I spent a slightly surreal weekend hanging out with Andrew Breitbart at CPAC this past weekend and at the end of the conservative convention, he was served with a lawsuit from Shirley Sherrod, the former USDA official who was forced to resign by USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack back in July, 2010 after Breitbart had published two videos of her as part of a long blog post. One of those videos showed Mrs. Sherrod (ironically, it turns out) telling the NAACP audience that she suggested people get work with the government because "you can't get fired". The second, better known video showed Mrs. Sherrod telling her story of how she didn't give a white farmer 'the full of force' of her help for a period of time. After the USDA fired her, apparently without an investigation, the full tape was released.
Why was I with the notorious Andrew Breitbart? As I've mentioned previously, for the past two months, I've been on the road working on a film about the Pigford 'Black Farmers' settlement. This project has been funded by Andrew Breitbart and even though I've had complete editorial freedom, obviously some people are going to question my opinion since I'm working with Andrew.
Are my feelings about Andrew altered by the fact that I'm working with him on the Pigford story? The reality is just the opposite. I don't like Andrew because I work with him, I work with him because I like him and because Pigford is an important, misrepresented story. I spent weeks looking into Pigford and getting to know Andrew before deciding to work with him. My initial view of him was based on countless stories and comments I'd read calling him racist, homophobic and worse. I learned very quickly that the real Andrew Breitbart didn't fit any of those stereotypes. Aside from my personal experience, I spoke with liberal friends who'd known him for years and confirmed that no, he's not a bigot.
That brings up another point that I want to be clear on. Work relationship aside, I'm proud to have Andrew Breitbart as a friend. Here's a man who is attacked mercilessly as racist and homophobic but just in the past three days at CPAC has shown has commitment to helping black farmers discriminated against by the USDA and hosted a party for the gay conservative group GOProud. Those are brave, independent positions in the conservative movement, not safe or calculated ones. Andrew isn't a partisan ideologue.
Andrew is outrageous and opinionated but I like that in people; it's a quality I like in Bob Cesca, Chez Pazeinza, David Sirota and a host of other people who I know a little bit. Bob, Chez or David might consider this a false equivalence since -- ya know -- as liberals they are obviously right and as a conservative Andrew is clearly wrong on everything.
Sorry, I don't fall for the 'false equivalence' meme. I worry more about the enforcement of lockstep conformity that I see on the left. I've seen the attacks on people like Jane Hamsher. I can both work with and be friends with people who I don't agree with on any number of political or social issues. I believe in free speech and lively debate. I'd love to see Bob, Chez, David and Andrew arguing over dinner.
I have been working on Pigford nonstop for weeks and until Mrs. Sherrod just plunged herself headfirst into the story by suing Andrew, I wasn't clear on how central a figure she was to the story. There has been no pressure by Andrew at all to focus on or attack Sherrod.
The timing of Shirley Sherrod's lawsuit is interesting. For one thing, months after the incident it's very clear that Mrs. Sherrod's reputation hasn't been hurt by the controversy, but in fact seems to have been enhanced by it. She seems to be a folk hero who gets honors, awards and speaking engagements. She was offered another job the next day and spoke to the president. I'm not a lawyer but I thought lawsuits -- especially those that might have chilling first amendment effects on publishers -- were usually filed by people who had suffered damages.
She doesn't seem to be feeling especially harmed by the video controversy from months back. Just a few days ago at a speech in Oregon, she described the incident by saying, "That moment was just a bump in the road."
Stranger still, Mrs. Sherrod's former attorney Rose Sanders told me via phone a couple of weeks ago, "Tell Andrew Breitbart I'm not going to sue him" because she's left the practice of law. Technically, she didn't -- Mrs. Sherrod seems to have retained the high priced, powerful Kirkland & Ellis law firm -- but in retrospect it was certainly a strange message for Sherrod's former attorney to tell me to relay to Breitbart.
I don't think it's a coincidence that this lawsuit comes just as things are starting to heat up in the Pigford investigation. Mrs. Sherrod is connected to Pigford. She's the largest recipient of a Pigford claim; she, her husband Charles Sherrod and the New Communities farm won over thirteen million dollars while most other farmers only got $50,000. Mrs. Sherrod was hired by the USDA after this award. Prior to being hired, she worked to help keep angry black farmers from pulling out of the lawsuit after they objected to the terms of the consent decree. And despite her hero status with many, the farmers I have personally interviewed about Mrs. Sherrod have decidedly mixed feelings about her.
So, why now? What I know for sure is that a couple of days ago Andrew Breitbart and I put on a press conference at CPAC that released a two-hour, unedited audio clip that showed how easy it was to commit fraud in Pigford and that people are coached on exactly how to do it. A week ago Friday, the National Review released a 4,000+ word article detailing the Pigford scandal. Other major media outlets have pieces in the works and politicians are looking seriously at investigating Pigford. The USDA has been stonewalling me for weeks. And after Media Matters published a deceptive piece calling the Pigford investigation a 'smear' against Mrs. Sherrod, this lawsuit comes. I have a number of questions I'd like to ask Mrs. Sherrod about Pigford but now that seems highly unlikely as she's sure to lawyer up on the issue.
