Rep. Grayson, do us a favor and speak up today about the injustice that was done to Ms. Sherrod, a good person who has devoted her life to helping others, black and white in her native state of Georgia, especially if President Obama or Secretary Vilsack or anyone else in the Democratic Party leadership will not do so. You have shown you have the guts to speak out against these sorts of right wing smears merchants like Andrew Breitbbart. Too many Democratic officials still will not. They still cower in fear of the power of the smear merchants on the right.
I watched the Rachel Maddow show last night and saw the clip from the Spooner family, the white couple who Sherrod helped keep their farm back in the 1980’s when she worked with a private NGO helping poor farmers. Here is what Mr and Mrs. Spooner had to say about her:
Sherrod said Tuesday that the incident with the farmer in 1986 occurred before she started work for the USDA and was working at the nonprofit Federation of Southern Cooperatives. She said the experience helped her learn to move beyond race and she tells the story to audiences to make that point.
Meanwhile, the farmer referenced in the clip told CNN he credits Sherrod with helping his family save their farm.
“I don’t know what brought up the racist mess,” Roger Spooner told CNN’s “Rick’s List.” “They just want to stir up some trouble, it sounds to me in my opinion.”
Spooner says Sherrod accompanied him and his wife to a lawyer in Americus, Georgia, who was able to help them file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which ultimately saved their farm.
“If it hadn’t been for her, we would’ve never known who to see or what to do,” he said. “She led us right to our success.”
Spooner’s wife, Eloise, remembered Sherrod as “nice-mannered, thoughtful, friendly; a good person.”
She said that when she saw the story of the tape and Sherrod’s resignation on television, “I said, ‘That ain’t right. They have not treated her right.’ “
It wasn’t right but when has that ever stopped Breitbart or Drudge or FOX or Limbaugh from defaming good people to advance their agenda? They wanted to attack the NAACP after that organization’s resolution condemning racism in the Tea Party. The fact that Ms. Sherrod was an employee of the Obama administration was a bonus for them. Ms. Sherrod could be made to appear to be a “black woman who hated white people and refused to help them” by taking her remarks from a speech she gave to the NAACP out of context and implying that she and the Obama administration was deliberating discriminating against poor white people.
The trouble was no one on Vilsack’s staff or at the White House stood up for her. No one on our side gave her the benefit of the doubt or waited to investigate the claims of people that we and they know to be liars, con artists and propagandists who distort the facts with little concern for the consequences to the lives of the people they set out to destroy. In short they acted as if the accusations of known sociopaths and defamation specialists were the gospel truth before even bothering to fact check those claims. Even the NAACP fell for this trap, afraid to tarnish their precious reputation. At least they have now apologized to her.
And what about the white people who Sherrod supposedly shafted according to Breitbart and Fox? Apparently the NAACP and Vilsack couldn’t be bothered to track them down or to get Ms. Sherrod’s side of the story.
I don’t know what surprised me more: Vilsack’s and the NAACP’s hasty move to condemn based her on the charges made by FOX News and Breitbart or the fact that CNN actually practiced some real journalism and found the people who Ms. Sherrod allegedly abused because of her racism.
Here’s a link to Anderson Cooper’s CNN’s interview with Mr. Spooner.
And here’s the You Tube clip with the Spooners being interviewed by Rick Sanchez about Shirley Sherrod, and also his interview with Ms. Sherrod:
The NAACP has apologized for its failure to investigate Breitbart and Fox News’ claims before jumping to conclusions and President Obama and Tom Vilsack should do the same: admit their mistake and reinstate her. Immediately and publicly.
And any Democrat who in the future responds to “stories” coming out of Breitbart’s little media empire should be in the future should make a point to emphasize his past record of lies and omissions in order to advance his own agenda before accepting any part of those stories as truthful. At this point the burden of proof should be on Breitbart and Fox News and anyone else who propagates these “edited” tapes he conjures up and any news organization should not run a Breitbart generated story until a thorough fact checking of his organization’s “work” has been completed.
We know what Andrew Breitbart is: a manipulative bastard who delights in playing the media and causing trouble and stirring up racial division in this country. He is a person who isn’t a journalist though he pretends to be one. What he is is far more insidious: a malevolent and malicious individual who has learned that the major corporate news media can be “played” to cover a story the way you want it covered if you know how to push the right buttons:
One thing Breitbart will say about 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.”
You see, Breitbart himself knows what he does, and it’s not journalism, and it isn’t performance art either though that’s the egotistical label he prefers. What he is is is a shit stirrer, plain and simple. He makes his money through the deliberate manipulation of lazy journalists.
