DISGRASIAN OF THE WEAK! The Sherrod Charade
Shirley Sherrod
Back in March, Andrew Breitbart wrote a post called “2010: A Race Odyssey — Disproving a Negative for Cash Prizes or, How the Civil Rights Movement Jumped the Shark” for Big Journalism, one of his five websites, in which he claimed that accusations of racism are merely a “trick” of the Left:
As I have said over and over and over, the left has one trick that it will use again and again when its back is in the corner: shout ‘racist’ in a crowded country.
Which is funny, given how Breitbart was the first to post that heavily-edited and manipulated video of USDA employee Shirley Sherrod giving a speech at an NAACP event, and the first to call Sherrod’s speech racist:
“In this piece you will see 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.”
That video, which appeared on July 19, touched off a two day-orgy on the part of the right wing-media, in which not only Sherrod, but the NAACP, civil rights activists, the so-called mainstream media, the Obama administration, and pretty much anyone who’s ever been engaged or concerned with race issues was labeled racist. Media Matters For America has a full timeline, but here are a few highlights:
“The—this woman on tape saying these racially charged things that she didn’t want to help farmers, in particular white farmer. That she said she wanted him to go out and deal with one of his own and she put him in touch with a white lawyer. Just the latest in a series of racial incidents.”–Sean Hannity, Hannity, July 19
“The former civil rights group known as the NAACP does not just invite anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and radical America-hating Marxist Jeremiah Wright to speak at their events…They also invite government officials who hate whitey, too. Georgia Director of Rural Development Shirley Sherrod, who was appointed last year by Obama’s Agriculture Secretary, admits in a speech at the NAACP that she discriminated against farmers because they were white. Of course, the audience did not even bat an eye.”–Gateway Pundit, “More Racism at NAACP: Radical Obama Official Admits That She Openly Discriminates Against Whites (Video)”
“Despite all the attention given to last week’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s resolution against the Tea Party, all three broadcast evening news programs completely ignored Monday’s revelations of racist comments made at one of the civil rights organization’s meetings in March.”–NewsBusters, “Broadcast Networks Ignore Racist Comments At NAACP Meeting”
“The NAACP is as racist an organization as there has been and is in this country.”–Rush Limbaugh, The Rush Limbaugh Show
Then, as we all know, video of Sherrod’s full speech finally emerged, which, as it turns out, was not actually a speech about embracing and spreading racism but about overcoming it, despite the fact that horrible things have happened to you as a victim of racism, things that would probably make the average person racist, horrible things like the murder of your black father by a white racist, for example.
Watch the speech in its entirety below:
Of course, by then, the damage had been done. Sherrod had already been fired from her USDA post, her speech had been condemned by the NAACP, this ludicrous meme that our country is in a state of reverse racism and that blacks are out to take what rightfully belongs to whites had been floated and was left hanging over the truth like a stink, where it will likely linger until it finally settles comfortably into the canon of Lies That Stupid People Continue to Believe, where falsehoods like “Obama is a Muslim” and “Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.” still live on.
Who could have predicted that such an easily debunked lie could have such legs, that it could run all the way up to the White House?
Why, Andrew Breitbart, of course!
Because in that same post from March in which he called accusations of racism a “trick” of the Left, Breitbart wrote:
“…Democrats need a racist Tea Party moment. To stop it in its tracks. That’s why on Saturday they used the Congressional Black Caucus to try to manufacture the false appearance of one. And when they didn’t get it, they did what they always do: they lied.
“And that’s how the Democrats play. They love using black people as symbols of oppression. They love to use them for staged rallies, staged walks and staged protests. It’s why they fought so hard to keep the heavily minority ACORN alive. They were the portable army that would cry racism in front of your place of business until the company paid them off to go away.”
And so, it seems, that’s how the right wingnuts play, too.
In the case of bringing down Shirley Sherrod, did the wingnuts need the opposing party to appear racist? Check. Was there a manufacturing of racism when there wasn’t any? Check. Was there lying? Check. Using black people as symbols of oppression (and, in this case, as symbols of The Oppressor)? Check. Using black people for protest and political theater? Check.
Yeah, no shit.
The only thing missing from this trick?
Someone to pay Breitbart to go away.
[MMFA: Timeline of Breitbart's Sherrod smear]
[Big Journalism: 2010: A Race Odyssey — Disproving a Negative for Cash Prizes or, How the Civil Rights Movement Jumped the Shark]
Filed under: Andrew Breitbart, Barack Obama, Civil Rights, FOX News is a Joke, Liars, Lies, MSM, NAACP, Obama, President Barack Obama, Racism, Racists, Right Wing Nutjobs, Right Wingnuts, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Shirley Sherrod, Shirley Sherrod Smear Campaign, Shirley Sherrod Speech, Tea Party Movement, Tea Party Racist, Teabaggers, USDA
Ugh! What a thing to wake up to and read on my birthday. Disgusting.
My dad follows conservative crazies like Breitbart. (Not saying all conservatives are crazy. But the ones discussed here certainly are!) It’s sad how many people take what these folks say as truth.
I’ve always hated the term “reverse racism”. It implies that whites are the racist race, and racism against them is racism against the racists. And as a white woman who tries to keep an open mind and a loving attitude, it hurts me. Racism is racism. And it is an ugly, terrible thing.
I actually wrote an article about this that I was quite proud of. Here is the link, if you are interested.
http://2r2bm.blogspot.com/2010/01/whites-are-not-all-racist-by-default.html
I hope Sherrod files a nice huge civil lawsuit against Breitbart for slander/libel/defamation and wins a huge judgement against him.
She’s definitely got a case here for that, right?