Posted on 07/30/2010 4:05:05 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Had Andrew Breitbart dutifully written a column detailing how an obscure USDA official, Shirley Sherrod, and her husband, Charles Sherrod, had scammed the government out of millions, the story would have had the range and lifespan of a fruit fly.
Instead, as the world knows, Breitbart released an edited version of Shirley Sherrod's speech before the NAACP that provoked national headlines and caused the NAACP to denounce her and a panicky Obama administration to fire her from her position as the Georgia Director of Rural Development for the USDA.
Then, of course, when the full version of the speech emerged -- which showed Sherrod as a recovering racist, not as a practicing one -- the Obama White House fell all over itself apologizing, and the media turned their guns on Breitbart.
Breitbart, however, had put a potentially huge story into play the only way he could -- through sheer provocation. As he knew, and as we are learning, the story goes well beyond Sherrod's long-ago racist mischief-making with a poor white farmer.
This past Sunday, in his weekly column for the San Francisco Chronicle, "Willie's World," veteran black politico Willie Brown confirmed that "there is more to the story than just [Sherrod's] remarks."
"As an old pro," Brown acknowledged, "I know that you don't fire someone without at least hearing their side of the story unless you want them gone in the first place." Brown observed that Sherrod had been a thorn in the USDA's side for years, that many had objected to her hiring, and that she had been "operating a community activist organization not unlike ACORN." Although Brown does not go into detail, he alludes to a class action lawsuit against the USDA in which she participated some years ago.
In the way of background, in 1997, a black farmer named Timothy Pigford, joined by four hundred other black farmers, filed a lawsuit against Bill Clinton's Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, claiming that the USDA treated black farmers unfairly in all manner of ways, from price support loans to disaster payments to operating loans. Worse, they charged that the USDA had failed to process any complaints about racial discrimination.
The notion that the Clinton Ag Department had spent four years consciously denying black farmers their due defies everything we know about Clinton's use of race and should have made the media suspicious about Pigford's claims dating back to 1983.
Flush with revenue in 1999 and eager to appease this bedrock constituency, the administration settled with the farmers -- more realistically, their attorneys -- for fifty grand apiece, plus various other perks like tax offsets and loan forgiveness. If any of the presumably racist USDA offenders were punished, that news escaped the media.
After the consent decree was announced, the USDA opened the door to other claimants who had been similarly discriminated against. They expected 2,000 additional claims. They got 22,000 more, roughly 60 percent of whom were approved for this taxpayer-funded Lotto.
Despite having a year and a half to apply, some 70,000 more alleged claimants argued that they not only had been discriminated against, but also had been denied notice of the likely windfall that awaited them.
In 2008, for reasons unknown, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa lobbied to give the alleged 70,000 "another bite at the apple." Co-sponsoring the bill was none other than U.S. Senator Barack Obama. In February of 2010, the Obama administration settled with the aggrieved 70,000 for $1.25 billion that the government did not have to give. This money, by the way, was finessed out of a defense appropriation bill.
At the time, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the agreement would close a "sordid chapter" in the department's history, a chapter in which no one seems to have been so much as reprimanded.
The major media reported the settlement as though it were the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. For the last forty years, as the civil rights industry has manufactured more and more absurd grievances -- most notably the Tea Party smear that incited Breitbart's reprisal -- the media have reported on them with increasingly wide-eyed innocence.
In the various stories on the settlement, not one reporter that I could identify stopped to do the math. Pajamas Media did in a detailed article by "Zombie" titled appropriately, "Pigford v. Glickman: 86,000 claims from 39,697 total farmers?"
Although 86,000 black farmers are alleged to have received payments, at no time in the last three decades have there been more than 40,000 black farmers. Nor is there much turnover in the farming business. No entrepreneurial activity involves more long-term investment.
Realistically, of the 40,000 or 86,000, how many could have applied for a USDA loan and been rejected while white farmers in comparable circumstances were getting loans? If there were hundreds, let alone thousands, the heads of loan officers should have been rolling around the USDA floors, but I know of no such purge.
More to the point, out of about $1 billion paid out so far in settlements, the largest amount has gone to the Sherrods' New Communities Incorporated, which received some $13 million. As Time Magazine approvingly reported this week, $330,000 was "awarded to Shirley and Charles Sherrod for mental suffering alone."
Unwittingly, Charles Sherrod shed light on the how and why of the settlement in a speech he gave in January 2010. As he explained, New Communities farmed its 6,000 acres successfully for seventeen years before running into five straight years of drought. Then, according to Sherrod, New Communities engaged in a three-year fight with the USDA to get the appropriate loans to deal with drought.
Said Sherrod, "They were saying that since we're a corporation, we're not an individual, we're not a farmer." Nevertheless, the Sherrods prevailed, but the late payments "caused us to lose this land." In other words, the bureaucratic delay over taxpayer-funded corporate welfare payments cost them their business.
Then, thanks to their "good lawyers," said a gleeful Sherrod, who seems to have fully recovered from his mental suffering, the Sherrods successfully sued the government for "a large sum of money -- a large sum of money." While saying this, he made hand gestures suggesting $15 million. The land itself was admittedly worth no more than $9 million.
