Shirley Sherrod Racist!

Some fun clips about the most recent conservative media's epic failure:






Mmmm... Fact checking...

Meanwhile
GOP invites blogger Breitbart to fundraiser

Quote :

(AP) – 23 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The Republican National Committee has invited conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart to participate in a private GOP fundraiser next month with party chairman Michael Steele.

Breitbart was behind an edited video clip of a former Department of Agriculture official that suggested Shirley Sherrod, who is black, denied a white farmer aid. The speech, when viewed in full, shows the opposite.

Tickets to the donor retreat in Beverly Hills, Calif., start at $1,000 and go up to $60,800 for a couple. Steele and Breitbart are listed as confirmed guests to the Aug. 12 event to update donors on the RNC's plans for the midterm elections.

Talking Points Memo first reported the invitation on Monday and it was later confirmed by Republicans.

The RNC declined to discuss the event.

What's the old saying?....You can't fix stupid!

Heretic wrote:

Mmmm... Fact checking...

Yeah. Well it's baffling to me why the Obama Administration keeps letting Fox and the right wing off the hook when they pull these bullshit stunts. Obviously, if the Administration had gotten all the facts before acting, then they could have really gone after the people that created this non-story. I really hope that the Obama Administration has learned a lesson from all of this.

Fox News and their ilk are pathological liars and it should be crystal clear to anyone at this point that they are nothing more than a transparent extension of the Republican Party.

In the midst of all of this, I was personally surprised to find out that Van Jones never actually signed any document giving credence to the "911 Truthers." That was news to me. It turns out that whole story was also manufactured. Unfrickin' believable!

Scorpion wrote:

Yeah. Well it's baffling to me why the Obama Administration keeps letting Fox and the right wing off the hook when they pull these bullshit stunts. Obviously, if the Administration had gotten all the facts before acting, then they could have really gone after the people that created this non-story. I really hope that the Obama Administration has learned a lesson from all of this.

My thoughts exactly. This should have been a slam dunk for them; yet another blatantly manufactured controversy. But instead they fumbled, and now the conservative media can cast the White House as the villains.

Scorpion wrote:

In the midst of all of this, I was personally surprised to find out that Van Jones never actually signed any document giving credence to the "911 Truthers." That was news to me. It turns out that whole story was also manufactured. Unfrickin' believable!

Quite a juxtaposition from the previous administration, isn't it? This one sacks people for nothing more than internet rumors; the last gave them medals for actually failing.

Here's an interesting article:

Quote :

as disappointing as Tom Vilsack's first crack at this was, the idea that he or Obama is the bad guy in this story is not only preposterous but verging on obscene. It's like the NYPD as the bad guy in the Son of Sam saga because they didn't catch David Berkowitz fast enough. Or perhaps that the real moral of the story is that the woman with the stalker should have been more focused on personal data security. Not for some time has something so captured the essential corruption of a big chunk of what passes as 'right wing media' (not all, by any means, but a sizable chunk along the Breitbart/Fox/Hannity continuum) and the corruption of the mainstream media itself as this episode.

Let's review what happened here. And for the sake of conversation, let's assume that Breitbart and his crew didn't edit this thing and hadn't seen any of the rest of the highly exculpatory video. (I'm willing to assume that for the sake of the conversation. And I think it may even be true as a matter of fact.) That's by far the most innocent explanation. And that means that Breitbart got a piece of video he knew nothing about and published it with a central claim (that it was about Sherrod's tenure at the USDA) that he either made up or made no attempt to verify. No vetting, no calls, no due diligence, not the slightest concern to confirm anything or find out what was true. Even setting aside the fact that, as Josh Green ably notes, most of Breitbart's scoops center on race and/or race-baiting, for anyone else practicing anything even vaguely resembling journalism, demonstrated recklessness and/or dishonesty on that scale would be a shattering if not necessarily fatal blow to reputation and credibility.

The administration gets some of the blame, though, right? They seemed to uncritically swallow this as easily as the waterheads on TV.

Yet they're still inviting Breitbart himself to their fundraiser. Yup. The same people who condemned Sherrod for the mere appearance of immoral behavior still welcome this dishonest hack with arms wide open. Meaty...

Shepard Smith still seems to one of the few journalists on Fox News left with any integrity. I've posted clips of him before; I definitely need to watch him more often:



What the hell was his guest talking about, calling the internet "an open sewer"? Was that really some lame argument for regulating the internet?

