The entire Shirley Sherrod affair is such a disgusting, stomach-churning episode of right-wing lies, propagandists posing as "journalists," and craven political cowardice and gullibility, that it's hard to know who to be most enraged at.
Andrew Breitbart, a particularly vile propagandist of the American right who severely edited a videotape of a speech by the Agriculture Department official to falsely label her an anti-white racist? Fox News, several of whose miserable excuses for journalists relentlessly plugged the entirely false story before and after Sherrod was fired? Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who had a minion call Sherrod on a cell phone and insist that she pull over to the side of the road and text in her resignation before any of the relevant background facts about the "scandal" emerged? The White House, which, apparently frightened of appearing in any way linked to black racism, stood by the essentially forced resignation even when it became clear that Sherrod's speech was nothing like what Breitbart suggested? Even the NAACP acted poorly in this sorry episode, saying it was "appalled" by Sherrod's words and later "concurring" with her firing. (To its credit, the civil rights group quickly recognized its error, retracting its comments yesterday and saying it had been "snookered" by Breitbart and Fox's falsehoods.)
Here's the story in brief, for those few people who still don't know about it. On Monday, Breitbart -- the same loathsome character who publicly called Ted Kennedy a "pile of human excrement" a few hours after the senator's death -- aired a video of Sherrod speaking to an NAACP banquet in Georgia last March. In his edited version, Sherrod is shown talking about initially not wanting to help a white man who was facing the loss of his farm because of her anger toward white racists. But the tape presented by Breitbart, who was furious about the NAACP's recent criticism of racism within the ranks of the Tea Parties, left out the crucial conclusion of what was really Sherrod's tale of redemption -- that in the course of the 1986 case she was discussing, she came to realize that "the struggle is really about poor people," and that her anti-white feelings were wrong. She said the case changed her entire outlook. (And in fact the farmer and his wife were all over the media yesterday, saying that Sherrod had saved their farm, was a fine and caring woman, and should get her job back.)
FoxNews.com and Fox Nation, both parts of Fox News, immediately picked up Breitbart's fairy tale and began plugging it, as did Fox News' Bill O'Reilly (who demanded Sherrod's resignation in taped comments run after she quit) and a number of other right-wing media outlets. (Many of these reports, following Breitbart, claimed that Sherrod's actions in the 1986 case had occurred while she was an Agriculture employee -- a complete falsehood.) That prompted Vilsack to have her thrown out of her job as the department's director of rural development in Georgia -- an act that Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen rightly described today as pure political "cowardice." Vilsack didn't bother to hear Sherrod's side of the story first, and he didn't watch the full videotape. Incredibly, even as the true story began to emerge, Vilsack said he was sticking by Sherrod's ouster, because, "rightly or wrongly," perceptions about her comments could make her job more difficult. Then, early this morning, the Associated Press quoted an unnamed White House official saying President Obama had been briefed on the situation but was supporting Vilsack's decision.
This isn't the first time we've seen this kind of wilting of White House officials under pressure from the political right. They fired Van Jones, a White House environmental advisor, after Fox's Glenn Beck made false claims that he was a "black nationalist" and former "radical communist" who was using green jobs as a form of "stealth reparations." They repudiated an accurate 2009 Department of Homeland Security report that was leaked and then attacked by right wingers for supposedly defaming conservatives -- a charge that was patently false.
Let's take a closer look at a couple of the other actors in this nasty little episode.
Andrew Breitbart is a former editor for the right-wing Drudge Report (which also plugged the Breitbart video) and a columnist for the arch-conservative Washington Times who sometimes substitutes for Michael Savage, a radio talk show host who regularly makes racist remarks on the air (and who, in the interest of full disclosure, has attacked me personally many times). It was one of Breitbart's websites that aired videos made by right-wing activists of ACORN employees giving advice concerning prostitution, and later suggested that ACORN was destroying incriminating documents. (California Attorney General Jerry Brown investigated, concluding there was no criminal activity depicted on the "severely edited" tapes Breitbart aired.) Breitbart also has claimed that Congressmen John Lewis and Andre Carson "made up" a story about being repeatedly called "niggers" during a walk through a Tea Party rally.
