Andrew Breitbart was beside himself with excitement and anticipation. He had been incensed that anyone would dare challenge his attempted smear of the NAACP. He thought that he would get away with labelling them a racist organization---I mean, they've got "Colored" in their name, right??? He and his fellow travelers, of course, hate the idea that a venerable and well-respected organization is around to speak out and stand up for racial justice. He thought he had found a golden opportunity to pierce their halo.
He found, or found and doctored, a tape about this sassy-ass Black woman in Georgia who seemed to fit his needs like a glove. She, on the tape, and in front of a Black audience, spoke derisively about a White farmer. The fact that she worked for USDA, and thus indirectly for Barack Obama, fulfilled his racist wet dream of a vivid example of how all Black People, and thus, of course, Barack Obama, hate all Whites and are thus out to exact revenge.
This little man had already proven a wizard of sorts at playing this game. He had, after all, been instrumental in the Swiftboating of Van Jones, as brilliant and forward-looking an individual as can be found on the scene today, and, like his efforts toward Barack Obama, sought to reduce him to a caricature. You see, Racists like this have a profound and inexorable difficulty with accepting Black individuals who are far more intelligent than they are. But his truly big score was the ACORN caper, as large a fraud as has been perpetrated upon the American people since the Iraq War.
ACORN, after all, had dared to empower poor Black and other folks, and actually encouraged and helped them to vote through registration drives across the country. I mean, the Repugs, going back to Nixon and Reagan, had worked long and hard to make sure that this Voting Rights crap wouldn't really work. Like the pro-Latino Movement growing now, it constituted an existential threat to their tenuous hold on power, for themselves and their Christian Right and Big Business Masters.
So Breitbart and Fox latched onto this idiot Pimp of a guy named O'Keefe, pimped their doctored tapes that fed right into this White fear of a Black-based organization that actually organized and helped Poor Folks, mostly w/mundane everyday needs like heat, food, and rent, but also with voting. They blasted the so-called MSM w/this shameless bs, and got away w/the appearance of truth in place of the actuality of it.
As has been said, a lie is halfway around the world before the truth can even put its shoes one. Ultimately, through a variety of court cases, O'Keefe's lies and propaganda were shown to be exactly that, but that was after, due to the shameful and cowardly performances of most of the MSM and scores of political figures, ACORN was basically emasculated and removed from their critical role in American society. The Bad Guys won. ACORN lost contracts, funds, etc. I hope they can rebuild, and I hope we help them.
So it was against this backdrop that Breitbart conjured up his Bitches' Brew of hateful rhetoric aimed at one Shirley Sherrod and the NAACP. He was, again, correct in his calculation that most in the MSM and public life, and even the NAACP (!) would fall all over themselves to quickly condemn what appeared to be reverse racism. The prompt action by the sheep in the media, the NAACP, USDA, and the White House seemed to vindicate his diabolical confidence. His devilish strategy was working again. There was widespread self-flagellation and gnashing of teeth at this horrible Black woman, who seemed to prove again the dangers of this seething Black hatred for White folk, never mind the fact that they had been brutally enslaved for more than 200 years and treated badly for another 150.
But Andrew Breitbart, this time around, made one fatal miscalculation. He bought into his own phony frame of this uppity Black woman. I mean, look how White folk had recoiled at the phrase "Wise Latina", also on tape. He failed, however, to grasp the redemptive power of her ENTIRE speech that night at the Freedom Fund Banquet in Georgia, he did not research Shirley Sherrod's powerful background story, and he underestimated her power and grit.
For starters, he didn't seem to know that her proud Father has been shot and killed by a Klansman who never even faced prosecution for this murder in spite of the existence of several eyewitnesses. That piercing narrative directly undercut the line they have so assiduously peddled that unfair treatment of Blacks was something far in the past. The even greater power was the full story she told that night in Georgia, that, in spite of the terrible injustice visited upon her family, she had come to accept and respect the Poor White Folks she encountered in rural southwestern Georgia for who they were---folks trying to make it. The moment the Claypools appeared on tv and testified that she had saved their farm and remained their friend, the jig was up. The fact that she had a heartfelt reunion with them on Friday afternoon sealed the deal.
Shirley Sherrod handled the incredible Media & Political firestorm that ensued with incredible grace and aplomb. What America saw was not at all the sick caricature that Andrew Breitbart had in mind to make his hateful and devilish point. Instead, they saw a woman who knew herself and her work, possessed of both a gritty toughness and warm compassion.
She played her hand, but did not overplay it. Through the round of interviews, appearances on the View, etc., and apologies from Tom Vilsack, Robert Gibbs, and even the President of the United States, she never got carried away with herself, but neither did she waver in defense of what she knew to be right.
My personal favorite from this strong Black woman came when she was asked about Breitbart and simply said, "He's a Lie!!!"
You see, with Shirley Sherrod comes this wonderfully-refreshing lack of the false equivalence that infects the brains of the MSM Newsreader/Interview and Rightwing Talking Point Pundit Class. Shirley Sherrod, having suffered the murder of her father by racists and having grown up with this evil or racism, sees and knows it for what it is. The fact that she has come to terms with it and now presents as this terrifically together person, incredibly well-grounded, is a gift to all of us. Her profound honesty cuts like a knife through the cloud of lies, half-truths and phoniness that pervades our culture.
In addition to the grotesque murder of her Dad, this incident brings to the fore another vivid example of outright racism, adjudicated as such, in her very USDA. Black farmers were discriminated against for decades, robbed and cheated. The court finally, after years and years of patient struggle, determined that they were owed the sum of $1.5 billion. They have STILL not been paid. Obama hasn't pushed it, the so-called Liberals in Congress haven't managed to find the funds to right this abject wrong, and some Black farmers are dying without receiving their just desserts. As a result the L'Affaire Shirley Sherrod, these good folks may finally receive justice.
While the Right, led by Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan, assiduously and loudly shifted the agenda to the White House and away from both Breitbart's (and Fox' and the rest of the RWNM's) devilish plot to use racial hatred and suspicion to divide and spread fear, with quite some degree of success, the real story was covered by the only media outlet that covered itself with glory in this whole mess---CNN. Tony Harris was the first person to sit and provide a pithy and piercing analysis, through interviews of the entire situation, drawing out the previously-hidden truth. Don Lemon went back to south Georgia with Shirley, covered her emotional reunion with the Claypools, and narrated a great special feature on the background of this proud woman and her family. CNN alone provided a good honest look at the real story this woman brought us. All of the others, including MSNBC, paled by comparison. I submit that the presence of such as Tony Harris, TJ Holmes, Don Lemon, and Fredricka Whitfield has made a difference. They are hardnosed in their analysis, but they bring a perspective to stories such as this that are simply missing at other outlets, including MSNBC. If you saw Whitfield's moving feature on her Dad and the other surviving Tuskeegee Airmen, you know what I mean.
The decision is, of course, entirely hers, but I, for one, hope that Shirley Sherrod will accept some role, either with USDA or a think tank or whatever, that keeps her honesty and her guts in front of us to cut through the bs. She reminds me of another strong Black woman, Bunatine Greenhouse, who sat there and steadfastly refused to be rolled by Dick Cheney and the other corrupt Warmongers who lusted after no-bid contracts for Halliburton. God Bless Shirley and Bunny---their examples, I hope, will be heeded and followed.