Slideshow: Political scapegoats 'thrown under the bus'

SISTER SOULJAH
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Unfortunately, black women are a common target in America’s racial politics, exploited for political gain. When Bill Clinton ran for President, he threw Sister Souljah under the bus. Following the 1992 Los Angeles riots, she was quoted by the Washington Post as saying “If Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?” Meanwhile, at a speech at Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, then-candidate Clinton repudiated Sister Souljah's statement, comparing her to the white supremacist Klansman David Duke.

VAN JONES
(AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Lawyer, activist and environmentalist Van Jones was appointed by President Obama as the Special Advisor for Green Jobs. Conservative websites such as WorldNetDaily criticized him for his community activism and support for left-wing causes. He became a regular target of Glenn Beck at Fox News, who referred to Jones as a “communist-anarchist radical.” Color of Change, an organization that Jones cofounded, launched a campaign to drive advertisers away from Beck’s show. Then, a video of Jones was posted on YouTube, in which he called Republican members of Congress “a**holes”. And he came under criticism for signing a petition that made suggestions about the Bush administration’s role in 9/11. The right-wing media machine was now in full gear, and Jones resigned. Apparently, the White House did not lift a finger to save Jones from what he called a “vicious smear campaign.”

REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT
(AP File Photo/Paul Sancya)

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor and mentor, was pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and a part of Obama’s presidential campaign. Wright left the campaign when certain videos surfaced on YouTube — in which Rev. Wright gave fiery sermons denouncing America’s foreign policy, suggesting that blacks should not sing “God Bless America” but “God damn America.” This led to a media circus, likely because many white reporters covering the story were unfamiliar with the black church, while large segments of the black community regarded Wright’s sermons as standard fare and a valid criticism of U.S. policy.

Obama responded to the Wright controversy in his Philadelphia speech on race, but eventually had to distance himself from Rev. Wright altogether. Candidate Obama effectively threw Rev. Wright, a man to whom he owed much, under the bus. Nevertheless, a good argument can be made that Wright, who seemed to bask in the media spotlight, should have been more strategic and waited until after the election to speak his mind. After all, Wright’s subsequent speeches before the NAACP and the National Press Club, and his interview with Bill Moyers, only served to reignite the controversy. Running to become the first nation’s black president, Obama had to make white audiences comfortable with him, and this issue was a distraction which threatened to end his candidacy.

SHIRLEY SHERROD
(AP Photo/United States Department of Agriculture)

As a black woman who is no stranger to racism, Shirley Sherrod became a civil rights activist after her father was murdered by a white farmer. Plus, she is married to Charles Sherrod, cofounder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Ms. Sherrod was forced to resign as the Georgia Director of Rural Development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture after a heavily edited video of one of her speeches was posted on BigGovernment.com, the website of conservative blogger Andrew Bretibart. At a March 2010 NAACP function in Georgia, Sherrod described her experiences with a white farmer when she worked for a nonprofit rural farm aid group in 1986.

Sherrod said the farmer, Roger Spooner, acted “superior,” and she debated about how much to help to give to him. “I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with helping a white person save their land,” she said. “I didn't give him the full force of what I could do,” Sherrod added, initially providing him with only the minimum assistance necessary. But eventually, Sherrod said, Mr. Spooner’s situation made her realize that whites and blacks are struggling alike, and helping farmers was more “about the poor versus those who have” rather than about race.

However, in the highly edited version that of the speech that went viral, Sherrod apparently admits that she racially discriminated against the white farmer. Her statement was taken out of context. And the administration was scared that Sherrod would appear on Glenn Beck. According to Sherrod, USDA Under Secretary Cheryl Cook harassed her, and demanded that she pull her car over and write her resignation on her blackberry. Now, that’s throwing someone under the bus.

The Obama administration has since apologized to Sherrod for the incident, and offered her another job at the USDA, but the damage has been done.

JEFF SESSIONS
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Now a senator from Alabama, Jefferson Beauregard “Jeff” Sessions III was nominated by President Reagan to serve as a federal district court judge in 1985. But Sessions became only the second judicial nominee in 48 years to be rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and with good reason: Sessions was a critic of the Voting Rights Act. He had called the NAACP and the ACLU “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” groups that “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” As a U.S. attorney in Alabama, he reportedly called a Black assistant U.S. attorney “boy”, and told him to “be careful what you say to white folks.” And as a federal prosecutor, Sessions engaged in a voter-fraud witch-hunt against three Black civil rights workers, including a former aide to Dr. King. Moreover, during a 1981 KKK murder investigation, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he “used to think they [the Klan] were OK” until he found out some of them were “pot smokers.”

