RSS Feed MenuOver the past few days, we’ve heard many weird defenses of Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart himself has claimed that he never intended to target Shirley Sherrod. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have raised the possibility that the whole business was a White House sting operation.
But the prize for bold cynicism has to go to James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal. Taranto yesterday posted a short column under the heading “David Frum is Silly.”
It was, Taranto says, “extraordinarily slipshod” of me to suggest that somebody like Andrew Breitbart had any moral obligation not to broadcast defamatory lies.
Taranto does not deny that the original Breitbart story about Shirley Sherrod was a reckless defamation of an innocent person. Taranto describes the original story as “journalistically shoddy” and acknowledges that Breitbart’s methods have been “grossly unethical.” But that’s OK! The methods are grossly unethical only by the outdated standards of “institutional journalism.” Breitbart, says Taranto, is not an institutional journalist – so anything goes.
It was a very effective bit of Alinskyite political theater, and in a way more so for Breitbart’s having gotten the story wrong. As it turned out, the NAACP condemned Shirley Sherrod based on a false, secondhand accusation of racism. Members of the Tea Party movement know just how she feels.
All the more effective for being wrong. Let those words sink in for a moment.
In his column, Taranto objects that I described conservatives these days as having a “unique capacity to ignore unwelcome fact” – the fact in this case being Breitbart’s involvement in the Sherrod smear. Taranto emphasizes: He does not ignore this unwelcome fact. He delights in it. Breitbart set out to destroy the career of a person who had done nothing wrong, without any effort to verify the story he broadcast to the world.
As Taranto tells it, the truly guilty party here is the NAACP. In Taranto’s view, the NAACP committed two wrongs:
First, they relied upon Breitbart-provided information. (As Otter says in Animal House: “You fucked up. You trusted us.”)
Are we to believe that [NAACP head] Ben Jealous thought Breitbart was what Dan Rather, before his fall, claimed to be–an impartial and reliable purveyor of facts? In the unlikely event that the answer to that question is yes, doesn’t his failure to know better reflect a stunning incompetence?
And second, when confronted with apparent racism within their own ranks, they acted promptly to condemn it.
[Breitbart] correctly identified the organization’s moral weakness. Confronted by a video showing apparent racism at an NAACP function, its leaders appear to have panicked and made a snap decision to denounce one of their own so as to pre-empt the charge of employing a double standard.
Personal background here: I worked at the Wall Street Journal editorial page from 1989 through 1992. As a new hire, I was sent to an orientation session. There I was shown an opinion survey ranked the Wall Street Journal in first place as America’s most trusted media source. Message: check and double-check everything – the value of the brand depends on the writers’ care and integrity.
The idea that a columnist for the Wall Street Journal would endorse falsehood and defamation as legitimate political tactics … while denouncing non-hypocrisy as a “moral weakness” … I’m not shocked by much these days, but I’ll admit: I’m shocked by that.
jakester // Jul 24, 2010 at 12:00 am
franco 2
named after the Generalissimo?
Well Sherrod was the target of all these attacks so she is allowed to pout and rant about it a bit.
jorae // Jul 24, 2010 at 5:33 am
Is there no shame anymore? I can’t imagine holding up a signs against any race or religion. I just couldn’t hold my head up and participate in such cruelty. Somehow Breitbart’s ego and his self worth seem to be stroked when crushing an innocent individual. Isn’t that a bit how Bundy felt when he had his victims pined down?
There is something growing in the Right Wing mind that needs to be addressed, and when people like Mr. Frum calls them out, they just spin the blame game back.
I feel Shirley S. should sue Breitbart. Then maybe more newspapers will think twice before they play the charter assassination game.
Non-Contributor // Jul 24, 2010 at 8:56 am
WSJ = FOX News.
I switched to the FT a few months ago. Could take reading Carl Rove and hearing about Glenn Beck any longer.
sinz54 // Jul 24, 2010 at 9:43 am
jorae: There is something growing in the Right Wing mind that needs to be addressed,
The hard-core right (as typified by RedState.com) sees the Obama Administration as heralding the end of America as we have known it.
