Andrew Breitbart Owes Shirley Sherrod and Us an Apology

The fiasco of the forced resignation of Shirley Sherrod has become one of the major stories of the day. It began when BigGovernment.com released a video given to Andrew Breitbart, which seemed to suggest, as Breitbart wrote, “video evidence of racism coming from a federal appointee and NAACP award recipient and in another clip from the same event a perfect rationalization for why the Tea Party needs to exist.”

What irked Breitbart — correctly — was that the Tea Party was being branded as racist by the NAACP and other liberal media outlets. As we have now learned, the original video handed to Breitbart included only part of the Sherrod speech. It was best explained by Roger Mackey in a New York Times blog:

The NAACP then backed down, releasing a statement indicating that after reviewing her entire speech and listening to the testimony of white farmers whom Sherrod actually helped, “the fact is Ms. Sherrod did help the white farmers mentioned in her speech. They personally credit her with helping to save their family farm. Moreover, this incident and the lesson it prompted occurred more than 20 years before she went to work for U.S.D.A.”

Sherrod, in her full speech, made it clear that what she was trying to convey was a change in her perspective, from seeing things only through the prism of race, when it was a matter of poor people of all colors needing help that was being denied them. She learned when “it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those that have and not so much – it is about white and black but, it opened my eyes because I took him to one of his own and I put him in his hands and felt, O.K., I’ve done my job.” The white farmer then had his farm foreclosed.

The white lawyer Sherrod had sent him to did not help stop the foreclosure, but told the farmer to let the farm go. At that point, Sherrod sprung to his defense and went on to help him save his farm. From this experience she learned “it’s really about those who have versus those who don’t … And it made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people, those who don’t have access the way others have.”

After finally hearing her story, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack promised to review the decision asking for her resignation. But there is more. On CNN, Sherrod told the story of how Undersecretary of Agriculture Cheryl Cook called her three times as she was driving to clients in Athens, Georgia, a three and a half hour car drive. “They asked me to resign, and in fact they harassed me as I was driving back to the state office from West Point, Georgia, yesterday,” she said. The last call “asked me to pull to the side of the road and do it [resign],” she said. The undersecretary told her that the White House wanted her to resign, because “you’re going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.”

The irony is that Glenn Beck did not show the video on his program at all that day. On the following day’s program, Beck came on the air — before the full video of Sherrod’s entire March speech had been made available by Breitbart and by the NAACP — and told his program’s viewers that Sherrod “shouldn’t have been fired.” Why, Beck asked, would they force a resignation based on a 24-year-old incident that might have been “taken entirely out of context”?

As for Breitbart, we have to ask: Who gave him the incomplete video? Why didn’t he ask whether the entire speech was in the clip? Not having done that, it was clearly irresponsible for him to run it. Perhaps it was a setup. At any rate, he should have asked for the complete speech before releasing it, since the subsequent rush to judgment — including the forced resignation of Sherrod — was the result. Breitbart appeared this morning on ABC’s Good Morning, America, where he said that:

Indeed, Breitbart refused to back down from what he said was simply his intent to show the double standard applied to the Tea Party, and he refused to apologize for showing the incomplete video that cost Sherrod her job. “They were clapping racist behavior,” he said of the audience who heard her speech. Refusing to apologize, he said “the audience showed racism.”

The NAAP acknowledged that they were “snookered by Fox News and Andrew Breitbart,” and apologized for their condemnation of Sherrod and asking for her removal. Breitbart, having now seen the entire speech, should do the same. Sherrod herself blamed the NAACP for throwing her to the wolves, without calling her and even looking at the video, which they had.