ROBERT BORK
(AP Photo)

Judge Robert Bork, a Reagan pick for the Supreme Court, was thrown under the bus in 1987 after his bitterly contested confirmation hearings. His problem was that he wanted to roll back the high court’s civil rights decisions, and he was therefore opposed by civil rights and women’s rights groups. Follwong the Bork nomination, Sen. Ted Kennedy said “Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution…” Bork’s nomination was killed in the Senate Judiciary Committee with a 9 to 5 vote.

ANITA HILL
(AP Photo/Greg Gibson)

When Clarence Thomas was nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court, law professor Anita Hill came forward to allege that Thomas sexually harassed her when she worked for him at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Testifying under oath, Hill was lambasted by the white men of the Senate Judiciary Committee and treated as a liar and criminal.

DAVIDE IGLESIAS
(AP Photo/Jake Schoellkopf)

Under the Bush administration, there was a politicization of the U.S. Justice Department, with prosecutors urged to pursue cases to meet the administration’s political agenda. One of these issues was voter fraud, specifically unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in heavily Democratic areas where blacks and Latinos live. Nine U.S. attorneys refused to toe the line and were fired. One prosecutor in particular, David Iglesias, was dismissed for being “soft” on voter fraud in New Mexico, and refusing to pursue these imaginary voter fraud cases. Obama Attorney General Eric Holder found that the Bush Justice Department was inappropriately political in the firings, but not criminal.

HARVEY GANTT
(AP Photo/Bob Jordan)

The Democratic nominee for President in 1988, then-Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, lost to George H.W. Bush in part because of the WILLIE Horton television ad. The Bush campaign commercial featured the menacing mugshot of Willie Horton, a black man who had committed rape after being released from a Massachusetts prison under a furlough program that Dukakis supported. Dukakis was thrown under the bus, but more importantly, all black men were thrown under the bus by an offensive ad that conjured up the worst racist stereotypes of black men as violent sexual predators.

Similarly, the late-Senator Jesse Helms, in his 1990 campaign against Democratic challenger Harvey Gantt, unveiled an offensive TV ad called “Hands.” The controversial commercial featured a close-up shot of two white hands crumpling up a rejection letter as the narrator said “You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.”

LANI GUINIER
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Bill Clinton was regarded by some as the first black President before the real and current first black President, of course. But that image was tarnished by his treatment of Sister Souljah and Lani Guinier. In 1993, Guinier was Clinton’s pick for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in 1993. Labeled in the Wall Street Journal as a “quota queen” (an equally offensive variation of “welfare queen”) by a Reagan Justice Department official because of her views in favor of proportional representation in local elections, Clinton eventually pulled the plug on her nomination. Guinier’s opponents stereotyped and mischaracterized her views. And for a president that wanted to shift back to the center, the bus was a perfect solution for his longtime law school friend.

DR. JOCELYN ELDERS
(AP Photo/Danny Johnston)

The first African-American surgeon general, Dr. Jocelyn Elders was appointed by President Clinton in 1993. In 1994, she spoke at a United Nations conference on AIDS, and was asked about her views on promoting masturbation as a method of preventing young people from engaging in risky sexual activity. She responded, "I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught." As a result of her remarks, Elders lost the support of the administration, and for her frank, no-nonsense talk abut teen sexuality, she was shown the door after 15 months on the job. "There have been too many areas where the President does not agree with her views. This is just one too many," Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta concluded.

Years later, Dr. Elders said that if she had to do it all again, she would do it the same way. "I went to Washington, not to get that job but to do that job," she said. "I wanted to do something about the problems that I saw out there that were happening in our country. I wanted to do something to make sure that all people had access to health care. I wanted to do something to reduce teenage pregnancies and begin to address the needs of our adolescents." How ironic that a president known for his extracurricular sexual activities inside the White House would throw his surgeon general under the bus over sex talk. Meanwhile, the HIV virus is spreading among young people ages 13-24, with blacks accounting for 55 percent of infections.

TRENT LOTT
(AP Photo/ Hattiesburg American, Ryan Moore)

The Republican senator from Mississippi resigned from his minority leadership position in 2002 after making comments praising Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), who ran for President in 1948 as a segregationist Dixiecrat on the States’ Rights ticket. "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it,” Lott said at Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. “And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either.” Lott had made similar statements about Thurmond at a rally in 1980.

ZOE BAIRD
(AP Photo/John Duricka)

President Bill Clinton’s first two candidates for Attorney General –Zoë Baird and Kimba Wood—were thrown under the bus because they had hired undocumented workers. Baird failed to pay social security taxes for her nanny and chauffeur. Wood paid the required taxes for her nanny and broke no laws, but her nomination was withdrawn because of the recurring “Nannygate” problem. Plus, Wood had trained as a Playboy bunny in London, a fact which proved a distraction for her candidacy.