Mary Frances Berry, the former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,  writing in Politico:

Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

Prominent black conservatives have denounced the remarks, and yet the MSM meme remains — based on no evidence — that the Tea Party is a racist organization.That’s because it fits the narrative. (more…)

James Taranto in his “Best of the Web Today” column in The Wall Street Journal:

Shirley Sherrod says she plans to sue conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, the Associated Press reports from San Diego: “Speaking Thursday at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, Sherrod said she would definitely sue over the video that took her remarks out of context”:

Sherrod said she had not received an apology from Breitbart and no longer wanted one. “He had to know that he was targeting me,” she said.

Does she have a winning case? Probably not.

For one thing, the alleged defamation (or, to be precise, the defamation that she would allege if she filed suit) took place while she was a public official and involved claims about the performance of her public duties. Thus she would have to meet the rigorous standard, set forth by the Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), of proving not only that Breitbart published a damaging falsehood about her but that he did so “with ‘actual malice’–that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Even if she proves that Breitbart published false and defamatory statements about her, he wins the case if he did so only negligently. (more…)

Big Sites publisher Andrew Breitbart to Newsweek’s Daniel Stone today:

In the aftermath of the saga that thrust Shirley Sherrod into the news cycle and spurred a national discussion about race, the former USDA employee has said she’ll “definitely will sue” Andrew Breitbart, the conservative blogger at BigGovernment.com who posted the original edited video taken widely out of context. Breitbart talked with Newsweek’s Daniel Stone about the whole episode, a potential lawsuit and whether he has any regrets.

Shirley Sherrod has said she will sue you. What’s your response?
I’m not going to respond to the lawsuit. She mentioned it last week, when it fueled 36 hours of coverage, and then again this week, when it fueled another round of coverage. Until there’s a lawsuit, unless there’s something to answer to, there’s nothing I can comment on.

If it came to pass, would you settle or fight it?
If there’s a lawsuit, there will be a legal team.

She said she simply wanted an apology? Why not just do it?
All I can say is that this is a person on national television who said I wanted to put blacks back into slavery. This thing has gotten to a place that’s far beyond where it should be. I’d be more than happy to meet with her in private and have a discussion with her.

Is that an invitation?
Sure, I’ll go whoever she wants. I’ll go to Albany, Georgia. I’ll go anywhere to have a private discussion with her. (more…)

***UPDATE:  “Hardball” Defense of Breitbart Memory-Holed

***

Today, on MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews acknowledged (and appears to be the first member of the mainstream media to acknowledge) that the video Andrew Breitbart posted in his July 19th Big Government article about an NAACP audience’s reaction to a particular moment in Shirley Sherrod’s speech, does in fact include Ms. Sherrod discussing her redemptive revelation (transcript from Newsbusters):

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, there you go. [Quoting Ms. Sherrod] “I opened my eyes. I realized it wasn’t about black and white. It was, but it was about other things, about poverty.” So … that part, that part in there about redemptive revelation was actually in the initial tape.

This then prompts Mr. Matthews to ask his guests, Governor Howard Dean and Joan Walsh, a question that answers itself:

Yeah, but why do you think if this was a complete slime job, why do you think Breitbart kept that in there, Governor? Why did he keep in that part – let me let the Governor in here. Why did he put the redemptive part in here at all?

Dean admits he has never even viewed that 2:36 video in its entirety! Nor has he even read Andrew Breitbart’s original article, which states:

Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

Of course that has not stopped Dean from appearing on multiple networks and ripping Fox News as being racist for having played the video of Shirley Sherrod released on BigGovernment.com (yes, the same 2:36 video he has not watched all — any? — of). (more…)

Explosive if true:

This time, the stupids are on the other side:

Howard Dean, the Democrat-Media gift that keeps on giving.

Remember — (more…)

It would be funny if it weren’t so funny:

Satire: the enemy of pomposity. Somewhere, the ghost of Thomas Nast is smiling:

Isn’t that right, Mr. Nast? (more…)

How dumb is Keith Olbermann?  This dumb:

Isn’t that right, Bessie? (more…)

Modern American leftism is, at heart, a culture of thugs and bullies who simply assert what they wish to be true and never let facts get in the way whatever ridiculous argument they are trying to make. Which is why it’s such a pleasure to see an honest newsman like Chris Wallace stand up to them:

More please.