His job is to provide the controversy du jour for Fox News. Fox then relies upon and points to him as a legitimate source of the “fair and balanced news” they report (i.e., propaganda, fraudulent claims, lies, and ginned up controversies). That is, they use Breitbart’s work product to amplify and spread a message of hate and division, allowing millions of Americans, who already are inclined to believe the “stories” (and by stories I mean fictions) he concocts to generate outrage and satisfy their own worldview, one in which anyone who is to the left of Sarah Palin is a leftist, socialist destroyer of our way of life, as well as a possible criminal, racist or whatever other label comes in handy to attack their designated enemies.
In short Breitbart is a parasite and symbiont, the remora which rides on the back of sharks like Drudge and FOX NEWS and Rush Limbaugh. It’s a nasty way to make a living but one he seems to relish:
For someone who claims to hate the “Democrat-media complex,” Breitbart sure knows how to work it. Few people are better at packaging information for maximum distribution and impact. He is, depending on whom you ask, either the “leading figure in this right-wing creation of a parallel universe of lies and idiotic conspiracy theories” (that was liberal critic Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America) or “the most dangerous man on the right today” (from Michael Goldfarb, Republican consultant and former campaign aide to John McCain). Breitbart is, in short, expert in making the journalism industry his bitch. “The market has forced me to come up with techniques to be noticed,” Breitbart says. “And now that I have them, I’m like, wow, this is actually great. This is fun.”
As Ms. Maddow said last night this isn’t really news. We’ve known since at least the phony ACORN tapes he doctored and released that this is Breitbart and Fox News’ modus operandi: He selectively edits a tape of his designated “villain” then publishes it (which in the case of the ACORN affair may end up causing him a host of legal woes) and Fox News and right wing blogs run with the “controversy” before anyone can verify his claims. Later we discover that almost everything he published is a lie, or made to appear something that it is not.
No the real news is that Democrats are still falling for his little gambits, so afraid of being called racist or socialist or criminal or whatever that they immediately disavow the person or organization Breitbart and his fellow travelers on the right have defamed.
Via George Stephanopoulos Ms. Sherrod has been told Agricukture Secretary Vilsack is reconsidering her dismissal after he (and unknown Obama officals?) acted “hastily” in response to the deceitful and manipulative hack job by Andrew Breitbart and Fox News which selectively edited comments from a speech she gave to the NAACP this March to make her appear a racist:
Sherrod has not heard from Vilsack or President Obama since the tape was released on the conservative website Biggovernment.com. She said she found out that Vilsack was reevaluating her dismissal at 5:30am when someone read his statement to her.
“I’m a bit disappointed that things happened in the way they happened. It doesn’t take away my support for the administration,” she said. “When I accepted the position at rural development, always in the back of my mind was doing the very best that I could to have that be a good reflection on [Obama] and what he was trying to do.”
If she could do it again Sherrod told me she might not tell her story about the white farmer the same way but her message would be the same.
“The message I was getting out there to them is the same message I want everyone to know, anyone I would speak to…I use my life, I grew up in a segregated society, to show how I could move beyond that,” she said.
So, to repeat myself: Rep. Grayson, do us a favor and speak up today about this injustice that was done to Ms. Sherrod, a good person who has devoted her life to helping others, black and white in her native state, especially if President Obama or Secretary Vilsack or anyone else in the Democratic Party leadership will not do so. At least you have the guts to speak out against these sorts of smears. Too many Democratic officials still will not oppose these evil men and women (and yes, what they are doing is evil). They still cower in fear of the power of the smear merchants on the right.
I am pretty sure that they will ultimately do justice in this case. They wouldn’t have announced a willingness to take a second look at it if they weren’t going to reverse it. But, you’re right that they deserve criticism for cowardice and naivete in this case and that they must learn from it for the future.
It’s presents an opportunity to discredit both Breitbart (and biggovernment.com) and Fox News, and that opportunity should not be squandered.
Hi. Revised the article a tad.
It’s presents an opportunity to discredit both Breitbart (and biggovernment.com) and Fox News, and that opportunity should not be squandered.
I’d add that this presents an opportunity to address the DISEASE–Breitbart and Faux–and not get stuck on the symptom.
I refuse–REFUSE–to brow beat the NAACP for not being hypocrites. They took that video on face value. Should they have done so? HELL NO! But that’s also beside the point. If it wasn’t Ms. Sherrod it ABSOLUTELY WOULD HAVE BEEN SOMEONE ELSE.
Breitbart is a LIAR. That is the point. And he’s traded in these lies for a reason: they are effective. The wingnut teabaggers, aided by Faux, have been trying to bring down President Obama (and by extension, any sort of centrist governance–never mind liberal); the best way for them to do so is to gin up some bogus “kill whitey” race war and use every means available to keep it going. Anyone remember FLOTUS’ alleged “whitey” comments during the campaign? Far cry from how the campaign handled those lies and how the administration handled this lie, isn’t it?