As for Fox News, the Special Report with Bret Baier did not show the video, and on the panel, Charles Krauthammer said she should not have been dismissed and was owed an apology. Moreover, Shepard Smith, who anchors the 7 o’clock news show, called Andrew Breitbart’s website one that is “widely discredited” and posts “inaccurate” videos “edited to the point where the world was deceived.” So Fox News as a whole not only came off guilt-free, one of its anchors even blasted Andrew Breitbart. Yet Sherrod herself told Media Matters, the left-wing media-watch site, that “Fox News would like to take us [African-Americans] back to…where black people were looking down…not looking white people in the face, not being able to compete for a job, and not be a whole person.” Talking for the network, Baier said, “Mrs. Sherrod, that is just not true.”

Clearly Sherrod, although she herself had blamed the NAACP for not checking out the small edited video clip, now joined in the same spurious attack on Fox as the civil rights organization previously had done. Yet some on Fox News were guilty of a rush to judgement — particularly Fox News top rated pundit Bill O’Reilly, who showed the incomplete and misleading video and demanded on the air that Sherrod be fired. So did Sean Hannity, who called it “just the latest in a series of racial incidents.” Newt Gingrich then told him that firing here “for viciously racist attitudes was exactly the right thing to do.”

Both of them did not consider that the tape might have been incomplete. But even more guilty is the White House, whose pressure — which of course they deny having been made — resulted in the secretary of Agriculture’s demand that she be removed from the job. Why would the administration not phone Sherrod, ask for her side of the story, and first ask for the video of the complete speech before acting? Is it that because having branded the Tea Party as racist, they clearly could not afford to look like they were allowing someone who appeared to be a black racist to stay on the job, after she confessed in a speech how she did not help a white farmer?

As we learned tonight, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack blamed himself, said it was all his own fault, and exonerated the White House completely, although he previously noted that the demand she be fired came from the president. Now, he noted that the White House had asked him to apologize, and to quickly offer Mrs. Sherrod her job back.

The New York Times report noted: “Ms. Sherrod took to the airwaves on Tuesday, especially CNN, where she said that the N.A.A.C.P. was ‘the reason why this happened.’ ‘They got into a fight with the Tea Party, and all of this came out as a result of that,’ she said. Mr. Breitbart reached a similar conclusion, though from a different perspective. ‘They’re trying to make this about me and Shirley Sherrod. This is about the N.A.A.C.P.,’ he said by phone. He said that the civil rights group had ‘spent an inordinate amount of airtime trying to brand the Tea Party as racist’ while tolerating racism itself.”

Breitbart is partially correct. The NAAcP has shown its irrelevance many times, trying to act as if the U.S. is still in the segregated 40s and 50s, when it was a necessary and major civil rights organization with a mission to complete. It has a stake in charging racism where it no longer exists. But the organization’s head acknowledged he was disturbed about the audience reaction when Sherrod was accounting her first response of not wanting to help a white farmer, and pledged to look into it. Breitbart is also right that the group snookered itself, and it was not his fault. But this is not an excuse for his own failures. He too must apologize for putting out a video without checking whether or not it was complete, and considering what it might do to Sherrod.

It was not simply about the Tea Party. Thus, David Frum is correct when he writes: “There will be no apology or statement of regret for distributing a doctored tape to defame and destroy someone. There will be not even a flutter of interest among conservatives in discussing Breitbart’s role. By the morning of July 21, the “Fox & Friends” morning show could devote a segment to the Sherrod case without so much as a mention of Breitbart’s role. The central fact of the Sherrod story has been edited out of the conservative narrative, just as it was edited out of the tape itself.” So this conservative is not writing Breitbart out of the narrative. He too must apologize and admit his error. If he does not, and persists in saying it is just about the Tea Party, he only hurts his own credibility and reputation. Sometimes those with the best of intentions can become their own worst enemy.

