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Debunked:
♦
No, it's not true that Shirley Sherrod, a black Georgia-based US Department of Agriculture bureaucrat, used her position to deny help to struggling white farmers. In fact, it's rather flamboyantly and obviously untrue, but she's been fired nonetheless by the Obama administration, and specifically by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, an unfairness which deserves more attention.
Since the lies in this matter are rather routine for America's right-wing, let's take a moment to look at this mess. First, the damning video comes from Andrew Breitbart, who has a long and growing track record of distorting the truth. He is, for example, the key funder of video liar James O'Keefe, whose lies and misleadingly edited video brought down the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Your second clue that you're being lied to is that Breitbart's video is heavily edited, which is always a red flag for anyone who cares about the truth.
Breitbart's biggest lie, though, is the made-up story that in the video, Sherrod is describing her work for the Dept of Agriculture. That's a lie and Breitbart must know it's a lie. Sherrod's speech described events from more than two decades ago, when she was working for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, a group set up specifically to help struggling black farmers. She described her reaction when a struggling white farmer came pleading for help at this co-op set up to help struggling black farmers. She says she was taken aback at first, but came to see, more than two decades ago, that struggling farmers should be helped regardless of their color. "It’s not just about black people," she said, "it’s about poor people."
Is that offensive to you? Is it hard to understand that she might be taken aback by a white guy asking for help? Are you shocked and outraged by the story? I'm sure not. To me it's an inspirational story about someone learning a worthwhile lesson, and obviously that was Shirley Sherrod's intent in telling it. Breitbart's intent, in editing and distorting her words and lying about the circumstances and her point, is pretty obvious, too.
I'll close this entry by quoting someone smarter than me, SusieMadrik, aka the Suburban Guerrilla, who is spot on as usual: "I can’t do anything about the media, or the gutless administration, but I can remind you that whenever a scandal is ginned up like this by the right-wing attack machine, IT IS ALWAYS A LIE. It may be a lie wrapped around a minute speck of truth, but that only makes the lie more plausible. It is still a lie."
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♦ For more debunked lies, see our debunkery page.
Why are we doing this?
Democracy depends on an informed public discourse. As lies and misinformation are multiplied by mass media, by bloggers, by panicked or intentionally lying emailers, democracy is more and more imperiled, and eventually becomes unworkable.
Please — our nation and our world face very serious, very real problems. You can help, by not believing everything anyone says, and instead being skeptical about all the phony, non-existent problems that are only distractions. Check the facts, or if that's too much trouble, check with the people who do check the facts. We particularly recommend
Columbia Journalism Review,
ConWebBlog,
FactCheck,
Media Matters,
RightWing Watch,
Snopes.com,
ThinkProgress, and
Washington Monthly.
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© Helen & Harry Highwater and the individual authors.
Big howdy
No nuts, please
Our privacy policies
Bill of Rights
Declaration of Independence
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Like the URL says, this website is about unknown news.
Our news comes only from mainstream, professional journalists or (rarely) other sources we trust entirely, with no nuttiness and no interest in the same news you see everywhere else.
What we believe
We believe in liberty and justice for all, so of course, we oppose many US government policies. This doesn't mean we're anti-American, redneck scum, pinko commies, militia members, or terrorist-sympathizers. It means we believe in freedom, as more than merely a cliché.
We believe you have the right to live your own life as you choose, and others have the equal right to live their lives as they choose. It's not complicated.
We believe freedom leads to peace, progress, and prosperity, while its opposite -- oppression -- leads to war, terrorism, poverty, and misery.
We believe it's preposterously stupid to hate people because of their appearance, their race or nationality, their religion or lack of religion, how they have sex with other consenting adults, etc. There are far more apropos reasons to hate most people.
We believe in questioning ourselves, our assumptions, each other -- and we especially believe in questioning authority (the more authority, the more questions). We believe obedience is a fine quality in dogs and young children, but not in adults.
Like America's right-wingers, we believe in
individual responsibility,
hard work to get ahead,
and stern punishment for serious crimes.
We believe big government should not be blindly trusted.
But unlike most right-wing leaders, we mean it.
Like America's left-wingers, we believe in
equal treatment under law,
war as a last (not first) resort,
and sensible stewardship of natural resources.
We believe big business should not be blindly trusted.
But unlike most left-wing leaders, we mean it.
Like libertarians, we believe it's wrong and reprehensible to arrest people for what they think, believe, look like, wear, eat, smoke, drink, inhale, inject, or otherwise do to themselves.
But unlike many libertarians, we're not obsessed with the gold standard, we don't believe incorporation is humanity's highest achievement, and we don't believe everything in life comes down to dollars and cents. We've read and enjoyed Ayn Rand's novels, but we understand that they're works of fiction.
We're skeptical, and we're sick of so-called 'journalists' who aren't skeptical at all.
A reader asks, what are our solutions?
We propose no solutions except common sense, which is never common. We like the principles of democracy, and the ideals broadly described as 'American'. The US Constitution is a fine and workable framework for solutions, when it's actually read and thoughtfully understood by intelligent statesmen and women. So, no manifestos from us. We don't dream that big, and if there's one thing the world doesn't need it's yet another manifesto.
Our suggestion is: think.
A fact-based instead of faith-based approach leads to solutions for most of the recurring issues of our time, from abortion to global climate change, pollution to universal health care, careful but real regulation of industry and economy, hunger, war, terror, human rights for humans not for corporations, science not religious doctrine in public schools, equal protection and prosecution under law, etc. Approach problems without glorifying stupidity, without demonizing intelligence, and answers usually come into focus.
These pages are published by Harry and Helen Highwater, happily married low-income nom de plumes and rabble-rousers from Madison, Wisconsin (with a few friends scattered around the world helping out).
We try to spotlight news that hasn't gotten enough (or appropriate) attention in American media, along with our opinions and yours.
We bang our keyboards against the wall, because it doesn't hurt as much as banging our heads.
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