Something’s wrong with this picture, or at least confusing.  New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd thinks it was, “The west wing white guys who pushed to ditch Shirley Sherrod” and Van Jones in an op-ed column in the same paper on the same day blamed the messenger, “In the era of YouTube, Twitter and 24-hour cable news, nobody is safe.”

Racism is alive and well in the White House as is political expediency.  Rushing to judgment to fire a black public servant cannot be executed by Fox News, Internet Blogs or cable news stations despite how distorted the news might be.   The culpability lies with the White House, it was they that urged the forced resignations of two blacks, Sherrod and Van Jones.

Van Jones said, “Life inside the Beltway has become a combination of speed chess and Mortal Combat: one wrong move can mean political death.”

Jones, who was dumped by Obama as special adviser for environmental jobs when by his own admission he used “some ill-chosen words about the Republican Party, but was falsely accused of signing his name to a petition of a 9/11 conspiracy”, believes the problem lies with the media.  Perhaps even with the first amendment being the source of the problem.

Meanwhile in the Sherrod situation, where a statement she made was taken far out of context making her appear to advocate racial discrimination when the opposite was true, Dowd thinks Obama, “The first black president should expand beyond his campaign security blanket, the smug cordon of overprotective white guys surrounding him – a long political tradition underscored by Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 when she complained about the “smart-ass white boys” from Walter Mondale’s campaign who tried to boss her around.”

Dowd thinks Obama’s closest advisers “are so terrified that Fox and the Tea Party will paint Obama as doing more for blacks that they tiptoe around and do less”.

Yet Fox didn’t run the story when it first broke nor did they run the distorted tape of Sherrod.

And should we forget that it was President Obama that called the Cambridge Mass. police “stupid” when they arrested black Harvard Professor Henry Gates when he did not have all the facts of the case later admitting “it was a poor choice of words.”  Shortly thereafter a beer Summit was held by Obama in the White House garden with all parties to clear the air.

It is not uncommon for politicians to blame the messenger for rush to judgment decisions, as Van Jones has done.

While Dowd is a messenger, she sees the fault in the ‘white guys’ Obama has surrounded himself with.  She says, “The president shouldn’t give Sherrod her old job back.  He should give are a new job: Director of Black Outreach.  This White House needs one.”

Yes, we have been tiptoeing around the race issue since our inception, but it is profoundly clear that you can’t have a good discussion on race if the facts don’t matter, whether you’re black or white.