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July 26, 2010 in Opinion
Leonard Pitts Jr.: Choking on baseless fury
Last week, the conservative outrage machine tried to chew up Shirley Sherrod.
You are familiar with that machine if you have access to the Internet or Fox News. As the name implies, it exists to stoke and maintain a state of perpetual apoplexy on the political right by feeding it a never-ending stream of perceived sins against conservative orthodoxy.
While the machine will use any available fuel (health care, immigration, Muslims) to manufacture fury, it has a special fondness for race. Specifically, for stories that depict the God-fearing white conservative as a victim of oppression.
So Sherrod must have seemed a godsend to blogger Andrew Breitbart.
Last Monday, he posted an excerpted video of Sherrod, an African-American employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, telling an NAACP audience how she once hesitated, because he was white, to help a farmer stave off bankruptcy. “Evidence of racism,” Breitbart sniffs righteously in an accompanying post.
Except that it wasn’t.
“After” the NAACP pronounced the video appalling, “after” Bill O’Reilly called her words unacceptable, and “after” the USDA demanded her resignation (all have since apologized) the truth came out, via the full video.
It turns out Sherrod is a daughter of Baker County, Ga., which she describes as having been the sort of proudly unreconstructed place where a black man might be murdered by a white one and, despite three witnesses, the grand jury would decline to indict. In 1965, Sherrod’s father was that black man, one of many.
So there she is in 1986, working at a nonprofit agency established to help farmers, and in comes this white farmer she finds condescending. She didn’t do all she could’ve for him, she told the audience. Instead, she handed him off to a white lawyer, figuring one of “his own kind” would take care of him.
Which would indeed be appalling and unacceptable, except that when the white lawyer failed to help that farmer, Sherrod resolved to help him herself, to overcome the bitterness and bias of her own heart. That farmer credits her with saving his farm.
Breitbart used a snippet of video to misrepresent her as a black bureaucrat bragging of how she stuck it to the white man. Sherrod’s point was actually about reconciliation, redemption, learning to embrace the wholeness of humanity.
Invited by CNN to explain the dissonance between his video and the truth, Breitbart chose instead to reiterate his charge of “racist” sentiment. For Breitbart, the video was an attempt to embarrass the NAACP, because it recently passed a resolution denouncing racist elements in the tea party movement. This is not about Sherrod, he insisted, though she might beg to differ.
In the interview, Breitbart came across as not overly concerned with “truth,” and much less with racial injustice, except insofar as it can be used to further his cause.
And isn’t it telling how often conservatives will discover their burning concern over race just when it becomes useful to them? We saw this last year. In a nation where one state may soon require Latinos to show their papers, conservatives hyperventilated over the “racism” of Sonia Sotomayor extolling the virtues of a “wise Latina.” Now, against the backdrop of an Agriculture Department that long ago admitted to decades of discrimination against black farmers, Breitbart weeps over the “racism” of Shirley Sherrod refusing to assist a white farmer – right up until she did.
It is probably useless to say Breitbart should be ashamed. There is little evidence he possesses the ability. But Sherrod is pondering a defamation suit, and a judgment in her favor might help him fix that defect.
May she win big. And may the outrage machine choke on the bill.
Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald. His e-mail address is lpitts@miamiherald.com.
Editorial: Workers’ beer routine undermines public trust 
JBlim on July 26 at 6:33 a.m.
“As the name implies, it exists to stoke and maintain a state of perpetual apoplexy on the political right by feeding it a never-ending stream of perceived sins against conservative orthodoxy.”
Pitts tells it like it is once again: whiny, phony conservative cry-babies will do or say anything to fool unthinking half-wits into supporting their self-serving, anti-America corporatist agenda.
cawilkesjr on July 26 at 7:18 a.m.
Well said…
Ninch on July 26 at 7:57 a.m.
UH… Leonard Pitts and so many others seem to have problems with listening and comprehension. But then again they choose to blame “the others” instead of realizing where all the responsibility lies, i.e. the Obama White House (and the NAACP) for acting so brashly. And all those who use this event to denigrate conservatives are not paying attention to reality.
