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Andrew Breitbart owes no apologies
By trailing wife

One of the strengths of Rantburg, built in by Mr. Pruitt from the very beginning, is that posted articles -- or excerpts from articles -- link to the original, wherever in the world it may have been published. Thus we can see for ourselves the journalist's context and intent, not only those bits the poster thought most important at the moment he presented it here.

Yesterday there was a discussion here at Rantburg about the Shirley Sherrod adventures.

The title of my very little essay -- in the original sense of to attempt -- links to Mr. Breitbart's piece breaking the Sherrod/NAACP story on his Big Government site, with the notorious Sherrod videos (there are two of them) therein embedded. I dare make no claim to orginal insights, as everything here was better said in the Rantburg thread yesterday, not to mention all over the internet. I only bring you what Mr. Breitbart actually wrote, which generated so much Sturm und Drang. He opened his piece with
Context is everything.

In this piece you will see video evidence of racism coming from a federal appointee and NAACP award recipient and in another clip from the same event a perfect rationalization for why the Tea Party needs to exist.

The key paragraphs, halfway through the essay, put his point in sharp relief (bolding mine):

We are in possession of a video from in which Shirley Sherrod, USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development, speaks at the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Georgia. In her meandering speech to what appears to be an all-black audience, this federally appointed executive bureaucrat lays out in stark detail, that her federal duties are managed through the prism of race and class distinctions.

In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn't do everything she can for him, because he is white. 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.

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.

The second video affirms the real reason there is tension between the Democratic Party and a growing mass of middle Americans -- and it's not because of race.

The NAACP which has transformed from a civil rights group to a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party and social-justice politics, supports a new America that relies less on individualism, entrepreneurialism and American grit, but instead giddily embraces, the un-American notion of unaccountability and government dependence. Shirley Sherrod, a federal appointee who oversees over a billion dollars of federal funds, nearly begs black men and women into taking government jobs at USDA -- because they won't get fired.

This is why the Democratic Party is scared. This is why the NAACP is scared. This is why black conservatives, previously marginalized as "Uncle Toms" by these progressive bullies, and shamefully, the NAACP, are coming out of the woodwork to join and, in many cases, lead the Tea Party movement.

Mr. Breitbart very clearly aimed his expose at the NAACP, triggering the kind of response from the NAACP and the White House that would have made Saul Alinsky beam with pride.

But why did he target the NAACP, of all groups, at this time? He explains that at the top of the essay, when he reviews the recent NAACP's attack on the Tea Party movement as inherently racist, a meme common in the mainstream media from the beginning of their reportage on the subject. But it's new that the NAACP, with all their authority, has chosen to weigh in on the subject.

Mr. Breitbart chose their own videoed behaviour as the tool with which to spike their very powerful guns.

And spike he did. As a result the charge of racism has lost much of the power to harm that its wielders held over the heads of the rest of us for the past two generations. With it goes much of President Obama's remaining power and appeal.

Y'all still think Mr. Breitbart needs to apologize for what happened to Ms Sherrod?
Posted by: trailing wife 2010-07-27
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=301971