Breitbart recently blogged about the "insufferable assholes" he claims populate the mainstream media. Ironically enough, given the role he played in the defaming of Shirley Sherrod, he described "the racket that is modern journalism," saying that journalists "lie when they claim to be objective." Elsewhere, in his first column about Sherrod, he crowed that "the new media will not be silenced."
Which brings us to Fox News, that infamous purveyor of falsehoods, wildly skewed reporting and propaganda posing as real facts (some of their "journalists" even later suggested that Fox had never plugged the Sherrod tape). As my colleague Alexander Zaitchik wrote on this blog yesterday, the network has "a long history of crude and transparent race-baiting." And Zaitchik wasn't even talking about the Sherrod spectacle -- he was writing about Fox's current obsession with the "scandal" of the Justice Department dismissing part of a voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party, a black racist hate group. On MSNBC last night, Rachel Maddow did a serious takedown of Fox's rantings about Sherrod.
The United States faces many serious problems in the year 2010, from a crashed economy to the largest oil spill in our history. But no American should ignore another serious threat to our integrity as a nation and a culture: the far-right propagandists, their media and political enablers, and the political cowardice that allows complete falsehoods to destroy perfectly innocent human beings.
Shirley Sherrod, ex-USDA worker: White House forced me to resign ...
Vilsack, White House apologize to former USDA official - CNN.com
Shirley Sherrod, Ousted USDA Official, Defended by Farmer She ...
http://www.laprogressive.com/rankism/shirley-sherrod-andrew-breitbart/
And she has also done us all a service today: she has exposed Breitbart of the O'Keefe Gang as The Man Who Can Never Be Trusted and Fox Noise as The Network That Can Never Be Trusted. Fox has had its Dan Rather moment now, and Breitbart will now be the boy who cried wolf.
If people had been regularly reading Media Matters for America as they should be, the likelihood of the White House (or Vilsack et al.) getting carried away would not have occurred.
My only concern now is that there are blacks who are bigoted against whites (not just non-blacks). Yes, not a lot, but racists are found in every quarter. And if they get government power to effect that racism, they only need yell "Breitbart" and "Fox News" and "consider the source" to avoid censure or even scrutiny. Breitbart's lies have promoted or furthered bigotry and racism rather than diminish it.
Sigh. Maybe if we all stopped acting so "stupidly" things would be better?
She also today accused FOX of wanting to "take them all back" [blacks] to the way it used to be.
She also expoused class warfare in saying "it's not about black/white but poor/not poor.
So you can put her on a pedestal, and honor her if you want, but it does not change the facts.
Yes, I was dissapointed that FOX didn't vet the story more, and thought they jumped the gun. But they didn't jump any more than MSNBC, or CNN would have if it had been a white worker referring a black farmer to "one of his own".
And ACORN, please. That cannot be disputed. There was MILES of video evidence that proved the criminal goings on in that organization. You really think the country is better off with ACORN back to their old tricks?!
This lady is no hero. FOX acted too quickly (in this instance), she probably shouldn't have been fired so quickely, but she is no hero. And the NAACP audience had their hypocritical laughs.
Why are none of you answering that little unpleasant truth?
We conservatives are all rotten. You liberals are all sweetness and purity.
We conservatives are wrong 100% of the time. You liberals are right 100% of the time.
FOX is evil. MSNBC is the Mother Teresa of journalism.
I get it.
Why is no one speaking out about the clear audience approval at her comments BEFORE any of them knew where the story was going?
Mr Potok, have you ever read an issue of the "Intelligence Report" you allegedly edit? That is also undeniably propaganda. Using words like "delusional" and "fear-mongerer" to refer to Conservative politicians, in what is supposed to be an objective summary of hate groups proves that you are nothing more than a mouthpiece for the left. Your recent "meet the patriots" article was nothing more than a biased hitpiece, obvious by the snarky remarks within. Please go back to the days when you actually did some good, and focus on actual hate groups like the Klan. A militiaman who owns a dozen guns, just in case, isn't a hate group.
You ought to have your voting rights revoked -- you clearly lack the capacity to think clearly.