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Shirley Sherrod came close to getting her very own beer summit. Even though she never got to sit down with the President over a cold one, she did get a phone call from the President himself, apologizing for firing her from her job at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Odds are, you’ve heard a little about this story, and odds are it went something like this: a videotape surfaced on the internet of a speech Sherrod gave earlier this year at an NAACP event.
The recording showed her tell how she mistreated a white farmer two decades ago.
Sherrod was promptly forced to resign from the USDA. The NAACP condemned her racist comments.
The USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack released a statement that there was zero tolerance for racism in his department.
Then Sherrod hit the broadcast and cable talk shows, all of them except Fox News, to tell her side of the story.
On CNN she blamed Fox News and the Tea Party for scaring the White House into pushing her out.
Sherrod claims that Andrew Breitbart (whose collection of Web sites includes breitbart.com, breitbart.tv and biggovernment.com) who posted the video online, took her statement out of context, posting only a heavily edited version of the speech.
Breitbart cut out, she says, the parts of the tape where Sherrod later explained how she came to realize it isn’t about race but rather about those who have versus those who don’t have.
It wasn’t long before the White House was backtracking. President Obama has said that Secretary Vilsack “jumped the gun” on firing Sherrod. She was also offered a new job in the government.
NAACP President Ben Jealous retracted his organization’s condemnation of Sherrod, claiming it had been “snookered” by Fox News and the Tea Party.
After reviewing the full tape and interviewing the white farmer involved, Jealous stated, “we now believe the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans.”
However, as of the time of this writing, the NAACP has refused to release the full version of this tape – which it possesses. If it actually exculpates Sherrod, one wonders why not make it public to set the record straight?
Now Sherrod says she wants to “get back” at Andrew Breitbart. She wants his Web site shut down because “she doesn’t see how” it “advances us in this country.” She says she doesn’t know the law, but she’s considering suing Andrew Breitbart for defamation.
While I eagerly await my own phone call apology from the President (and hopefully my own beer summit at the White House, too), I might as well dig into this story and see if I can find some of the truth hiding in the shadows.
First, Fox News never ran a single story about Sherrod until after she had already been fired, so any accusation against Fox for pressuring the White House to fire her is patently false.
Second, Breitbart, who posted the clip of Sherrod’s speech that got her fired, never edited out the so-called “redeeming” parts where Sherrod explains her road-to-Damascus moment where she says the incident “opened my eyes” and she realized it wasn’t about race but “that’s when it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those who have.”
Third, Breitbart’s stated intention in posting the video was not to show Sherrod was racist, but rather to call attention to the laughter and agreement from members of the audience as Sherrod explained how she mistreated the white farmer.
When those audience members were laughing at the maltreatment of the white farmer, they had no way of knowing there were any “redeeming” words yet to come from Sherrod.
This whole saga started when the NAACP’s annual conference debated in closed session, and passed a resolution condemning the Tea Party for its alleged racism.
The resolution “calls on the tea party and all people of good will to repudiate the racist element and activities within the tea party.”
Andrew Breitbart evidently got his feathers in a ruffle about this unfounded accusation of racism within the Tea Party. This isn’t the first time he’s come to the defense of the Tea Party.
You may recall that many Congressional Democrats accused Tea Party protestors of spitting on them and yelling racial slurs at them as they marched on the street to the Capitol for the final vote on Obamacare this spring. There were literally dozens of handheld video cameras recording this procession, including many held and operated by the Congressmen themselves.
Breitbart publicly challenged anyone to produce video evidence to back up their claims of racist comments from the protestors. He pledged $100,000 out of his own pocket if anyone could find such evidence. None has been produced.
Nathanial Stuart, an aspiring video blogger, has also set out to find the racists in the Tea Party. He’s documented several interviews with black Tea Party activists who vehemently object to any accusation that the organization is racist.
The Tea Party has nothing to do with race, and frankly only cares about a person’s beliefs, not their skin color.
As the left loses touch and continues to lose the hearts and minds of the public on issues such as the proper role of government, spending, taxation, the national debt, national security, and immigration, the only card they have left to play is the race card. Such unfounded, ad hominem attacks are definite signs of desperation.
As the President and his party’s poll numbers continue to slide, you’re likely to see even more charges of racism against their opponents. So, get ready for the next beer summit.
Tar Heel Dispatch is written by Tyler Younts, a third-year law student at Campbell University. Younts, who grew up in Farmer, has a passion for writing and for politics and for writing about politics. E-mail comments to news@randolphguide.com or directly to Younts at tlyounts0209@email.campbell.edu