I cannot answer each of my critics directly, but their points are the same: Breitbart does not owe an apology; the NAACP and the Left are exclusively at fault; Shirley Sherrod is a Marxist or perhaps even a communist; etc etc etc. Here is my response:

Last night, even Bill O’Reilly apologized to Sherrod for running the Breitbart released video and for not putting her comments in their entire context. Is O’Reilly now also a tool of the Left? Hardly, and he did the right thing. Breitbart, after hearing the NAACP’s attacks on the Tea Party, rememebered he had asked for the relevant parts of the video (not the entire speech) and then saw it, and released it to prove that the NAACP itself was playing a racist card. That means he responded with his own one-sided and misleading racial card, without trying to see if Sherrod’s entire comment proved his point.

Virtually everyone who has watched the speech, even Charles Krauthammer, notes that her speech was one of inspiration and reconciliation. Despite the horror of having her own father murdered by the Klan and a cross burned on their lawn in 1965, Sherrod calls for all of us working together, and transcending racial appeals. It is, as many have pointed out, an American story—not a racial story preached by the racial hucksters of the Left. True, at times she contradicts herself. In my blog entry, I included her own misguided statements about Fox News to Media Matters, and said she was wrong and losing her own high ground. But she has not repeated this on the numerous other programs she has been on.

The simple reason Andrew Breitbart owes an apology is this: He alone released the edited video- that did not include the rest of Sherrod’s story, in which she shows how her original reaction was wrong and how she moved on, and then helped the white farmer as best as she could- thereby indeed saving him from foreclosure and saving his farm. He and his wife have been Sherrod’s friends since then. Breitbart now says over and over “They made it about her,” as he did on a TV interview. No, HE made it about her, by releasing the misleading video. If he refuses to own up to his mistake, he has then squandered any credibility he may have had. So, I repeat: Andrew, apologize to her and to all of us.

You are hopeless. He wasn’t being dishonest. He just released a video that speaks for itself. And when you look at the entire video, you get the same message, i.e., the NAACP and Sherrod are racists. Stop trying to kill the messenger.

"Were a leftist to do that,"
============== Leftists ARE doing that, even as we speak which is why many Freepers have a tough time swallowing the spirited defense of Sherrod, the NAACP and the attack on Breitbart...these evil pieces of zhit don't need any help from our side, ESPECIALLY when the defense is usually coming from some who do so to reinforce their sense of superiority....

"You know, I haven't seen such a mean-spirited people as I've seen lately over this issue of health care. Some of the racism we thought was buried. Didn't it surface? Now, we endured eight years of the Bush's and we didn't do the stuff these Republicans are doing because you have a black President."

If you have the energy to repeat that, keep doing so. The mobies and wobblies on this thread will continue to ignore that. But I recommend using FR's html. Then keep repeating it every time a mobie tries to shift the focus.

The Media and the Left and the NAACP want to make Breitbart the issue.

The NAACP member in Sherrod's audience laughed with approval when she spoke of the racism she practiced 24 years ago, and they thought she was doing now.

This video proves the NAACP harbors racists.

Odds are good that they thought she was doing it now because of Obama encouraging Eric Holder's dismissal of the New Black Panther case.

Keep it up if you can. The mobies get paid to infiltrate FR, while you and I post here when when we can find the time and energy. They tell their conscience that "we're only following orders." We need to keep them on the defensive where they belong. Ping me when they start to get personal and post to me instead of engaging them, like I'm doing with you here.

Hey A¢¢hole mobies: How do like that?

And THAT is Breitbart’s point: the audience, not Shirley Sherrod. To Breitbart, Shirley Sherrod is irrelevant.

You never once addressed the info in the links. You simply dismissed it because it doesn't fit your script.

I don't give a flying monkeys tail what Coulter thinks. I don't care what Limbaugh thinks. I don't care what ANY of them think. I am not a member of group think. Got it?

I'm sorry if you need them to feel vindicated in your opinion. I use fact.

And the fact is that this woman's whole speech was racist.

The fact is that the NAACP laughed when she was telling them that a white man, while telling her he was superior, was asking her for help and she was deciding just how MUCH help she'd give him.

The fact is that she said Republicans opposing Bam are racist.

