Whose knee jerked first? A GMA tape shows Obama explaining to Elisabeth Leamy in an exclusive interview that  Secretary Tom Vilsack’s  hasty dismissal of  Shirley Sherrod from  her position at the  Department of Agriculture  was a  knee-jerk  reaction to the media culture of blogging and YouTube. There is no denying that the media culture is one that can drive public opinion, however some of the President’s explanation leaves questions.

“He jumped the gun, partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on You Tube or a blog and everybody scrambles. And I’ve told my team and I told my agencies that we have to make sure that we’re focusing on doing the right thing instead of what looks to be politically necessary at that very moment.  We have to take our time and, and think these issues through.”-President Obama, ABC news

All of this is an interesting parsing of a volatile over-reaction that Obama himself, has taken great pains to soothe. However, the idea of  Vilsack alone, “jumping the gun” as Obama chose to call the pressure placed on Sherrod to pull over, while driving, to resign immediately -  speaks to the urgency of someone, somewhere to get rid of Sherrod fast.

The question is, why so fast? Was it  in order to contain and diffuse a story so strong that it even dwarfed Obama’s triumphant signing of the much-touted financial reform bill? The signing of that bill and the recent extension of unemployment benefits the kind of successes Obama desperately needs to highlight in the face of both his and both the House an Senate’s dismal poll numbers. Was the goal to get the spotlight off Sherrod and back on Obama’s successes?

Sherrod herself has repeatedly stressed, and continues to stress, that the pressure came directly from the White House. Meanwhile Vilsack took full responsibility for the hasty firing of Sherrod, claiming  “no one  from the White House had anything to do with this at all.” However, earlier, even after Vilsack had learned that the tape was edited, Vilsack defended the decision to accept Sherrod’s resignation saying, “The controversy surrounding her comments would create situations where her decisions, rightly or wrongly, would be called into question making it difficult for her to bring jobs to Georgia.” Remember, Vilsack had heard the speech in full context when he said that. Then, as described by Politico’s Mike Allen, something changed.

“Yielding to a late-night phone call from the White House, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack reversed himself early today and said he will reconsider the abrupt firing of Shirley Sherrod, a Georgia-based Agriculture Department official who was the victim of a media frenzy over comments that turned out to have been distorted by video editing.” Mike Allen, Politico.com

Bottom Line: If the White House can admit to intervening in the end, why can’t they admit thier role in the very begining? The question is, whose knee jerked first? Whose really to blame?

Devonia Smith is the Dallas Political Buzz columnist for Examiner.com and a contributor to Painespeak.com. She can be followed on twitter by clicking @DevoniaSmith

British Petroleum can be accurately called many things: greedy, reckless, an environmental tyrant, aloof, and astonishingly bad at damn near everything they attempt. They are a success despite their numerous failings, a product of an industry propped up by the addictive properties of its merchandise. But “flattery” aside BP is also the employer of almost 100,000 people worldwide, and its likely most of them are not evil.

And that’s the point, BP is a company comprised of people, some with fancy suits and hidden agendas in desperate need of an indictment, and some with a mop and a broom or a cubicle and a ceaselessly ringing phone. These people have families, attend soccer games, and do all the things you or I enjoy in our thoroughly non-villainous lives. It’s these people though that are suffering a different kind of torture then the thousands and thousands of displaced fisherman and Gulf residents, the keepers of the Gulf Coasts disappearing majesty. A different torture, but torture all the same.

So why are we seeking to attack them? Our concern over collateral damage practically non-existent. It’s they who will be most affected if BP folds. They and us. You see BP has for better or worse been accountable. They have thus far spent the money, willfully supplying a $20 billion dollar escrow for the recovery effort, and they are handling the repair effort and the cleanup effort concurrently. Are they doing it well? No, but that’s another matter altogether. The point is they are signing the checks and if they suddenly disappeared then who would that responsibility fall too? The answer: you, me, and those fisherman, with our tax dollars that are already spread too thin.

Calls to ban BP from off shore drilling (but not Transocean?), from oil exploration of any sort within the US and its territories, and the cancellation of productive Government contracts are little more than efforts to aggressively punish a company that has angered and wounded us. No due process, no investigation, but rather a public flogging with no regard for what happens to BP, a company that could find itself morally and fiscally viable once more with the aid of a few well placed executive indictments. No concern for those people working the refineries, those people on the rigs, or working one of tens of thousands of jobs within BP that had nothing to do with this spill or the poor effort to contain it. No worry over the thousands of independent small business owners and near minimum wage workers that operate or work for BP brand gas stations across the US that are being hit hard by boycotts.

Still, some would argue that BP has operated consistently with little to no consideration for the potential or true damage done to the Gulf Coast, its innocent residents, and the other areas throughout the world where BP maintains a drilling presence. They would argue that the destruction of this company is what karma demands, it is just, and it is righteous, and they would not be wrong in light of the decimation, environmental and economic to the Gulf Coast. But in following that line of logic we forsake our system of laws, the means for which we attain actual justice. Something a mob mentality cannot achieve.