Wow. This former Reagan White House political director suggests, as Phillip Klein puts it, "that [Sherrod] is a liar for saying that [her father] was lynched, when he was merely beaten to death by a white sheriff who evidence suggests had previously threatened to 'get him.'" Seriously. It's a mind numbing read.

Some conservatives in the media really, really don't care if their arguments make any sense anymore, do they? Or maybe they don't care because their audience doesn't...

I hope it's the former.

Heretic wrote:

Wow. This former Reagan White House political director suggests, as Phillip Klein puts it, "that [Sherrod] is a liar for saying that [her father] was lynched, when he was merely beaten to death by a white sheriff who evidence suggests had previously threatened to 'get him.'" Seriously. It's a mind numbing read.

That's putting it mildly. I've read very few pieces as intellectually bankrupt as this one. It's certainly a great example of a classic "straw man" argument.

I think that Radley Balko's critique was right on the money...

Quote :

If you're ever giving a speech in which you recount a racially-motivated injustice, be sure you're thoroughly familiar with and relay to your audience not only any subsequent legal action related to the case, but also the political affiliations of any and all judges who presided over those legal proceedings, both at trial and on appeal, and whether or not they or any of their business partners (and presumably family members, friends, or golfing buddies) were racist. Also, and most importantly, never, ever, ever talk about any historical racial injustice without also mentioning that the late Sen. Robert Byrd, a Democrat (be sure to mention this part, it's important!), was once an Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan.

Heretic wrote:

Some conservatives in the media really, really don't care if their arguments make any sense anymore, do they? Or maybe they don't care because their audience doesn't...

I hope it's the former.

It's both, I suspect.

Thanks for the link to a truly disturbing piece.

I believed her after this was all exposed. She was making a point, (her father was lynched) and her message was it wasn't about race, it was about haves and have nots''

I can usually look at someone and figure out for myself if they are true or not. She was a true person. The administration jumped the gun. I admire her for saying she "had to think about it".

What I didn't like was the Obama administration offered her a job - that apparently was not needed until they found out they jumped the gun.

I admire her, I understand what she as saying...and I don't care what color she is...she is to be strictly admired for being attacked from a distorted video and handling better than the gun-humpers in Washington. Telling Obama she would have to "think about it" when he apologized and suddenly a new position was available. Why was the position not posted for others to apply for, and why buy her out. She smelled a skunk...and I totally am in sinc with her. I'm white, she's black, right is right, wrong is wrong. I admire her for what she did after that attack.

Seeing the white farmer and his wife hug and kiss her, declaring they kept in touch with her all these years and she indeed saved the farm....was enough for me to conclude how stupid media outlets are - desperate for dividing our nation.

I stick to my opinion. All you have to do is look at her and know she is a sincere person. Screw the media.

They tried to destroy her credibility, but what they have done to the common folks in America is teach us not to listen to any of those MNBC, FOX, or any misleading media hungry to survive. Eager to divide.

I would love to meet her and thank her. She's not a brown-nose.

UrRight wrote:

They tried to destroy her credibility, but what they have done to the common folks in America is teach us not to listen to any of those MNBC, FOX, or any misleading media hungry to survive. Eager to divide.

It's Fox News that helped manufacture this,not any other network.

Yeah, well for the record, her father was murdered.

Quote :

It was 45 years ago today that my father's funeral was held. I was a young girl at the age of 17 when my father was murdered by a white man in Baker County. In Baker County, the murder of black people occurred periodically, and in every case the white men who murdered them were never punished. It was no different in my father's case. There were three witnesses to his murder, but the grand jury refused to indict the white man who murdered him.

The person who was "lynched" (actually beaten to death) was another relative who was killed in the 40's.

Quote :

...there were two sheriffs from Baker County that -- whose names you probably never heard but I know in the case of one, the thing he did many, many years ago still affect us today. And that sheriff was Claude Screws. Claude Screws lynched a black man. And this was at the beginning of the 40s. And the strange thing back then was an all-white federal jury convicted him not of murder but of depriving Bobby Hall -- and I should say that Bobby Hall was a relative -- depriving him of his civil rights.

Artie60438 wrote:

It's Fox News that helped manufacture this,not any other network.

I don't think Fox was the only one... I thought there were a few others that followed the story, but it certainly wasn't given the ridiculous coverage that Fox gave it.