Andrew's response is characteristically defiant but this won't likely be fun for either Mr. Breitbart or Mrs. Sherrod. But just as in Pigford, I'm sure somewhere there are trial attorneys laughing and opening a bottle of wine. Meanwhile, the years of racism at the USDA continue and the black farmers continue to suffer due to Pigford.
Follow Lee Stranahan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Stranahan
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Didnt makkke it all the way thru the article kept getting a gagging response as I read it. Is this what your boy bart has lowered himself to, are you some sort of character witness? Mrs Sherrod plugged herself into the story??? Turns out your boy bart messed with the wrong Sister. Yes I said Sister because that is what it takes to bring down the likes of the barts in the world.
No settlelment will be accepted, this Sister will seek justice, not teabagger justice, not rightwing nuttery justice but blind justice that rolls down like rain to wash his ilk away.
*Check your backyard for pods
*Deal with it.
*Tell your boy to get ready to pay
On the other hand,this egregious and self serving post by Breitbart's employee may well be entered into evidence by the plaintiff in order to show a pattern of behaviour by the defendant. Unfortunately Breitbart's tactic has a good chance of working in front of the wrong judge.
And now, Mr. Stranahan, I think you are probably also a racist. Saying things like "my liberal friends don't think he's a bigot" certainly doesn't help your case. And if you're not a racist (maybe you don't know that you are, many white people don't) then you are certainly working for a racist in order to help a racist.
What is the best thing that could possibly come out of your documentary? That you expose some trivial amount of fraud and plunge a small community of black farmers into poverty? No one cares if poor black farmers worked the system after the civil rights movement. No one who isn't racist, that is. Because the rest of us are pretty much okay with the idea that black people who grew up before the civil rights era, black people who had to fight for their right to be recognized as citizens (which is pretty much the generation of black people involved in Pigford), are angry at white people and wanted to stick it to the man every way they could. More power to them.
Why do you even care about this? Racism is the only reason I can think of.
I care about this story because acrual black farmers who were discriminated against by the USDA haven't gotten justice, because their suit against the USDA was hijacked.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jack-coleman/2011/02/16/odd-timing-sherrod-lawsuit-against-breitbart-questioned-unlikely-quart
I found a video of an interview of him recently which told me all I needed to know....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4EL3OTnRA0 He said he'll basically do anything to win (in a battle to fight the left). He helped launch HuffPo but left and joined Drudge when he saw that HuffPo was veering to the left. I find it a bit ironic that he's willing to fund you through your "investigation" about the Pigford cases. Are you going to allow him to influence the outcome? What if you don't find what HE wants you to find?
If I ever ventured out to do some citizen investigative journalism, someone like Andrew Breitbart would be the last person I'd want to be associated with!
my $0.02
I've been on the road nearly 3 months now and I've had -- as I mention -- complete independence.
The Court held that a public official suing for defamation must prove that the statement in question was made with actual malice, which in this context refers to knowledge or reckless lack of investigation, rather than the ordinary meaning of malicious intent. In his concurring opinion, Justice Black explained that "'[m]alice,' even as defined by the Court, is an elusive, abstract concept, hard to prove and hard to disprove. The requirement that malice be proved provides at best an evanescent protection for the right critically to discuss public affairs and certainly does not measure up to the sturdy safeguard embodied in the First Amendment."
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/02/14/pigford-a-tragedy-and-a-non-troversy/
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/adam_serwer_archive?month=02&year=2011&base_name=pigford_ect_ctd
The second link includes a great summary of Breitbart's work (perhaps not Stranahan's, but you lie down with dogs,...) by Adam Serwer:
"Andrew Breitbart's Pigford "reporting" is of the same nature as the video stings that have garnered him so much notoriety. All of his "scoops" have the same basic plot: An organization working to rectify some aspect of economic, racial, or gender inequality is guilty not merely of being liberal, but of complicity in some grand criminal enterprise. Having decided this is the case, Breitbart or someone associated with him assembles evidence to support that conclusion, ignoring any and all information that might otherwise refute it. If need be, the evidence is manipulated to portray the opposite of what actually occurred, because the guilt of the subject is assumed. The story always contains some element of twisted fantasy about how women, the poor, or black people actually live.
It's practically paint by the numbers. The only shocking thing about his Pigford report is that there wasn't a pimp involved."
"I don't like Andrew because I work with him..."
"Andrew is outrageous and opinionated..."
See what I did there, Lee? I didn't edit, I was "excerpting." I even included ellipses. I'll just publish those all over the Net and let people decide for themselves, shall I? "We distort, you decide," eh?
jp
"My view of him was ...racist, homophobic and worse."
It's not something to sue over.
I lost any respect for Breitbart over the years long ago when I realized a lot of the stuff he posted that the Drudge Report linked to was a farce. His style of reporting is one reason I stopped identifying as a Republican.
I look forward to hearing the final verdict of this lawsuit.