The Shirley Sherrod Affair Redux - E.J. Dionne finds his back bone (Sort of)

Hard on the heals of the pillarying of Shirley Sherrod for becoming more racially sensative and thus a more effective advocate for the poor, columnist E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post manages to find some backbone:

The mainstream media and the Obama administration must stop cowering before a right wing that has persistently forced its propaganda to be accepted as news by convincing traditional journalists that "fairness" requires treating extremist rants as "one side of the story." And there can be no more shilly-shallying about the fact that racial backlash politics is becoming an important component of the campaign against President Obama and against progressives in this year's election.

Now Let's be frank - The Washington Post has long been part of the problem. They, like all MSM these days, seem to fall victim to this false "fairness" doctrine daily. Two of my blogging "heros" - Glenn Greenwald and Dan Froomkin - have called the Post out regularly for this kind of behavior. I suspect they will again.

Still, it's nice to see at least one Post columnist actually earning the "Liberal Media" label that is so often, and so falsely, pinned on the Post by these very same right wing talking heads.

Now, Adams is accusing the Obama Justice Department of being "motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law." This is racially inflammatory, politically motivated nonsense -- and it's nonsense even if Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh talk about it a thousand times a day. When an outlandish charge for which there is no evidence is treated as an on-the-one-hand-and-on-the-other-hand issue, the liars win.