The Cubic Measure

Appar­ently Olber­mann came out of his vaca­tion bliss to respond to the tragedy that is Faux News treat­ment of Shirley Sherrod’s career. It is time for every­one to lis­ten to what they are say­ing, stand up against the racists who are paid by Rupert Mur­dock to spew hatred and fear.

Here is the text of his Spe­cial Comment:

1. Closed cap­tion­ing of: Olber­mann: The witch hunt vs. Sher­rod and those who made it possible

   »> with my thanks to lawrence o’donnell and my staff, as promised my spe­cial com­ment on the witch hunt against shirley sher­rod and those who made it possible.

2. octo­ber 15 , 1594 , a jin­go­is­tic french man stepped on to the min­is­ter of war in paris. he was told he was attend­ing a revie. another man slammed a hand on his shoul­der and arrested him for trea­son. he was con­victed, stripped of mil­i­tary rank, sent to a fortress in guy anna. he was utterly and totally inno­cent. all the evi­dence was fab­ri­cated, some stitched together with the parts that would have exon­er­ated him edited out. reli­gious fer­vor gripped his coun­try and his eth­nic group was in the minor­ity at the time the major­ity was try­ing to paint that minor­ity evil and big­oted against the major­ity. those in gov­ern­ment who knew his inno­cence stayed silent in a fool­ish and ill fated attempt to gov­ern on behalf of all the peo­ple, those in the press who did not grab at the cir­cu­la­tion and the prof­its that the hatred and scape­goat­ing would bring them were chased out of the coun­try. it would be five years before the man was par­doned, 11 before he was exon­er­ated and restored to active ser­vice. his name was cap­tain alfred dra fus and the fortress in guy anna was devil’s island. how far we have come. we can pull a dry fus faster than the french could in 1894 . # 2 days until they sent him to devil’s island. we did it to shirley she rod in 48 hours . we, the fools of the right, the whole of the cow­er­ing media, this net­work included, the whole of the gov­ern­ment, self-​defeating above it all pres­i­dent included. a by prod­uct of which we can ruin somebody’s life. the real truth will emerge at the same light­ning speed if we are lucky. no mat­ter how much of a stretch it is to com­pare sher­rod to dry fus, mis­take it not she has been to her own devil’s island. thanks to the per­pet­ual fraud machine that is fox news and the scum that is bre­it­bart , a por­tion of this coun­try, the hate­ful, the racist who whom she is for­ever con­victed and impris­oned. i have sat behind this dechk and pushed back at these coun­ter­feit jour­nal­ist as a man might push down the tide. i have been branded a ideal log and prof­i­teer. i have said in every way i could think of and have been told i am over the top because i mocked and shouted and repeated and today the proof lies in front of you bleed­ing. the rep­u­ta­tion of shirley sher­rod , a woman who 24 years ago saw and over­came the vengeance in her own heart, achieved the true great­ness the rest of us might hope to express for one moment in the whole of our lives, a rep­u­ta­tion assas­si­nated by fox news, assas­si­nated by that scum bre­it­bart , assas­si­nated by mea­ger brain imi­ta­tors on other chan­nels and web­sites, their limp fel­low trav­el­ers who never asked ques­tions but shot and shot and shot and shot and laughed. let me make this utterly clear. what you see on fox news, what you read on right wing web­sites is the utter and com­plete per­ver­sion of jour­nal­ism and can have no place in a civ­i­lized soci­ety. it is words crashed together never to inform, only to inflame. it is a polit­i­cal guil­lo­tine. it is the manip­u­la­tion of real­ity to make the racists seem bevef lent and con­vict the been­n­eve lent as racists if her words are stripped of con­text, rearranged and fal­si­fied to do so. what you see on fox news is a manip­u­la­tion, not just of a story, not just on behalf of a polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy , manip­u­la­tion of a soci­ety. it is inten­tional redi­rec­tion from real­ity and progress to a para­noid delu­sion and the foment­ing of hatred of amer­i­cans by amer­i­cans and nearly every last word of it is never in any tan­gi­ble sense true. ask shirley sher­rod . but this evil has not become insti­tu­tion­al­ized just because of the hard soul­less work of rupert mur­doch and the scum bre­it­bart . our soci­ety has not bought into this 24 hour parade of feces dressed up as news because of a clever mar­ket­ing plan . the assas­sins on the right have been enabled on the left. the apolo­gies are nice. they pro­vide a thin line of self-​respect but only a thin one. the legit­i­mate media did not look at the whole video­tape, the doc­tored clip did not seem to be lead­ing up to a how­ever, we didn’t even today when this net­work let this pornog­ra­pher of pro­pa­ganda spew his lies and his venom and fraud­u­lent obvi­ously false self-​defense like a quack doc­tor attend­ing a life-​or-​death surgery we didn’t once con­sider a source. we are appalled by her actions said the naacp. she mis­treated a white farmer in need of assis­tance because of his race. ben­jamin jeal­ous didn’t ask the farmer if ms. sher­rod had saved his farm. we have been work­ing to turn the page on the sor­did civil rights record at usda. this