So Andrew Breitbart posts this video of Shirley Sherrod, (former) USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development talking to the NAACP about discriminating against white people. The story she’s relating is pretty much a Mea Culpa, saying she was in the wrong, which is pretty clear by the end of he comments on the video. But, as the post shows, Breitbart wasn’t calling out Sherrod as much as he was calling out the NAACP:
Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.
Thus the post starting the kerfuffle was a reaction to the NAACP condemnation of the Tea Parties based on assertions similarly lacking in research or context. It is strangely illuminating that both the NAACP and the Obama Administration immediately threw Sherrord under the bus (and I mean immediately, as in post was at 8am, resignation before 5pm the same day) before establishing the context of those remarks. Sort of proving the whole point about leaping to baseless and/or unsubstantiated charges of racism before receiving all the facts. Sensing a pattern?
Say what you want about Breitbart. He didn’t fire the woman. He didn’t even call for her resignation. He just handed them a coil of rope and said “go play with this.”