Everything in and out of USDA basically stopped on Wednesday because of the saga with Shirley Sherrod, the Georgia USDA rural development director forced to resign earlier in the week.

What a mess.

The controversy and soap opera surrounding it went from being a snow ball rolling down a mountain side to an all-out avalanche. The internet term for all this is simply, "The story has gone viral."

For those who have missed the controversy, Sherrod spoke at an NAACP meeting back in March. A conservative blogger took about 3 minutes of Sherrod's comments to make it look like in her job at USDA she had not helped a white farmer as much as she should have. Other conservative bloggers and media, and then other media picked up on the comments and video, and by Monday morning Sherrod was called from the USDA mothership in Washington and told to resign.

The full video, over 45 minutes long, shows this incident happened in the mid-1980s when Sherrod worked at a private job. Sherrod also was telling a story of how she came to cope and set aside her own prejudices in dealing with that farmer and his family. Sherrod was giving an inspirational speech in which she explained that poverty and financial struggles go beyond race.

The NAACP, which initially backed Sherrod's dismissal, recanted and apologized. News organizations, feeling duped, had to respond by throwing everything at the story.

By Wednesday afternoon, this entire incident had turned into the biggest racial embarrassment in the Obama administration tenure. Sherrod told CNN she was the first black official fired by a black president.

At first, and in the middle, and right up until about the time I decided to write this, I really didn't want to get involved by writing about it. After all, at the root of this, the stituation involves one person, unjustly fired no doubt, but one person nonetheless. Policy should have a bigger picture. But it does. First, we can't deal with race in this country. And second, this administration has become knee-jerk in its terrified reaction to conservative attacks.

With nothing coming out of USDA, reporters turned to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. His daily press briefing was filled with questions about Sherrod. When did the White House know? Who was told? When did the president know and what did he say?

Gibbs basically apologized on behalf of the administration. Gibbs said of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who forced Sherrod's resignation, "He will apologize for the events of the last few days and they will talk about their next steps."

The controversy sucked the air out of President Obama signing the financial reform bill as well.

Gibbs told reporters that Vilsack was trying to get ahold of Sherrod. If they had her cellphone number, pass it on so he could get ahold of her. Reporters also asked about Vilsack's capabilities of managing his department over this. Again, in some fairness, the media drove this story, then turned around, and drove it some more.

Reporters also said no one at USDA would respond to them.

Finally, after the Gibbs' presser, USDA announced Vilsack will talk to reporters later this afternoon.

At our office, we're disappointed Saturday Night Live only has re-runs in the summer because this would make a great skit.

I can be found on Twitter at ChrisClaytonDTN.