Breitbart is a 41-year-old a conservative blogger, newspaper columnist and television commentator. He’s responsible for posting edited videos Monday (July 19th) that discredited Shirley Sherrod, an African-American woman employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The videos appeared to show Sherrod giving a reverse racist speech at a 2009 NAACP fundraising event. The clips were edited so that Sherrod looked as if she was showing off an unashamed discriminatory attitude toward white farmers while NAACP audience members laughed and shouted with approval. Sherrod was forced to resign in the resulting controversy.
Breitbart said he posted the clips because they contained “video evidence of racism coming from a federal appointee and NAACP award recipient”. However, the unedited video of the speech came out the next day (July 20th) showing almost the opposite happening. It revealed that Sherrod was, in fact, making an argument against racial discrimination, and the NAACP audience was applauding her call for tolerance. Shortly thereafter, the mainstream media backtracked and began exposing all the deception contained in the original clip, and Sherrod got a job offer from her old boss.
So with that hubbub behind, the “inside the beltway” crowd has shifted its focus back to Breitbart. Pundits from Politico.com, as well as CNN commentator Anderson Cooper have asserted that Breitbart is just an example of the out-of-control partisanship occurring in the blogosphere. Politico editor Jim VandeHei has said Breitbart is the right-wing equivalent of the left’s Arianna Huffington.
This is pure drivel. While definitely biased for the Democratic Party and progressive politics, Huffington has never intentionally manufactured a story and tried to pass it off as journalism. Breitbart is a scumbag whose messages go well beyond the boundaries of partisanship.
Yes, I said messages!
Do you remember the uproar over ACORN when an apparently incriminating video surfaced? This clip featured an apparent undercover reporter dressed as a pimp, who entered an agency office and supposedly exposed rampant corruption.
Like the Sherrod video, the ACORN pimp clip turned out to be fallacious and manufactured, and the person behind it was none other than Andrew Breitbart. But unlike Sherrod, ACORN never recovered because Congress decided to defund the community action agency after the pimp story first aired.
That’s two examples where Breitbart’s “partisanship” has poured gasoline on the charcoal embers of American racism by dangerously manufacturing stories. Breitbart is free to speak, but the media are free to quit giving him a podium. News sources must have at least some semblance of credibility. The next time CNN, MSNBC or FOX carries a Breitbart video, it should be one of him being dragged into court on civil lawsuit charges.
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