Much has been written over the past few days about Ms. Sherrod’s speech before the NAACP. With the benefit of some distance and reflection, ‘Puter’s got the following additional thoughts.

1. Ms. Sherrod did not deserve the treatment she received at the hands of the conservative media or the current Administration for she said. ‘Puter thinks Ms. Sherrod is clearly wrongheaded and (still) dangerously fixated on race, but agrees that the full text did not show a current racist motive, as we were led to believe.

2. Regardless of (1), Ms. Sherrod’s admitted past inclination was clearly racist, regardless of any proferred explanation. Stating that one treated a white man differently based solely on the color of his skin is racist, whether or not one later makes amends. Ms. Sherrod admitted that in her speech. As it occurred 25 years ago, the “victim” of the racism was made whole, and there are no further (known) instances of Ms. Sherrod’s racism, there is no reason to fire her.

3. A white man holding Ms. Sherrod’s position making the same speech would have fired, and would not have received the second chance Ms. Sherrod received. It is this glaring double standard that caused, in ‘Puter’s opinion, the instant conflagration. Americans are tired of having two sets of rules, one for whites and one for blacks. Or, more likely, one for liberals and one for conservatives. This is of course exacerbated by the obscenely liberal bent of our current media (see, e.g., the simmering JouroList scandal), but that’s for another post.

4. The Adminstration is in full meltdown. It fired Ms. Sherrod solely on the basis of Mr. Breitbart’s original post, without seeking to confirm the truth of the charges or context of Ms. Sherrod’s speech. The Administration’s reaction is telling. We see a terrified child lashing out at all those it imagines might do it harm. This does not bode well at all for the challenges ahead of us. Now is the time for grown-ups.

5. The Byrd Principle is alive and well: Liberals can be racists and maintain their standing, so long as they apologize to those who may have been offended by their racism (not for the acts themselves) really, really nicely. Conservatives, well, not so much.

6. As a corollary to (3), conservatives latched on to this story because it fits the following confirmed narrative (see, e.g., JournoList).

The mainstream media is biased. It unfairly covers up the sins of its favored party, the Democrats, while at the same time pillorying Republicans for the same acts. Therefore, the only media to trust is that with a conservative bent, such as Drudge, Breitbart and FoxNews, for example.

‘Puter believes that if conservatives trusted the mainstream media to fairly present all sides of a story including the conservative side, this never would have happened. Breitbart wouldn’t have rushed the story out, and many conservatives would have waited for confirmation of the story. Instead, it appeared to conservatives to be merely another instance of the liberal media covering up for its side. Calmer heads (on both sides) would have prevailed had the media not spent the past 10 or so years systematically destroying its much-vaunted reputation for fairness.

‘Puter may or may not return to this topic later. It’s almost noon, when the Castle’s cantina is permitted to start serving malt liquor, and ‘Puter’s got a table reserved with the Czar.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.