After the NAACP called on the Tea Party to condemn the racism in its midst, Andrew Breitbart promised to produce a tape of “racism…at a NAACP dinner” and told the president of the NAACP to “go to hell.” He then produced a video that showed Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod admitting to a NAACP audience that she had once withheld help from a white farmer because of his race. Ms. Sherrod, who worked for the USDA in Georgia, was promptly fired by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
Yesterday, I asked for and accepted Ms. Sherrod’s resignation for two reasons. First, for the past 18 months, we have been working to turn the page on the sordid civil rights record at USDA and this controversy could make it more difficult to move forward on correcting injustices. Second, state rural development directors make many decisions and are often called to use their discretion. The controversy surrounding her comments would create situations where her decisions, rightly or wrongly, would be called into question making it difficult for her to bring jobs to Georgia.
Our policy is clear. There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA and we strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person. We have a duty to ensure that when we provide services to the American people we do so in an equitable manner. But equally important is our duty to instill confidence in the American people that we are fair service providers.
The problem is that Tom Vilsack just got punk’d. Think Progress explains:
Within less than a day, Sherrod resigned from her USDA post under heavy pressure from the White House, saying she received “at least three” frantic phone calls from superiors demanding her resignation. At first glance, the forced resignation seemed fair — even the NAACP endorsed it, calling her comments “shameful.”
However, new evidence suggests that BigGovernment selectively edited the video to grossly distort what actually happened.
Here’s what Ms. Sherrod told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Sherrod [told the Atlanta Journal Constitution] that what online viewers weren’t told in reports posted throughout the day Monday was that the tale she told at the banquet happened 24 years ago — before she got the USDA job — when she worked with the Georgia field office for the Federation of Southern Cooperative/Land Assistance Fund.
Sherrod said the short video clip excluded the breadth of the story about how she eventually worked with the man over a two-year period to help ward off foreclosure of his farm, and how she eventually became friends with the farmer and his wife. […]
“The story helped me realize that race is not the issue, it’s about the people who have and the people who don’t. When I speak to groups, I try to speak about getting beyond the issue of race.“
Indeed, after nearly a quarter century, Ms. Sherrod remains close friends with this family.
Indeed, the wife of the white farmer in question, 82-year-old Eloise Spooner, confirmed the story and called Sherrod a “friend for life.” She told CNN that Sherrod “treated us really good and got us all we could.” “She’s the one I give credit to with helping us save our farm.”
So, Tom Vilsack just forced an employee to resign based on a doctored video recounting a 24 year old event that occurred before she was even employed by the Department of Agriculture. She was sacked for explaining how she unlearned racism (a quarter of a century ago). And, Vilsack’s explanation is that “right or wrong” these allegations would make it difficult to do her job effectively.
If this stands then the administration has no spine and no brain. Andrew Breitbart was also the brain that destroyed ACORN using doctored video, and he has a long history of playing the media.
One thing Breitbart will say about [Matt] Drudge, though, is that his mentor introduced him to Arianna Huffington, then a right-wing pundit and Drudge confidant. Breitbart became her researcher and Web guru. By her side, he learned that the media could be more than scooped — it could be hacked. The first exploit was almost an accident: In September 1998, he suggested that Drudge and Huffington go to the embezzlement trial of former Clinton business associate Susan McDougal. The Los Angeles Times took note of their attendance the next day in a headline and a few sentences in the Metro section. Publicists have been pulling similar tricks since silent-movie days, sending celebrity clients to public events. But to Breitbart, the move was a revelation. “You can play the media. You can force them to cover things,” he says. “This is not just stenography. There’s a performance art to it.”
In this case, the performance art made Vilsack make a very poor decision and cost a fine women her job and her reputation. The NAACP has now backtracked on their condemnation and admitted they were ‘snookered.’
With regard to the initial media coverage of the resignation of USDA official Shirley Sherrod, we have come to the conclusion we were snookered by Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias.
Having reviewed the full tape, spoken to Ms. Sherrod, and most importantly heard the testimony of the white farmers mentioned in this story, we now believe the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans.
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.
It’s time for Vilsack to make the same admission and reinstate her. If he hesitates out of embarrassment, then Obama should reinstate her himself. No leader worth a damn can allow his employees to get victimized by a dirty trickster like Breitbart.
Update [2010-7-20 21:58:2 by BooMan]: Here is the unedited video of her speech.
