different. think there s probably more of a teachable moment about race with the skip gates, professor crowley incident. i think there s everybody wanted to be ahead of the story. fox news wanted to be ahead of the story. i don t think they looked at what s going on. the administration wanted to keep haefahead of the story. i don t think this is so much about that tape in particular. remember, fox was flogging this new black panther, there was a secret memo going around in the doj saying that blacks were not to be tried the same way as whites. i think there was, within the administration, the sense that we got to prove we are not favoring people of color over whites and that this is what drove this particular situation. certainly a lot of people fell down. the facts were not straight. i think there was more that was going on than what we re talking about right here. michael, it s not just the sherrod incident that has brought race front and center. it s also been this battle that s
discussion to try to start to get over the tensions that pull us apart every time one of these racial hurricanes come rolling through. just a year ago we were talking about how you know, skip gates and jeff crowley situation was a teachable moment. before that it was something else. so she sees this she say h she viewed the president was running away from the conversation, rather than looking at it as an opportunity to move toward. mark, how do we protect ourselves? we didn t cover a given hurricane, real or not, over a couple days we would all be fired. with e know how does fox does business. cnn is not much better. the internet is the same thing. it s like an organism that s designed to go on massive alert, cackle like a bunch of chickens, and then move onto the next thing. we don t deal with race. we don t actually understand the financial problems.
department last night about the case, and agreed, based on new evidence, that it should be reviewed. but it is clear to say, fred, that they are trying to emphasize here that it is not a white house matter. now, one major caveat here, fred, that i have to tell you, is you remember last july, when you had sergeant crowley and professor skip gates head-to-head over a racial matter. i was in that briefing with robert gibbs at the goggle at 9:00 morning in the office when the president said he s not going to talk about this, no more on this racial matter, and it was just a few hours later we saw the president come in and surprise visit to the briefing room to declare this beer summit. so we will see how this plays out, how this unfolds in the next 60 minutes or so. so we but we are getting indications from the white house that they do not want the president to be close to this controversy or close to this story. they believe it is really a matter of the usda. well, it seems like it mig
skip gates or sergeant crowley, we saw the president come out and make a surprise statement and talk about it to cool things down. i asked whether or not that will happen. i got no response. so it s going to be interesting to see what level of involvement president obama will have in this, whether he will reach out to ms. sherrod himself or we will hear regrets. all of that is yet to play out. you re going to need a beer after all of that construction work. who was among the first and fastest to throw shirley sherrod under the bus? the naacp, the group that you would think would have at least wanted to hear her side of the story. funny how a little context can change everything. here s what the group s president said last night. we saw a statement that we believed was a condensed version of the truth, that was, you know, shorter than the actual statement but true. we responded quickly because
that there are a lot of things happening in terms of education to right the disparities that are there, but in order to have the conversation that you re talking about, dylan, it requires, you know, to talk tough topics, have a conversation that we have seen time and time again. can i list the number of teachable moments we ve had for at least the last 20 years where we ve said, no, this time will be the last time we do this. we will move forward together hand in hand and here we are one year after the skip gates arrest where that was yet another teachable moment, and once again we re trying to grapple with this topic that we can t seem to get ahold of and move beyond. i agree. dylan, can i make one last point. please. i think that this toxicity that we ve seen recently is only going to get worse. if you look at the sort of the reward that there is on cable at night, whether it s on msnbc or on fox. i totally agree. or if you look at what s happening online with breitbart o