Last March, Shirley Sherrod told an American tale of hope and redemption.

The year was 1986, and she was working for the Georgia field office for the Federation of Southern Cooperative/Land Assistance Fund. Sherrod, who is black, met a white farmer seeking help with a pending bankruptcy. But the farmer’s attitude was, shall we say, offputting.

“What he didn’t know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was, I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him,” Sherrod said. “I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough.”

Sherrod did more than enough — she “kept us out of bankruptcy,” says the farmer’s wife, Eloise Spooner. “Her husband told her, ‘You’re spending more time with the Spooners than you are with me’… She took probably two or three trips with us to Albany just to help us out.”

The experience was a revelation for Sherrod. “I went on to work with many more white farmers,” she says. “The story helped me realize that race is not the issue, it’s about the people who have and the people who don’t. When I speak to groups, I try to speak about getting beyond the issue of race.”

Shirley Sherrod is now the USDA rural development director for Georgia. Or was.

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Above: BP engineers hard at work Friday in the Houston Command Center, gravely accepting their responsibility to monitor and control the deep-sea oil gusher.

Only the photo appears to have been taken in 2001. With new monitor images pasted in. And not very well.

BP has replaced the photo with what it says is the original. Although the photographer might want to check the settings on his Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, since the camera still records the shot being taken “3/6/2001 – 3:16 PM”.

In any event, we prefer the “original” provided to AmericaBlog by someone with better Photoshop skillz:

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The judges also would have accepted The Matrix, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Usual Suspects, An American Werewolf in London, Citizen Kane, and Singin’ in the Rain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn-YesqzvNk

While we’ve been preoccupied reading the Riverside Palin, basement-dwellers across America have been enjoying the saga of the iPhone 4’s antenna. (Short version: You lose bars if you hold it a certain way. You also lose bars if you hold every other cellphone a certain way.)

The best take so far appears to be from Taiwan’s Apple Daily (convenient nomenclature coincidence), best known for their Tiger Woods animations. We’ll let you have it raw, although we’ll be happy to annotate upon request.

Oh, and we’re quite happy with our own iPhone 4, thankyouverymuch. But since Steve wants to buy us a case for it, we’ll also be quite happy to take him up on it.

Meanwhile, back at camp…

Truth Wins Out (TWO) released an exclusive video statement today from two former clients of “ex-gay” life coach Alan Downing. The clients, Ben Unger and Chaim Levin, alleged that during individual therapy sessions, Downing made them undress in front of a mirror and touch their bodies while the significantly older therapist watched. Unger and Levin call the sessions a “psychological striptease” and believe they were harmed by what they consider unprofessional behavior and sexual misconduct.

Downing, who admits he is still attracted to men, is a major player in the “ex-gay” industry and a practitioner of so-called “reparative therapy”. He is the lead therapist for Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) and is listed on the People Can Change website as a “Senior Trainer” for Journey into Manhood, which is a controversial “ex-gay” backwoods retreat designed to supposedly make gay men more masculine.

“Journey into Manhood”? Hmmm… Where have we heard that before?

Breaking News: Major ‘Ex-Gay’ Life Coach Accused of Sexual Misconduct By Former Clients [Truth Wins Out]

“A California man, whose mother said he was upset about Congress’ ‘left-wing agenda,’ allegedly opened fire on police officers during a traffic stop in Oakland early Sunday morning.” [TPM]

Bigotriage: Pretending you didn’t say what you said by claiming what you said really said something else.

Drilliance: The ability to ignore the manifest practical consequences of your political positions.

Bristoleum: A shiny finish applied to virgin wood.

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