FACT: Breibart’s “evidence of racism” was the bad BEHAVIOR of the NAACP audience cheered the first part of Sherrod’s story regarding anti-white sentiment. Breibart’s focus was on NAACP because of their resolution against racism in the Tea Party movement, yet they were themselves guilty. (Note also that the film clip of Sherrod’s redemption was also posted on Breibart web site). Ironically, the NAACP jumped on Sherrod and supported her firing, even though they had possession of the entire video-taped speech, because it was a NAACP event. And Sherrod has no case to sue Breibart because he was smart enough to post both video tapes… as well she was a public figure in her Ag Dept position. If Sherrod had told the story differently with a preface to what her story was really about as well as not egging on the audience with the initial misconception, she might have a case regarding selective video tape editing, but nothing was doctored on the tapes. Besides she was an “at will” employee and she also has no basis for damages for defamation (over a couple of days at that and multiple apologies). In fact, now she is whole again and even increased her personal value.
mikeln on July 26 at 8:03 a.m.
How many half-wits will still beleive this right wing-nuts story? I hope she is able to sue these nuts out of buisness, but the courts are stacked against her and lawyers for these nuts will get her case dismissed before it ever sees the light of justice.
ChefGus/ John Olsen on July 26 at 9:03 p.m.
There was NO cheering…. you are not entitled to your own facts… listen to the tape if you have not yet…… You have obviously never spent any time in a black church or black audience……I hope the suit includes libel for loss of her job…. The racism that is currently rampant, egged on by the right wing talk folks is leading to potential violence …….. john
misjustice on July 27 at 9:54 a.m.
2010; sadly, The Summer of Hate… brought to you with commercial interruptions by Faux Noose and Hate Talk Radio!
It’s an election year and the issue of race will be used to motivate the masses; get ‘em to the polls!
mmspowaus on July 27 at 3:43 p.m.
ChefGus:
To be fair, there was cheering as Ninch stated. I saw the video many times and that was cheering. She was no preacher and this was not a black church. Besides the vocal southern baptist churches I’ve attended praise if something is praise worthy and jeer if it is jeer worthy or remain silent…
On the video, that crowd was defiantly cheering…and it was inappropriate…. She should have corrected the crowd and she didn’t…
MISJusitce:
The reason you think it is the summer of hate is because you watch WAY to much of the loons at MSNBC…
Don’t confuse hate with debate….missy
FYI Pitts proves yet again he cannot rise above his name…
JBlim on July 27 at 8:24 p.m.
Matt, can you tell us at what minute you heard the “cheering.”
She talks about the white farmer starting around minute 16:30, and there was some chuckling at about minute 17:30, which when taken in the context of her recollections, didn’t sound inappropriate to me. I didn’t listen to the whole thing. Please tell me what minute you are talking about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9NcCa_KjXk
misjustice on July 27 at 9:05 p.m.
Matty, I don’t watch MSNBC ( I don’t have cable)…but I do read, watch PBS and listen to the radio…and I know enough to state that the haters are Murdoch’s merry band of miscreants; and people like you…
JBlim on July 28 at 2:57 p.m.
Matt???
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Matt?
Ed Byrnes on July 29 at 7:56 p.m.
It is truly sad when we fight against each other, or construct the idea in our heads that people of another race are the enemy, when it is abundantly clear that our common enemy is on Wall Street, and on our Spokane streets terrorizing us citizens under the cover of law.
As long as we allow ourselves to be manipulated into hating each other we will never confront our true enemies.
misjustice on July 30 at 7:01 a.m.
ebyrnes; we have a history in this nation of hating the ‘other’. When the Irish immigrated here it was common place for there to be signs in businesses, “No Irish Need Apply”. When the Chinese were immigrants working on the railroads they were demonized and not allowed to live amongst the populace at large. And I don’t need to go into the Jim Crow laws which kept Black Americans on the outside looking in. As a nation we endorsed genocide against Native Peoples, killing those we could and extracting ethnic cleansing on those we did not kill.
The common thread in our sad, sorted history of hatred against the ‘other’ is that as one group gained begrudged acceptance into society a new group was chosen to take the place of the ‘other’…the ones to blame, to fear, to loath, and to be targeted as the scapegoat for all of our ills. The Hispanic people, sadly, are now the main target; although the recent attack on Ms. Sherrod demonstrates that Black Americans are still, in some quarters, vulnerable to racist smear attacks propagated by those with an agenda to keep us divided by any and all means possible.
Ed Byrnes on July 31 at 6:25 a.m.
misjustice: Agreed, and thank you for mentioning the Irish since I am fourth generation Irish-American and among the first generation in my family to earn a college degree. I clearly recall my grandfather describing the “Irish Need Not Apply” signs that were abundant in the New York City of his youth. It is so unfortunate that we have not learned from our history, especially when the real enemies of us working people are behaving like dogs in the street.