For those scoring at home, we’re using the ten-point-must system. Enjoy:

First, it was Keith Olbermann, struggling unsuccessfully to pronounce Capt. Alfred Dreyfus’s last name properly in the course of a ten-minute nervous breakdown the other night. And now it’s Mr. Ed!

That would be Ed Schultz, host of “The Ed Show,” whose proprietary interest in the Obama Administration has to be seen to be believed:

(more…)

Rush Limbaugh this week on the JournoList:

All right, there is a huge story out there today, but it could be even bigger, and it should be even bigger. It is from Chatsworth Osborne Jr.’s website, The Daily Caller, and it is about this Journolist, and what it shows is something that we have known all along, and that is that there’s not just media coordination in order to advance the Democrat Party agenda and to rip and ridicule, criticize Republicans and conservatives. It’s not just coordination. It is an outright propaganda campaign.

Jonathan Strong has the story: “Documents Show Media Plotting to Kill Stories About Rev. Jeremiah Wright.” But it’s far more than that. Here’s one of the great pull quotes from this story: “In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, ‘Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.’”So liberals don’t just lie, they lie to destroy people. No smear is too low or outrageous when it comes to conservatives. But what this story misses is it portrays the people involved in this Journolist as basically a bunch of obscure left-wing bloggers working for small-time websites and magazines like The Nation and the Washington Independent and so forth, when in fact this is pervasive throughout what is called the mainstream media.

(more…)

One of the nastiest episodes in American journalism occurred in the immediate aftermath of John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate during the 2008 election. It was a potential game-changer and, for a moment, it rocked the leftist media back on its heels. Who can ever forget Andrea Mitchell’s gaping-fish-out-of-water reaction to Palin’s electrifying acceptance speech? For one brief, horrible moment, the Marxist Media saw its dream of a People’s Republic dying, shot through the heart by the moose-hunting mom from Nowhere, Alaska.

Soon enough, though, the counter-attack began… almost as if it was co-ordinated.  And you know what? It was! From the Daily Caller:

In the hours after Sen. John McCain announced his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the last presidential race, members of an online forum called Journolist struggled to make sense of the pick. Many of them were liberal reporters, and in some cases their comments reflected a journalist’s instinct to figure out the meaning of a story.

Joe Conason, JournoList member

(more…)

NEW YORK (AP) – A conservative blog posts 2 minutes, 38 seconds of video clips of a black federal agriculture official saying she didn’t do everything she could to help a white farmer. The blogger labels it racism. Calls grow for the Obama administration to remove her. No one at the Agriculture Department or the White House checks further. The official is forced to resign.

Monday ends, but not the story.

A complete, 43-minute version of the video surfaces the next day, Tuesday, and casts a much different light on Shirley Sherrod’s comments: They were part of an NAACP speech about how she overcame her racial prejudice to help the farmer, not about prejudice that stopped her from helping him.

Now, the administration is criticized for wronging her by rushing to judgment.

By Wednesday afternoon, Sherrod is sitting at a studio in CNN’s Atlanta headquarters, watching on live television as White House press secretary Robert Gibbs apologizes to her.

She accepts and says: “Being afraid of the machine that the right has put out there—that’s what’s driving this.” (more…)

Here’’s the most famous graduate of Cornell Cow College, proving once again that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing — in Keith’s hands, very dangerous. Watch if you can this amazing portrait of a former sportscaster in the throes of a nervous breakdown, lashing out at both the right and the left in his historical ignorance and unearned dudgeon:

Yes, you heard that right: the Dreyfus Affair. (more…)

Yesterday Andrew Breitbart appeared on Hannity and CNN’s John King USA to discuss NAACP racism and the firing of Shirley Sherrod:

***

Breitbart’s argument is simple and straightforward: Regardless of what else is in Sherrod’s speech, the first video released on BigGovernment.com features Sherrod telling a tale of racism that is received by the NAACP audience with laughter and cheers. They weren’t cheering redemption; they were cheering discrimination. Upon hearing the cheers, Sherrod fails to offer any immediate clarification and even smiles right along with them.

Breitbart’s main objective by releasing the video was to call out the NAACP, an organization who has recently gone to great lengths to condemn the Tea Party’s alleged racism, for sanctioning racism in it’s own organization. Sherrod immediately became the scapegoat for the embarrassed NAACP and USDA, but she was never the target, the NAACP itself was, and the delight the audience took in the racist part of Sherrod’s speech leaves them exposed. (more…)