Breitbart Lies About Shirley Sherrod: do facts actually matter anymore?

By John

[This post has been edited to correct the spelling of Breitbart and Sherrod]

Update: here’s the full original video from the NAACP site, also via TPM:

Update II: go here to sign a petition to support Sherrod being reinstated.

While the NAACP is receiving death threats over their call for the ‘tea parties’ to repudiate racists elements in their midst, the rightwing republican blogs are getting the vapors over a very deceptively edited tape of an Ag Department official who is made to appear to admit to blatant racism against a white farmer. The conveniently redacted video is of a black woman, Shirley Sherrod, explaining how she encountered racial tension and her own mixed feelings, 24 years ago, before working through the difficulties, helping the white family keep their farm and becoming friends with them.

I first saw the video at redstate, although it was first put out by Brietbart’s Big Government site, the same site that put out the very deceptively edited ACORN videos, which created an equally untrue perception. It was clear that it was strategically cut, literally it stopped Sharrod in mid sentence when it appeared she was going to explain how her first reactions were mistaken.

TPM is working on getting the whole, unedited, tape, which a local production company is holding until it gets permission from the local NAACP chapter to release it.

Sharrod has spoken to the Atlanta Journal Constitution and CNN — Media Matters has the video, which I can’t embed. I’ll put it up here as soon as it’s available in a format wordpress supports.

So, do the actual facts matter here? Or are we just going to accept the false rightwing republican narrative that has counter factually smeared Shirley Sharrod, just as they did to ACORN, Van Jones, Dawn Johnson and countless others?

[From the AJC article] The wife of the white farmer allegedly discriminated against by the USDA’s rural development director for Georgia said Shirley Sherrod “kept us out of bankruptcy.”

Eloise Spooner, 82, awoke Tuesday to discover that Sherrod had lost her job after videotaped comments she made in March at a local NAACP banquet surfaced on the web.

…

But Spooner, who considers Sherrod a “friend for life,” said the federal official worked tirelessly to help the Iron City couple hold onto their land as they faced bankruptcy back in 1986.

…

“But Tuesday morning, Sherrod said 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.

“And I went on to work with many more white farmers,” she said. “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.”

Sessions refudiates Kagan

By Jeff

No, this post is not going to be about the high intelligence of one former Alaskan Governor, but instead about the few minutes I heard of the Elena Kagan vote this morning. SPOILER ALERT, she was given the nod and will soon join the Supreme Court. However, the approval was not before Senator Sessions (R-Alabama) put in his two cents as to why he could not possibly vote for her.

Since I don’t have his exact quote I’ll have to paraphrase. Basically he used the same old concern that the integrity of the Supreme Court is the most important thing in the Universe, and that the possibility of a judge having some sort of emotions or “political agenda” is ALMOST as evil as two women marrying each other. He believes that Kagan will be an “activist judge” and shove her liberal, socialist, political agenda down the throats of the American people and will completely disregard the laws of the United States.

His nay vote (and he wasn’t the only one on the committee to vote no) is what angers me about politics in general. Justice Roberts has never once decided in favor of the individual against a corporation, you don’t call THAT political activism from the bench? Please! Stop being such hippocrates. And this goes for both the Dems and the GOP, they’re all guilty of it. One party is so concerned and upset about something the other party is doing…but it’s something they themselves did previously! Why can’t they just be REAL and say “Yeah we know she’s more liberal leaning, I don’t like that so I’m going to say no. I’d rather have a conservative judge in there” boom end of story and everyone knows your honest.

Never. Gonna. Happen.