David Kurtz is skeptical that Andrew Breitbart has been entirely forthright about his latest “scoop” involving a former employee of the USDA:
Andrew Breitbart has another notch in his belt: the forced resignation of a black USDA appointee in Georgia who Breitbart has on tape addressing a local NAACP chapter earlier this year and seeming to admit that she didn’t give a white farmer all the help she could have because he was white. Or at least that’s the story you get from Brietbart’s Big Government and from Fox.
But that was enough for the Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to issue a statement condemning her remarks, and for the national NAACP to do the same.
But the Atlanta Journal-Constitution interviewed the woman, Shirley Sherrod, and if what she says is true, there’s a lot more to this story. She tells the paper that the incident she was recounting happened 24 years ago, before she worked for the USDA, that she went on to provide considerable assistance to the farmer, that she eventually became friends with the farmer and his wife, and that the whole point of retelling the story was to show how she had managed to move beyond race herself.
Sherrod is on CNN telling a similar version of events right now.
But none of that part of her speech is in the clip that Breitbart and Fox are running. We’re on the hunt for the full video. The local production company won’t release it to us without the sign off of the local NAACP chapter. But the guy who owns the production company confirmed to us over the phone that the entire video matches what Sherrod is saying.
I’m going to wait to pass judgment until I see the entire video. Maybe a lot of other people should have, too.
Slide // Jul 21, 2010 at 12:20 am
easton // Jul 21, 2010 at 12:10 am : “it is human to excuse the failures of those we most agree with or even just like. I myself have done this on far too many occasions.”
So true. I often find myself straying into the tribalism that our politics has unfortunately evolved into, reflexively finding myself making excuses for those on my “team” while discounting the arguments on the other side. One has to always guard against giving into one’s biases. It is not always easy to be intellectually honest in this environment. Another casualty of the hyper partisan world we find ourselves in.
florishes // Jul 21, 2010 at 12:26 am
Nobody took the time to investigate this story.
Obama looks like a frightened little president, the NAACP looks like a reactionary mess, the Breitbart faction look deceitfully invested in the politics of racial hate. And, Fox News looks like the purveyors of Helter Skelter fantasy. I wonder which human rights organization Meghan Kelley and Friends will target next.
Madeline // Jul 21, 2010 at 12:29 am
What’s funny (funny weird, not funny ha ha) is that there was as much “selective editing” in the ACORN tapes, but that didn’t get nearly as much coverage. Breitbart has lost all credibility at this point, has he not? I can’t imagine him getting a free pass from the media after this.
And I want to add my kudos to DeepSouthPopulist. You, sir or madame, are a class act.
msmilack // Jul 21, 2010 at 1:06 am
Jenin
You should rent the movie “Absence of Malice.” Journalists absolutely can be sued for what they write; it’s a little trickier with newer forms of media but purposely smearing someone as he has done is worse than just a lack of ethics; it is malicious.
jorae // Jul 21, 2010 at 4:02 am
The damage is done. The people who listen to Fox are just one degree hotter about anything concerning the NAACP or Obama.
The web site for Breitbart about this story was published yesterday…so all the comments reflect how bad Obama is and that rotten NAACP….but go to the end of the blog and you see where people are posting the new facts. But it starts out generating hate.
I have found Fox does this too, the old stuff come up first. They either have a cut off at 149 or review your posts before posting. By the time you get wind of the false story, they have closed the thread.
At Youtube, the right wing clips usually have a pop up stating “your thread will be reviewed before posting”.
There is something wrong with this freedom when it spreads hate…
westony // Jul 21, 2010 at 9:57 am
Can we ALL get along. Everyone has made their point. The President, his staff and the NAACP are “nervous” Nellies’ about race. So much so they would allow themselves to be Snookered.
Fox News and their boys and girls will resort to anything to bring the Pres. down. Breitbart said on Hannity last night. He doesn’t care about Shirley Sherrod. He only wants to protect the Tea Party against racism and deflect the racism label to the Democrats.
In other words he doesn’t care whom he hurts and he’s NOT Apologetic. Not one bit
Churl // Jul 21, 2010 at 10:31 am
This is getting to be fun.
Ms. Sherrod claims that, immediately after the video was posted she received three phone calls from “the White House” directing her to resign her position. She says that the third caller instructed her to pull her vehicle to the side of the road and resign via her mobile phone. The Chicago Way: stop the bus long enough to order the driver to get under it.
Sherrod and her husband were parties to a multimillion dollar racial discrimination lawsuit against the USDA. The suit was settled shortly before her appointment to the job she was just kicked out of.
It now seems the president of the NAACP may have attended Ms. Sherrod’s speech and did not at that time register the outrage that he affected when the video went public. This at the same time that the Amen Corner of the audience kept muttering approval of what sounded like anti-white racist behavior.
Glenn Beck (chief barbarian at the gates of Frum’s imagination and main devil in the Left’s Pandemonium) is defending Ms. Sherrod as an unfortunate scapegoat whose remarks were taken completely out of context.
I’ve taken a long position in popcorn futures.
Slide // Jul 21, 2010 at 10:45 am
Churl,
1) Ms. Sherrod did not claim to have received three phone calls from the “white House”. She said she received calls from an under-secretary of the USDA.
2) Why would the president of the NAACP register outrage at the speech? There was nothing to be outraged about. It was a wonderful story by Ms. Sherrod pointing out why we should not use race in making decisions. I applaud her story.
3)The “amen corner” was not muttering approval not of the racist behavior but rather the understanding that we can all succumb to the behavior sited which was wrong. That was the whole point of the speech. It is EXACTLY opposite of what Britebart and his ilk at Fox are trying to depict.
But other than that you were right on.
Churl // Jul 21, 2010 at 10:57 am
Slide,
(1) I saw Ms. Sherrod on the teevee, and she used the phrase “White House”.
(2) Agreed. It was indeed a wonderful redemption story. So, why did the NAACP president not stand up to defend the inspirational remarks that he, his very own self, saw and heard?
(3) Apparently you can read the minds of people on video. I can’t.
bamboozer // Jul 21, 2010 at 11:26 am
Did Breitbart edit the tape? Hell Yeah! He’s made tape editing into an art form and I dare say he’ll be back yet again. Discredited? Please! Behind thier backs Conservatives are laughing thier butts off, they got the drop on Vilsack, the NAACP and by association Obama. Thier Lovin’ It! Fox News is probably on the phone asking “ya got anymore?”.
easton // Jul 21, 2010 at 2:08 pm
churl at 10:31 This at the same time that the Amen Corner of the audience kept muttering approval of what sounded like anti-white racist behavior.
churl at 10:57 Apparently you can read the minds of people on video. I can’t.
Extraordinary.
busboy33 // Jul 22, 2010 at 2:57 am
@easton:
You’re looking at this all wrong. When you go for consistency, you can’t work “Obama is Teh Debil” into all the different answers. If you focus on the Obama/Debil connection, then you have to sacrifice consistency.
You’ve just got your priorities backwards.
subvert » "The big breakthrough will come…when we are able to handle the truth about people." Van Jones // Jul 25, 2010 at 5:56 pm
[...] spoke in public on behaviour of her government employer but apparently of her own choosing and gave plenty of context which made her story about race and class understanding really [...]