Indeed we can rip this company to shreds, we have that ability without question. We can disregard the damage that would bring in the name of blood-lust and smile broadly at the decimation. But applying our passion to those pursuits does nothing to improve the situation in the Gulf. It does nothing to ensure that something like this never happens again.

And so rather then embrace our base instincts, giving in to our anger we can In this fleeting moment of increased awareness and zeal, work to reform high consumption behavior, and push for true investment in alternative fuels and environmental protections. In this moment we can demand that our Government craft a new energy plan without the corrupting influence of industry. An energy plan that strictly and without fail regulates the energy industry while simultaneously investigating BP and lowering the full force of the law onto the heads of those guilty of corruption and negligence. It’s up to us to determine the course of our fire, up to us to move toward the productive or blindly tear apart a company, our misspent rage, and hollow activism leaving us with a bigger mess and a Gulf Coast still in tatters.

This will sound like a pebble in an ocean, a whisper in a rainstorm but I must ask you what is your guiding star? Are you pulled by politic or principle? It is a struggle, pushing you toward both ends. I know your need, your hunger for something more no matter your method, no matter your tone. Politics needs passion, it feeds upon it, draining us of our hopes, our dreams, leaving only a shell of apathy and dissent. And yet we open our veins to its jagged teeth, and yet we bare our souls to a maddening process certain to disappoint and mangle.

We are the romantics that dream of a better world, those that fight for the rights of ourselves and those around us. We are Democrats, we are Republicans, we are Independents, and we are Other. Soldiers all fighting in the same war on the same side. Soldiers following our lesser natures while engaging in bickering and posturing, impuning our brothers and sisters over petty disagreements for hollow pride in the name of “politics“, not fighting for our country but toward its unraveling .

We ought to be better, we ought to stand together and not splinter upon the burden of tiny fractures. Our cause seems unified but not our spirit, and I am bewildered by this, and I am guilty of this as much as you, if not more-my sins confessed and repented for, my behavior no doubt poised to repeat its devilish ways because we cannot be perfect but we can, with relative ease be better by adhering to our principles.

We can seek out intelligence and bravery in our elected leaders, choosing from within us the best of us to rediscover the lost art of leadership. We can respect and acknowledge the sheer patriotism that is ingrained in any person that throws body to the flames and spikes of this process, this pastime, and we can work to disavow any knowledge of those that would split our ranks for the sake of their own selfish feasts, damning not just our better angels to places of darkness but our nation to the ranks of the listless and bare. Salvation can come to those who battle not with fists and fiery rhetoric but who exercise restraint, compassion, and allow themselves the splendor of an open mind.

Perhaps Glenn Beck has gone one step beyond. We already knew that Mr. Beck had planned a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th, a rally where, following a stirring countrified opening act Mr. Beck will reveal “The Plan” supposedly given to him by God. Yes apparently Martin Luther King had a dream, and Glen Beck has a hallucination.

While specific details of “The Plan” have been hard to come by, Mr. Beck did reveal a brief description on his website, painting “The Plan” as a “100 year plan for America that will provide specific policies, principles, and most important, action steps that each of us can take to play a role in Americas re-founding”. Whether those “action steps” will be chiseled unto a tablet and delivered to Mr. Beck upon a mountain are not known.

In keeping with the “delusions of grandeur” theme though Mr. Beck will also hand out the “Badge of Merit”. An award bestowed by Mr. Beck that will supposedly be more like the “Military Badge of Merit” briefly awarded by George Washington and not the Boy Scout patch given for helping little old ladies cross the street.

You see according to Mr. Beck the “Purple Heart” which serves as the official successor to the “Military Badge of Merit” is a creation of progressives. One that no doubt pales in comparison to the original and Mr. Beck’s update because according to Mr. Beck, the original “had nothing to do with being wounded in action”. According to Mr. Beck the “Military Badge of Merit “had everything to do with doing something of honor and integrity, something where you really put your neck out, not just getting shot…not that that’s…he was trying to build people that understood honor and merit integrity, god”.  Now is such insight from Mr. Beck, a man with as much real military service as my childhood collection of G.I. Joe action figures really worth enough to be insulted by? Yes and no.

On one hand it’s easy to see Glenn Beck for what he truly is and not be threatened or even riled. An opportunistic cartoon who has seized on a golden age of American anger and bent it to his will. Someone who uses the blind faith of his followers as a stepping stone toward the greatness his particular brand of madness permits him to believe he is fated to have. A snake oil salesman and disc jockey with amazing control of his tear ducts but sadly not his free roaming mouth. But Glenn Beck is also a dedicated weapon empowered by that growing theatre of like minded individuals who take Mr. Beck’s words as gospel without dissecting them and seeking even a hint of his numerous self serving motives.

