game.

When the president heard, not saw, that Shirley Sherrod, an employee of the Department of Agriculture, had committed a racist act some time in her past he didn't call her onto the Oval Office carpet, look her in the eye and ask her in an infuriated whisper, "What did you do?"

No. Rather, he joined a chorus of full-voiced, uninformed critics calling for her immediate resignation. The road to Ms. Sherrod's firing was paved before anyone asked her what was the deal.

As for the road she was on, she was actually told to pull off of it as she was driving with an assistant, and use her Blackberry to write a letter of resignation.

Fire drill: Stop, drop and roll. Firing drill: stop, park, head rolls.

Except Sherrod had not committed alleged act, video notwithstanding.

Sherrod's antagonist in this mess is a staunch conservative blogger named Andrew Breitbart. He admitted that the incident was borne of his frustration at accusations of the existence of racism within the tea party movement.

So Breitbart, a couple of weeks ago, posted to his Web site, a brief clip of Sherrod giving a 40-minute speech to members and guests at an NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in her home state of Georgia. The clip catches Sherrod explaining a position in which her job was to assist poor farmers fend off foreclosure and otherwise get federal assistance to keep title to their lands.

She told her audience that most of her clients were poor black farmers. She said the first time a white farmer came to her for help, he spent a lot of time talking, "Trying to show me that he was superior to me," Sherrod is heard to say on the two-minute video.

"But he had come to me for help. What he didn't know, while he was taking all that time trying to show me that he was superior to me, I was trying to decide how much help I was going to give him."

She admitted that she was struggling with the fact that so many black people were having a hard time keeping their farms, and she found herself there having to help a white man keep his.

"So, I didn't give him the full force of what I could do."

Sherrod was using that example, not to incite her audience or to prove that she could use racism in her powerful position. Quite the opposite. She was talking about doing the right thing. Using that example to show how her decision to treat someone poorly because of race made her feel bad about herself.

"That's when it was revealed to me" - that's soul sista' church speak for "And God said" - it's about poor, versus those who have. It's not so much about white and black. It is about white and black, but ... . It opened my eyes."

She did give the man the service he needed and deserved. Indeed, CNN found that old farmer last week. He still sings Sherrod's praises.

Here's the problem. Sherrod was fired. She's been offered her job back, other jobs, lecture circuit and a list of lawyers. But the damage to her character and her career have been done.

What was Breitbart thinking? His video opens with placards, one of which says Sherrod admits that she discriminates in the application of her job, based on race.

He lied. In his misguided effort to falsely have Sherrod identified as a racist, he convicted himself as one. His junior varsity prank would have not worked so well had the media and the Obama administration done their due diligence.

The video went up on Youtube, and then to national news outlets and then, of course, to the White House. Obama had the chance to slide a race card up the sleeve of the liberal left that could have won a thousands hands. The ace of "this is what we have to deal with."

But rather, he took the bait. His staff took the bait. The television stations took the bait, leaving the rest of us to wonder, "Is this what we have to deal with?"

This is the opinion of Chuck Potter.