And as blogger Gina McCaul noted, “It’s a monsoon over at NAACP headquarters these days.”
In the wake of the Shirley Sherrod debacle, criticism has rained down on the NAACP.
NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous has been in hot water ever since he pushed through a resolution condemning “the bigoted elements within the Tea Party.”
Jealous’ stewardship of the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization is being questioned by old media columnists, including Bob Herbert and Maureen Dowd.
TheRoot.com’s Lynette Holloway asked, “Does the NAACP Have a Leadership Problem?”
A number of bloggers, including Gina and Amy Alexander, have put Jealous on blast.
Gina wrote:
On Wednesday, I called for the resignation of NAACP President Benjamin Jealous. I did so not because he was “snookered.” I did so because I believe at this juncture in his personal development and the current political and technological environment he is unfit to lead as demonstrated by his inability to accept complete and total responsibility for his organization’s bad acts. Nobody made the NAACP condemn Shirley Sherrod before speaking to ITS OWN MEMBERS who were present at her speech. No one made the NAACP condemn Shirley Sherrod before getting its hands on a tape of her speech shot by ITS OWN MEMBERS. Nobody forced them to pick a fight with a foe they are CLEARLY too inept to respond to in a strategically sound and competent way. The NAACP took the path of LEAST RESISTANCE and when they were called on it they tried to deflect responsibility for their own BAD ACTS. Leaders take responsibility. LOSERS make excuses.
And it’s not just New York Times columnists and bloggers piling on. When a mathematician starts talking, you know you’ve got a problem.
Dr. Jonathan David Farley graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University. He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Oxford University.
Jonathan, a lifetime member of the NAACP, recounted his own “Shirley Sherrod moment” in a recent blog post.
In the age of social media, don’t start folks talking because they have a platform to tell everything they know.