con­tro­versy could make it more dif­fi­cult to move for­ward on cor­rect­ing injus­tice. tom vil­sack didn’t look at the whole video­tape. didn’t first ask if the event took place when miss sher­rod worked for usda not 24 years ago. we could have waited all day. we could have had a media cir­cus said the deputy chief of staff at the white house . but we took deci­sive action and it’s a good kpachl of how to respond in this atmos­phere. jim mussina didn’t ask if the deci­sive action might have been like send­ing dra fus to devil’s island. it is a good exam­ple of how to respond in this atmos­phere, this atmos­phere. this atmos­phere exists because the peo­ple around him let this pres­i­dent dumbed down. the ques­tion used to be fire it up, the rhetor­i­cal ques­tion , ready to go. the ques­tion now is fired it up. the answer is not ready because we can’t afford the posi­tion of look­ing insuf­fi­ciently pres­i­den­tial and pro­vid­ing a media cir­cus . to pair phase james watt mr. mussina and mr. emanuel remod­el­ing this pres­i­dent to be elec­table in 2012 , let obama be obama. and that advice must be heeded above one man above all oth­ers. can you give us some specif­i­cally some things he said that would help us mr. gibbs was asked at this afternoon’s press brief­ing? well, again mr. gibbs replied, i think he talked about the fact that — that — that a dis­ser­vice had been done here and an injus­tice had hap­pened. he was quot­ing you mr. pres­i­dent. fired up? a dis­ser­vice has been done? fired up. an injus­tice had hap­pened. mr. pres­i­dent, it is beyond admi­ral that in your posi­tion and at this time of fear­ful divi­sion in this coun­try you view your­self as pres­i­dent of every­one not as your pre­de­ces­sor only of the pres­i­dent of just those who voted for you. you must come to terms while you have spent this first 18 months bend­ing over back­wards for these other peo­ple, they have spent this time insist­ing you are not actu­ally pres­i­dent or you are a com­mu­nist or bent on destroy­ing what­ever is star­ring this week in the para­noid fan­tasies churned up by fox news and the far­ci­cal bre­it­bart . if only for the arro­gance of the irony this cru­sade to prove you a for­eign influ­ence is led by an aus­tralian named mur­doch and his sons who pre­tend to be british and his sec­ond largest share­holder of saudi ara­bia . just for that, you, sir, must stand up to this attack on you and this nation. their game plan is trans­par­ent. they can strand together all the forces of anti-​black racism in this coun­try, direct them at you and all for which you and this nation stand and con­vince the unwashed and unthink­ing out there not only are they not racist, but you, you, barack obama and van jones and shirley sher­rod , you are the real racists and so in oppos­ing you they are not express­ing the worst ves­tige of our past, they are stand­ing up against it. as you stay silent and neu­tral and everybody’s pres­i­dent they are con­vinc­ing racist they the civil right lead­ers and you are police chief bull con­nor . and some idiot at fox news barksed a your peo­ple throw an hon­or­able pub­lic ser­vant under the bus as a cor­rect way to respond in this atmos­phere. mr. pres­i­dent, please, stop try­ing to act every minute like a noble neu­tral fig­ure shar­ing equal minds and con­tem­pla­tive schol­ars. it is a freak­ing war out here and the imag­ined con­sen­sus you seek is years in the future if ever to be are dis­cov­ered in this coun­try. this false con­sen­sus has got­ten us the cru­ci­fix­ion of van jones and the racist buf­foon speak­ing from the lin­coln memo­r­ial on the 47^th anniver­sary of dr. king’s speech and now it has got­ten us shirley sher­rod and your answer is to note a dis­ser­vice and injus­tice. sir, get a copy of “the amer­i­can pres­i­dent .” when you get to the line where he says i was so busy keep my job i for­got to do my job. hit the rewind but­ton. 20 times. fire it up. fire it up. any­body? any­body? lastly, ms. sher­rod , i’ve got no busi­ness speak­ing on behalf of the peo­ple of the united states . that’s the president’s job. i don’t know why he hasn’t done this yet so i’m going to. we would like to apol­o­gize to you and ask you to return to work on our behalf or make you sec­re­tary of agri­cul­ture or white house chief of staff . the pres­i­dent could use you tonight. i want to thank you for being hon­or­ableably and qui­etly an out­stand­ing amer­i­can. long ago there was harm done to you. one day 24 years ago you real­ized you were not end­ing that harm just pass­ing it along through vengeance and blind­ness. you stopped not with fan­fare or pub­li­cized rehab or on a polit­i­cal stage, you just stopped and then you rejoined the right­eous who occupy every cor­ner of our great nation and politi­cian and in hour of unde­served trial and abuse of your devil’s island you have main­tained your dig­nity and your honor. only one of us in all of this in the mount of angst and the pres­i­den­tial advis­ers only one of us has done her job cor­rectly. you, ms. sher­rod , know what deci­sive action is and how to respond in this atmos­phere and thank god some­body does.

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by Keith Olber­mann Anchor, ‘Countdown’

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