They are convinced that Obama and his netroots supporters want to remake America in the socialist mold of Canada or Europe, which is utter anathema to them. And so they see this as not just politics but WAR against un-American forces that have to be stopped at all costs.
The rest of us conservatives don’t see this as a war. But we are equally opposed to European-style Social Democracy and don’t want to import it into America.
My ancestors came to America to get away from Europe, and it would be spitting on their memory if I helped turn America into a carbon copy of Europe. Four times in the last 100 years, the United States had to save Europe from itself. If we become just like Europe–soft, effete, indolent pacifists who tolerate high unemployment in the name of social “justice” and are flaccid before the threat of Islamism, then who will save us next time?
sinz54 // Jul 24, 2010 at 9:49 am
ktward: I’ve zero idea how the GOP–today shaped and marketed by its most extreme, caricature voices and pols–can possibly hope to woo critical Indies.
As seen in the recent polls, independents’ disgust with Obama is all the GOP needs to win.
Historically, the opposition party just capitalizes on the mistakes and inadequacies of the incumbent party, rather than acting as a “shadow government” the way the British parties do. The Dems did in 2006, despite having no better answers for the War on Terror.
So I expect the GOP will do quite well this November, as long as the unemployment rate remains above 9%.
The problem isn’t how to win. The GOP has demonstrated it knows how to win–they propelled Bush to the White House in 2000 despite losing the popular vote to Al Gore.
The problem is how to govern if you do win.
If the GOP does succeed in winning a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, what are they going to do with it? Where’s the 2010 Contract with America? I haven’t seen one?
LauraNo // Jul 24, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Sinz, you point out just what Frum is saying. Conservatives are happy to ‘win’ no matter what immoral thing they have to do. Stealing an election was just the start.
Rokker // Jul 24, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Once Rupert Murdoch got his grubby hands on WSJ ‘journalistic integrity’ ended. Now like Fox it is there to serve a political agenda.
jorae // Jul 24, 2010 at 8:08 pm
Giving up European monarchies is one thing. Considering we lead the way with the Constitution for the people and they followed proves they pretty much were in agreement with our original way.
Then they improved “for the people.” We stopped for the benefit of rights to your money and gave it labels to teach our children. Which moved us back more into a monarchy without titles.
America has suffered by not taking care of our own people.
When wealth rises in just one part of the community, you see divorce and crimes go up. That is the world you get when you take “for the common good” out of government.
ktward // Jul 25, 2010 at 5:02 pm
If we become just like Europe–soft, effete, indolent pacifists who tolerate high unemployment in the name of social “justice” and are flaccid before the threat of Islamism, then who will save us next time?
The “threat of Islamism”?
As is disturbingly typical of Zionist ideologues–both Christian and Jewish–you conflate the threat of terrorism with Islam.
Terrorism is terrorism.
There’s zero difference between AQ– waving their self-righteous flag as ‘Muslim’ activists– and our own homegrown Timothy McVeighs, Tiller killers, and Hutaree militias waving their self-righteous flags as ‘Christian’ activists.
You, sinz54, attempt to foster the very same kind of ideological, propagandist bullshit that the terrorists themselves hang their hats on.
the rooster // Jul 26, 2010 at 5:09 pm
As a regular reader of Mr. Taranto and an occasional reader of Mr. Frum, I have read the back and forth with great interest, and must sadly conclude that, through either intellectual laziness or dishonesty, Mr. Frum’s claims are inaccurate. Read both of Taranto’s columns (in addition to Frum’s piece) and see if you don’t agree.
Who Snookered David Frum? | Lux Libertas - Light and Liberty // Jul 27, 2010 at 9:35 am
[...] David Frum has posted an astonishingly feeble response to our Thursday item on the Shirley Sherrod fiasco, in which we took issue with an earlier Frum post on the subject. Normally we shy away from back-and-forths with bloggers, on the theory that engaging in them is somewhat self-indulgent. But because Frum outrageously misrepresents our views, and in ways that are potentially harmful to our professional reputation, we feel we must respond. [...]