The books, the website, “Fusion Magazine”, the television and the radio show, a burgeoning empire that paid Beck $32 million dollars last year aided by the audacity of Glenn Beck that grows with every controversial outburst. Does Beck know that when he mocks the intelligence of the President’s daughter that he will undoubtedly have to apologize for that misstep moments later? Of course, but that doesn’t dampen the free press and publicity, the focus on the “Big, Bad, Beck” that that gets him. The same is true of Mr. Beck’s comments on Wednesday, impuning the honor and sacrifices of thousands of American soldiers who were wounded or slain on the field of battle, including the U.S. military personnel who died on 9/11. Remarks made primarily to build the mythology of Glenn Beck even though they stand against his usual support of our military including his work with the Special Operations Warriors foundation.

You see for Beck the whispered contradictions and hypocrisy don’t matter. It’s the screaming headlines that advance his cause, the cause of Glenn Beck. And while that may be fine for one lone nut it is in the adoring masses, those who deify, mimic, and take his make believe antics at face value that trouble me because they just don’t seem to realize that cartoon’s are only meant to entertain, not enlighten or emulate.

“What I don’t like from the President’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,’”-Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky Rand Paul on Good Morning America, adding “I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business.”

Rand Paul has discovered infamy as briskly as he found fame, displaying a harsh and aloof tone in relation to firstly America’s long celebrated civil rights laws and now the growing outrage over a disastrous oil spill that continues to rage out of control.

But while Paul has flipped and flubbed his initial victory tour, creating a firestorm with his remarks and then canceling on “Meet the Press” after what he called, “a long week” he may be exactly what the tea partiers want and what they should fear most.

Now I won’t pretend to hold any admiration for the tea party movement as it is ideologically the Joker to my Batman, but they do deserve respect. Raised from the cobbling of America’s individual screams, born out of frustration and a gnawing pull toward action no political force has identified with or been more in tune with America’s anger in a time of outright fear and utter disappointment the the tea party.

In many ways the tea party movement is the child of the “Hope” and “Change” movement that carried Barack Obama into office. Though ideologically dissimilar both felt the pulse of a nation, at once begging for something new and fresh, while nearly at the same point burning for something genuine, less slick, and perhaps closer to things remembered. It is in essence a forever waged war between the split personality of America, the ideologies of “the bright new horizon” and the “good old days” with different players, different labels, and the same dust ups and lack of a true resolution.

Whether the tea partiers are to be as effective as the Obama movement was in 2008 will likely be a matter settled in the coming years. But based on this primary season it appears as if they are off to a good start. That said, every movement needs a leader, someone in power who can carry the hopes and worries of a mass audience into the halls of power and create lasting change. In that and their ability to create any real legislative change the tea party has failed.

Efforts to thwart the stimulus, health care reform, and of course the election of Barack Obama himself prior to their branding as “tea partiers” have been glaring, while the reactions to those defeats have been much like a tantrum with threats and slight displays of violence that have served to keep this movement away from what it should prize above all else, mainstream appeal. A necessary evil in the pursuit of actual power.

That’s where Rand Paul comes in. The son of conservative deity, Congressman, and former Presidential candidate Ron Paul, Rand shows an appeal that flies close to the “aw shucks” regular guy persona that George W. Bush used to seduce voters (and say what you will about Mr. Bush but he was a successful politician). Its these tools that helped Rand Paul crush GOP establishment pick Trey Grayson in the primary and which make him a natural leader of the tea party movement.

And yet it is his recent statements and the ease with which tea partiers take to and applaud those statements that should be of concern to anyone wishing for a true tea party revolution. A revolution that does more then score election victories against moderate Republicans and a couple of woefully under prepared Democrats. A revolution that captures and holds the attention and admiration of a majority of people in this country.

In much the same way as it was his lack of intellectual curiosity that sunk George W. Bush, making him an unpopular cartoon here and abroad, it is Rand Paul’s intellectual rigidity that may damn him and all that hitch themselves to his wagon. Faithfully libertarian Paul is, as was mentioned before, made to be visibly uncomfortable at the thought of affirming the acceptability of the federal government’s banning of institutional racism in establishments public and private and then fiercely displeased that a President would dare use his bully pulpit to castigate a corporation, a foreign born corporation no less that oversaw one of the larger if not the largest environmental disasters in the history of the United States, raping the natural splendor of the gulf coast, depressing or deadening industries all along the coast in the midst of what is still a fragile recovery from a national economic meltdown.

Is this opening the tent and growing the movement or is Rand Paul and the celebration of him condemning the tea party to the fringes?

Such a question is not for me to answer, only pose. But if the tea party movement and Rand Paul continue to seek an American uprising, a revolution without the support of its people it will continue to feel like an invasion, loud, frightening, and easily undone by its lack of real firepower. Left or right without center is merely a group of shouters dancing in place to the song of their own voices, winning their little tournaments, feasting on the resounding cheers of a puny gathering and accomplishing little or no part of their agenda. That is unless the whole point was just to get on the ballot and make a lot of noise.