Shirley Sherrod Case Against Andrew Breitbart Begins - HuffPo
A year to the day after Shirley Sherrod was ousted from the Agriculture Department, the former government employee is still seeking vindication.
On July 19, 2010, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack ordered Sherrod’s resignation from her job as a Georgia rural development official after learning about a video of Sherrod making supposedly racist remarks.
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The video on Andrew Breitbart’s website turned out to be edited, and when Sherrod’s full speech to an NAACP group earlier that year came to light, it became clear that her remarks about an initial reluctance to help a white farmer were not racist but an attempt at telling a story of racial reconciliation. Once that was obvious to everyone, Sherrod received public apologies from the administration – even from President Barack Obama himself – and an offer to come back to the USDA, which she declined.
Sherrod is now suing Breitbart, his employee Larry O’Connor and an unnamed “John Doe” defendant for “defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress.” Sherrod’s lawyers say the unnamed defendant is the person who they believe passed the video on to Breitbart.
The suit asks for damages but does not specify an amount. The complaint says the incident has affected Sherrod’s sleep and caused her back pain. It contends that she was damaged by having her “integrity, impartiality and motivations questioned, making it difficult (if not impossible) for her to continue her life’s work assisting poor farmers in rural areas” even though she was invited to come back to the Agriculture Department.
Lawyers for Breitbart and O’Connor have called the suit an assault on free speech and charge that Sherrod is seeking “revenge” on Breitbart because she does not like his politics. In one brief, they quote Sherrod saying on CNN shortly after she was ousted that Breitbart is “one person I’d like to get back at.”
“The attack on my wife has opened up an avalanche of discussion on a tabooed subject…RACE. It is a blessing to be an instrument of God’s GRACE.”
A totally clueless Chris Matthews, who somehow doesn’t know the rudimentary facts involving the Shirley Sherrod story, acts as though Howard Dean and Salon’s Joan Walsh are the dunces here. Listen, at one point Matthews mutters something like, after Dean brings up Drudge, “you go look at Drudge if those are your sources.”
This all happened during the 5pm version of Hardball and was never truly cleared up, though they had Joan Walsh back, for the 7pm show.
For more on Matthew’s insanity go to tpc and mediaite
Also, the 5pm version has been washed from MSNBC’s website according to the above sources.
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I asked Breitbart, via web chat, for his reaction to Sherrod’s lawsuit threat. He declined to comment directly, instead sending me a series of quotes from others evidently meant to demonstrate the righteousness of his cause. One was from Sherrod herself, delivered to CNN’s Tony Harris on July 20: “…The NAACP has not tried to contact me one time and they are the reason why this happened. They got into a fight with the Tea Party, and all of this came out as a result of that.”
Considering what happened last time Breitbart quoted Sherrod with limited context, you’d think his lawyers would advise him against this line of defense.
”Andrew Breitbart responds to Sherrod’s lawsuit threat’s by quoting Sherrod out of context again
Greg Mitchell - RT@jeffbercovici
“I bet the number of attorneys who’d volunteer to take this one would stretch around the block.”
Stephen Colbert gives “Papa Bear” Bill O’Reilly props for his “apology” on the Shirley Sherrod affair
After another summer break, the Daily Show came back to address the biggest story of their absence, the Shirley Sherrod debacle. - gawker.tv
“Let me make this utterly clear: What you see on Fox News, what you read on Right Wing websites, is the utter and complete perversion of journalism, and it can have no place in a civilized society. It is words crashed together, never to inform, only to inflame. It is a political guillotine. It is the manipulation of reality to make the racist seem benevolent, and to convict the benevolent as racist — even if her words must be edited, filleted, stripped of all context, rearranged, fabricated, and falsified, to do so.
What you see on Fox News, what you read on Right Wing websites… is a manipulation. Not just of a story, not just on behalf of a political philosophy. Manipulation of a society, its intentional redirection from reality and progress, to a paranoid delusion and the fomenting of hatred of Americans by Americans…The assassins of the Right have been enabled on the Left. — Keith Olbermann’s special comment on the Sherrod debacle”
The Shame of the Fourth Estate
It has become fashionable to dismiss Keith Olbermann as an over-the-top ranter — or as the MSNBC host put it himself, “a mirror image of that which I assail.” But there was nothing over-the-top about his special comment about Shirley Sherrod. Every word he spoke was true. And the only thing that made his stance so remarkable is the abject failure of the mainstream media — especially this week — to accurately describe the source of the allegation against Sherrod, or to chronicle the long-term impact of the “complete perversion of journalism” practiced 365 days a year by Fox News (and the right-wing bloggers and radio hosts that make up the rest of this wackosphere). - Charles Kaiser
via @KeithOlbermann continue reading… The Hillman Foundation
…”Fox News did something that was absolutely racist,” “They had an obligation to find out what was really in the clip. They have been pushing a theme of black racism, phony Black Panther crap and this business and Sotomayor and all this other stuff. The Tea Party called out their racist fringe and I think the Republican Party has got to stop appealing to its racist fringe. And Fox News is what did that. You put that on.” - Howard Dean on Fox News’ coverage of the Shirley Sherrod story
“[They] “jumped the gun, partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles. … I’ve told my team and I told my agencies that we have to make sure that we’re focusing on doing the right thing instead of what looks to be politically necessary at that very moment. We have to take our time and, and think these issues through. … If there’s a lesson to be drawn from this episode, it’s that rather than us jumping to conclusions and pointing fingers at each other, we should all look inward and try to examine what’s in our own hearts.”
Pres. Obama on the way the Shirley Sherrod affair was handled. via Good Morning America
Bill O’Reilly Apologizes, Attacks Sherrod break it down Cenk
(via TheYoungTurks)
I originally posted a tweet that read something like, ‘O’Reilly apologizes for jumping the gun with the Shirley Sharrod story’. Although I know BillO is a disingenuous blow-hard I try to be fair. If he apologized then solid, at least he owned up to a mistake. Shit happens and in this case A LOT of people jumped the gun. But I had to delete the tweet (that sounds kinda Johnny Cochranesque, hat tip PPG) because later that night I watched BillO’s “apology” and it was riddled with bullshit. Different day, same BillO. Shoulda known better.
David Axelrod: Administration, Media Did Sherrod a ‘Great Disservice’
Exclusive - PBSNewsHour
Elizibeth Hasselbeck pulls something called the “Hatch Act” out of her ass to confront Shirley Sherrod: “is this something even legal going on here?” in regards to part of her speech.
Sherrod’s response could not have been better.
Bill O’Reilly Called Rachel Maddow A Loon Tonight
“This from a guy on YouTube insanely shouting obscenities at his staff” - @KeithOlbermann