My guess: there are more people involved in an Administration than a campaign, and we (general “we”) have been conditioned to REACT to wingnuts instead of putting these assholes into place.
I reject the whole notion of firing Vilsack or firing Jealous–that comes from folks who didn’t like them in the first place. (There are those who criticize the NAACP for any and everything just as there are people who criticize the Admin for any and everything.) And even IF it was somehow warranted, it’s still treating the symptoms.
The point isn’t how to better handle wingnuts. The point is rooting out the disease: Wingnuttia’s trade in lies and this society’s refusal to stand up and say, “No.” The media play a big part of this because they are routinely cajoled and punked into covering bullshit stories that take months to get refuted–if ever.
This is an opportunity for our President to address the disease. Lead by example. That’s what I want to see.
The remora’s union objects to being associated rhetorically with Andrew Breitbart.
In a time where the rascist pot is boiling this may just be the beginning of Breitbart’s baiting. Since he won’t be called into account, he’ll do it again.
But in the NAACP’s rush to follow it’s own directive to the Tbaggers and call out racism Breitbart nastily calculated that they would do just that, rush rather than take an indepth look.
Even with the original video, the fact that it was brought to the Fox screen by Breitbart via Hannity screamed foul. They’re not even bothering to bring in new characters to play the roles, yet they’re still able to get the mileage.
Why do Democrats let the right-wing media make their personnel decisions for them? This is hardly the first time. I’m getting tired of saying this, but when Democrats react to every little cable cycle item with panic, it simply proves there is something to panic about and validates the right wing’s claims. Spitzer is a “disgraced former governor,” but Vitter is a US Senator with a big lead in a Bible-thumping state. Roughly the same offenses; two very different outcomes.
Grow a pair for crying out loud. To repeat what James Carville says, “If the Democrats won’t even defend themselves, why would voters think Democrats will defend them?” This was a great item to make a stand on, but instead Democrats just panicked and jumped to the right-wing tune. Why would people give time and money or even votes to such hapless chumps?
If the USDA had proceeded with caution and done due diligence, the headlines would be about Breitbart, doctored tapes and a vicious smear attempt, not the ineptitude, cowardice and lack of principle of Vilsack and the Obama administration.
What makes you think that? The headlines would have read, “Obama Administration Still Harboring Racist–Why Won’t Other News Outlets Report This Fact.”
It’s no excuse for them not to take the opportunity to root out the disease (see upthread). But let’s be clear about what they’d face before the truth came to light.
I say this as someone who has given Democrats a decade of my time, a fair amount of money, and most of my votes for many years. So, I guess that makes me a chump too.
Yes, the Obama Administration and the NAACP were played by Briebert, Fox, and the unhinged racist right, but look behind you, progressives, Briebert et al are about to check mate you too! You’re allowing them AND the mainstream media and cable news to avoid the blame they too deserve. They were complicit in this. Fox may be the architects of the Willie Hortoning of Barack Obama, but the mainstream media have been complicit by-standers. There was no journalistic due diligence done by any of the cable networks before running that doctored video non-stop. They thought they had evidence of reverse discrimination by an angry Black woman in the Obama Administration. And they ran with it, CNN included until Tony Harris, who until yesterday I thought was at the top of Spike Lee’s Drop Squad list, became the standard bearer of responsible journalism. Ain’t that some shit!
Yes, the Obama Administration over-reacted, but it’s understandable given that every word he or his wife utter gets taken out of context and posted on Drudge then picked up by Fox and the crazy right as evidence of their conspiracy to enslave the white race.
Last week when the NAACP dared challenge the Tea Party’s racism, most of the mainstream media was critical saying it was wrong to attempt to paint an entire “movement” with the behavior of a few. A few?! Some of the same folks criticizing the NAACP today said their resolution was a fail and misguided. Check out Andrew Sullivan’s take from last week as an example. Check out tapes of Morning Joe last week when the entire damn panel patronized Black folks saying the NAACP should focus on more pressing problems facing the African American Community than the Tea Party “perceived” racism. Instead, they started hyping that bull shit Black Panther Party voter intimidation lie. The overwhelming reaction from the white mainstream media was “leave the Tea Party alone, Negroes!” But oh how a week changes things.
This hypocrisy is unbelievable! And progressives are more than willing to enable it. Well played, Briebert!
This. A million times, this.
I agree, let’s get Grayson to champion her cause. And, I did not know this about Huffington and Breitbart. Maybe that explains how her site operates now.