Doesn’t the Shirley Sherrod controversy speak to the wisdom of taking a moment before we fire people? I appreciate the importance of punishment and forcing people to take responsibility for their actions/misdeeds. However, I would argue that any boss or executive out there should think very long and hard before firing someone since it has so many negative repurcussions on the life and career of the dismissed, not to mention the health of the organizations to which they belong. Responsible leadership necessitates that we think dispassionately and prudentially about the big decisions. It also requires a sense of perspective about any potential fireable transgression. This includes thinking about the act in the context of the whole person under fire. Rashness is no virtue in the corner office.
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Heck, if a manager is going to fire someone for their misdeeds, they probably ought to confirm that said misdeeds actually occurred.
Yes, I agree, the Department acted hastily, even nastily in its haste.
However, the Democrat Party and the NAACP have orchestrated this dangerous atmosphere in which fumbles, jokes, and the kind of inartful speech we all spew out at times, are captured, amplified, torqued, and made into a national issue. Apologies are demanded. Resignations are demanded. Retractions are issued.
It’s gotten ridiculous but the Democrat Party and its myriad of clamoring client organizations have deployed this technique against so many others. Did they not see that others would learn the ploy?
Consider this example. George Bush had nothing to do with Hurricane Katrina or the chaos of New Orleans. Neither was his fault. Indeed, New Orleans had ample city and state government for handling their affairs. This was, after all, not an invasion by Cuba. It was bad weather.
But, the Left quickly seized on this and made it a George Bush issue. In doing so, they converted Katrina into a federal government issue and were able to list the collapse of law and order in New Orleans as a failure of George Bush specifially, and the heartless Republicans in general.
And, now, we come to the BP oil spill. We do have law; if BP committed crimes, officials may be prosecuted. We do have civil law; BP has deep pockets and may be sued. But, the Left made such disasters the immediate high-profile responsibility of the sitting President of the United States!
So, President Obama and his party will have to live with this failure which is really not his failure at all–although the federal government does exercise authority and jurisdiction over coastal waterways and oil exploration. President Bush had no authority over the weather.
The Democrats–and the NAACP–will now have to live in the frightening, stifling, instant-news, hypercritical atmosphere they brewed. Into such an atmosphere, Shirley Sherrod spoke.
We have a blame political culture. The democrats are reaping what they sowed as MJM has pointed out so eloquently.
There is a larger lesson here. When you’re considering firing a person, especially on the basis of strong and potentially career-threatening grounds like “racism,” then for the love of G-d take a long moment to make sure there is absolutely no other conclusion to come to. Accusations like those will haunt a person for the rest of her career—even if they’re false and later refuted.
We toss off accusations like “racist,” “sexist,” “misogynist,” etc. with a stunning lack of appreciation for how potentially permanently damning they can be for a person’s life, reputation, and career. And we make them moreover with a stunning insousciance about our lack of knowledge of the person concerned, of the person’s circumstances, and of the person’s general character. We make such accusations, then happily forget about the person and get on without own life; but the person accused of this gets this stain on her life or career forever.
I have made this point on Pileus before: Think long and hard before you condemn a person’s character, especially on the basis of merely a few isolated sentences or remarks.