I heard her. And I don't need Coulter or anyone else to tell me that I didn't.

Don't feed the A¢¢hole moby trolls.

Members of the NAACP applauded Sherrod's speech at that point where they thought she was speaking of her racist treatment of a white farmer while she was working under Obama.

All on the right should never lose focus of that fact.

Breitbart’s concern wasn’t with Shirley Sherrod. His concern was with audience members who cheered her on when they heard the story of her former racism. While Shirley Sherrod is no longer a racist, some of the people in the audience were.

Dude, actually listen to what she says in that video. Shirley is as racist as she ever was; she's just expressing it in a different manner.

I continue to hammer Breitbart because he posted something out of context.

You can listen to the whole racist speech. It's online.

A rational person would come to a different conclusion.

She's a racist. And that can't be denied. She said that Republicans are racist because they oppose Bam's agenda. She has not changed. She still makes decisions based on color. She still says "my people" and "them". A rational person knows racism when they see it.

You're still making excuses for Breitbart's lack of integrity on this matter

Nope. Her full speech is worse than the excerpt.

“I continue to hammer Breitbart because he posted something out of context. “

Given the easily verifiable fact that the Breitbart excerpt INCLUDED Sherrod’s exculpatory phrase “it’s about poor and those who have” it is clear that your point is invalid.

Do your homework. Don’t repeat untrue Media Matters Marxist talking points as though they were fact.

Also, Sherrod’s phrase “oh, it’s still about black and white” is completely within context AND within the original Breitbart post. This is incontrovertible.

Please do your own homework and don’t hammer conservatives with false accusations. We are supposed to be on the same side here on FR.

Virtually everyone who has watched the speech, even Charles Krauthammer, notes that her speech was one of inspiration and reconciliation.

Poor Ron. The speech shows that both Shirley and her audience are both racist and classist. There is nothing inspiring or reconciling about her remarks.

The broad concensus across the political spectrum is that Breitbart's excerpt does not convey the same message as the full video.

Was Breitbart just lazy to start with? Maybe. But now he's had the chance to review the full video and he's trying to spin his way out of his previous position.

So now he has no excuse -- he's being dishonest.

As for you.... well, your continual attempts to excuse Breitbart are not to your benefit.

We are supposed to be on the same side here on FR.

As for me, I prefer to the company of honest people, of whatever political stripe. "Being conservative" is no excuse for dishonesty.

But if party is more important to you than truth ... go for it.

These moby trolls who take their hints from Media Matters (which still dishonestly claims that Breitbart’s video was “heavily edited”) are not worth your time engaging them.

Here, let me speak to you instead.

Have you noticed, that like liberals, every time you point out a valid point, as in this instance where the audience clearly responded with racist approval when Sherrod was telling of her earlier behavior, the trolls try to shift the focus onto Breitbart? Or onto you?

It’s a sure sign of them carrying the Leftist/Statist agenda even if they’re only dupes. And in some instances, you now know why Obama needed stimulus funds that are unaccountable. ;)

Maybe you should check how this was being offered as a story. You and ODH have insisted this was always about Sherrod and NOT the NAACP. Really.............

Breitbart hits NAACP with promised video of racism (This Is Really Bad) Hot Air ^ | 07/19/2010 | Ed Morrissey

The NAACP is about to learn one of the most basic of all lessons in life — those who live in glass houses should avoid provoking a stone-throwing war. After the civil-rights organization threatened to issue a condemnation of Tea Party activism by equating it with racism (a position from which they ultimately retreated), Andrew Breitbart announced that he would publish at least one video of the NAACP itself cheering racism.

SHOCK: Video Suggests Racism At NAACP Event (From WCBS TV NY SHOCK!)

Video Proof - NAACP is racist organization

More Racism at NAACP: Radical Obama Official Admits That She Openly Discriminates Against Whites

But you keep buying that MSM spin.

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