Sherrod gave this talk to announce that the FCC had awarded New Communities a radio station in Albany, Georgia, still another race-based corporate welfare boondoggle. Before the award of this station, he added, the Sherrods "had no means of communicating with our people."
The "our people" in question, of course, are black people. With this new voice, the Sherrods will help "stop the white man and his Uncle Toms from stealing our elections. We must not be afraid to vote black."
Yes, indeed -- these are just the people we want spending the money we don't have.
Don’t you mean “shouldn’t”?
Edit now means to alter not excerpt.
The left is trying to accuse Breitbart of editing/altering the clip. Being precise in language by stating it was an excerpt DOES matter. The EXCERPT that he posted included Saint Shirley's "mea culpa" which the NAACP did NOT applaud as they had her racism.
The press is planting the idea that this was always about Sherrod and that he doctored the tape. It was not.
I have to admit, at the beginning of this story, even I , a great admirer of Breitbart and his tactics, was down on him for a misstep with this one, owing strictly to the way this was characterized in the media. But Breitbart is way too wily and creative in the way he does things-—the truth he was trying to coax out of it, eventually does come out.
But the official story, this one even having Obama as a vocal participant, is a very different one, and the one the general public will remember, unfortunately.
Words do have meaning. In this case both ‘edit’ and ‘excerpt’ mean to ‘select’ or ‘cut out’ sections of the original material. And the 1913 definitions do have meaning, and do apply just as well to audio-visual material as they do to written matter.
It’s interesting. You run around like a Robo-chicken sqawking “Words have meaning!” “Words have meaning!” “Words have meaning!” brrraawkk “Words have meaning!” “Words have meaning!” brraawkk
But then you DENY that the meaning in a dictionary that is 97 years old no longer means what it says.
That’s called what? Maybe you know the word to describe it. Cognitive dissonance? Schizophrenia? ADD?
Just to be clear, in case you might think I don’t like you or something like that: I like you.
I think you are another great Freeper.
Just wrong on this issue of the meanings of edit and excerpt.
It's called outdated. Modern definitions apply when one is talking about modern society and their understanding. Especially with all the "special" edits that make the rounds in email and on You Tube. You can make anyone say anything with editing now. Excerpted and edited means something entirely different in 2010 than it meant in 1913.
Again, by using the word "edit" the press is trying to smear Breitbart by saying he altered the tape to make it appear that she said something that she didn't. I'm sorry that you don't get it.
Disagreement only means hatred to the left. Because they are children. I've been married 40 years and never made my Hubby sleep on the couch. LOL
They are still waiting in the corners to receive slave reparations to game the systems, like the usurper and his gram-ma Toot did???
Take, for example, what I heard on a top of the hour radio news report on the subject. I can't remember if it was Fox news or ABC:
'The Whitehouse today apologized for the firing of Ms. Sherrod based on comments she made that were take dramatically out of context.'
The context of what she said was complete in the EXCERPT and not mitigated by the totality of the speech. In fact she admitted her bigotry remains to this day, and still foments racial discord by reinforcing the lie that white people are stealing the elections.
This post was only EDITED for emphasis, punctuation and spelling. Any remaining errors can be attributed to insufficient intake of coffee.
Excerpt means "to take an unaltered selection out of"
Using the word "edit" to describe an unaltered excerpt is playing the leftists game. We must control the terms used in order to win the fight.
This post was only EDITED for emphasis, punctuation and spelling. Any remaining errors can be attributed to insufficient intake of coffee.
Boy I hear THAT! :-)
Well a hundred thousand is just Georgia peanuts to fifteen mil!!!
There is a part of the recording that indicates something was edited out. How much and what was said remains a mystery, but I would love it if Breitbart ends up with that clip.
Now THAT would be great. I have read several times that people thought the original was edited. They said it was explained that the NAACP changed tapes during her speech. Um, yeah.
Well then, this is yet another juicy tidbit for Breitbart's defense lawyer to get into, along with why Ms. Sherrod felt it necessary to send an email to Vilsack to give him a head's up, warn him that this video existed FOUR DAYS BEFORE it was aired on Big Government -- he can ask her why she was so concerned, worried to the point of feeling the need to alert the head honcho.
Bring it on, Shirley.
Quit hijacking the thread. What Breitbart did was excerpt a section of the entire video. Actually, whoever emailed him the video did the job. He just posted what he had been given.
In the big picture, your derailing the thread over semantics is taking the focus off of this marxist, racist, money grubbing fame whore.
The real nugget of information is that her husband was given a FCC license so that now they can communicate to their people, hence the reason she came out attacking Fox News.
we need an edit button! your should be you’re
Tapes? They still use tapes? With all of the government assistance they receive, they can't afford to go to DVR.
Anyway, I thought the Breitbart recording was not from that source. If so, it should have recorded the missing piece. Regardless, she did continue speaking and therefore it was NOT the 'whole speech'.
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