Shirley Sherrod’s Damascus moment
Consider this hypothetical discussion about the color of grass:
A: “The grass in the city park is green.”
B: “That’s ridiculous.”
A: “Here is a photo of the grass in the city park. The grass is clearly green.”
B: “Look at the context in that photo. The sky is blue. How can you say that the sky is green when the sky is clearly blue?”
A: ???
That’s the level of our political discourse today.
A: “The NAACP has become a racist organization.”
B: “That’s ridiculous.”
A: “Look at this video: Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement.”
B: “But look at the context. Sherrod went on to say she was wrong. How can you say that Sherrod is racist when she realized she was wrong?”
Sherrod recanted, and the video Breitbart posted showed that. But the NAACP audience approved of her tale before she got to that part of her story. That was the point of Breitbart’s Big Government article:
Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.
The NAACP has been saying some stupid things about race lately—has been lying about Tea Party gatherings—and Breitbart called them on it.
Shirley Sherrod, describing her journey to Damascus moment, received laughter from the NAACP audience for her actions before she described her conversion. The Obama administration, rather than decry the racist response to her speech… forced her to resign, despite having earlier been warned by her that the speech was out there, and despite Breitbart including her conversion in the clip.
The worst part is how brazenly the left in the media, in politics, and in the blogs, are lying to pin this on Fox news. Fox didn’t even run with the story until the White House confirmed it. They were still fact-checking it—no airing of the video, no mention of her name—when the White House fired Sherrod. A cynic might say that they fired Sherrod to take the heat off of the NAACP. Or, maybe the White House didn’t like that she eventually helped the white farmer. It’s also entirely possible it was just bureaucratic incompetence—there certainly hasn’t been a dearth of that from the White House recently.
But trying to pin the blame for their own incompetence on Fox News is a new level of incompetence. This isn’t 1995. There are more than three networks, and there is a whole lot more computing power—including the power to display an entire day’s worth of news in a few seconds.
- March 1, 2012: Rewriting history on the death of Andrew Breitbart
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This is the only page I have that talks about Andrew Breitbart, and it’s especially timely today. In their obituaries, the news media, blogs, and blog commenters are falling over themselves lying about the dead, and the most common lie is that he somehow mistakenly defamed Shirley Sherrod. He did not. He included the context about Shirley Sherrod’s realization of her mistake in his original video of her road to Damascus. The stated point of the video was how the audience reacted to her mistake before she said it was a mistake.
Even the staff writers at Fox News felt compelled to include the left’s spin on the Sherrod story1:
Breitbart became embroiled in a controversy of his own, though, for his reporting on a web video of Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod. The edited video appeared to show Sherrod making a racist comment, but the full tape later put the remark in context and made clear that Sherrod was actually talking about bridging racial differences.
Certainly, the video edited by Breitbart showed Sherrod making a racist comment: that was her point in telling the story. The lie here is that “the full tape later put the remark in context”. The original video that Breitbart posted put the remark in context. This is a lie, it’s smoke and mirrors, to divert attention away from Breitbart’s bullseye: that the audience approved of her racism.
And you have commenters blaring it from liberal blogs and sneaking into conservative blogs trying to push the lie. I’ve seen it on Ace of Spades HQ and on Legal Insurrection.
Everybody makes mistakes; I’m sure Breitbart made some too. The Sherrod story wasn’t one of them.
Fox News
- Bret Baier Takes on Howard Dean for Lying About Fox News!: Bret Baier
- Bret Baier plays Fox News in fast forward from the moment the NAACP story went live on Big Government, to after the White House fired Sherrod. (Hat tip to Smitty at The Other McCain)
- Ousted official Shirley Sherrod blamed Fox, but other outlets ran with story: Howard Kurtz
- “But for all the chatter that she was done in by Fox News, the network didn’t touch the story until her forced resignation was made public Monday evening, with the exception of brief comments by O’Reilly. Fox Senior Vice President Michael Clemente said: ‘Let’s take our time and get the facts straight on this story. Can we get confirmation and comments from Sherrod before going on-air. Let’s make sure we do this right.’”
- The Power of Fox News: Tom Maguire at JustOneMinute
- “Sherrod may be the only official ever dismissed because of the fear that Fox host Glenn Beck might go after her.”
NAACP
- Juggling the Sherrod Chainsaw: John Hayward at The Daily Caller
- “The game played by the NAACP against the Tea Party involves floating a lot of vague allegations, allowing them to congeal for several months, and then popping up on TV in October to express deep concerns about this ‘controversial’ organization. They sure didn’t need people buzzing about what Shirley Sherrod said on that video… so under the bus she goes.”
- Video Proof: The NAACP Awards Racism-2010: Andrew Breitbart at Big Government
- “Once again, the American main stream media has asserted itself as the number one enemy of the truth, when the facts don’t fit the left-wing narrative. Like the NAACP, it has become no better than Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in its willingness to exploit race for political ends and their unflinching support of the Obama’s left-wing agenda.”
White House
- Breitbart Didn’t Hide Sherrod’s Redemption and Other Things the Media’s Gotten Wrong So Far: Guy Benson at Big Government
- “This President often decries the 24-hour, hyper-reactionary media cycle, yet his administration responded with warp-speed to toss Sherrod overboard. Can it now safely be asserted that the Obama administration ‘acted stupidly’?”
- Sherrod: I want to talk to Obama: Allahpundit at Hot Air
- “Presumably they felt it was safe to run on O’Reilly once Sherrod was fired on the theory that the USDA must have seen the full tape before letting her go. Oops. Exit question: Is Sherrod week in the blogosphere finally over?”
- Vilsack: I Will Have to Live With Shirley Sherrod Mistake: Brian Montopoli
- “The agriculture secretary said the White House did not pressure him to make the decision to fire Sherrod or communicate with him about the matter, despite Sherrod’s indication that a USDA official told her the White House wanted her to step down.”
More Andrew Breitbart
- Rewriting history on the death of Andrew Breitbart
- The best and most heinous time to rewrite history is in the obituary of the history-maker.