We can't let Breitbart and Fox off the hook. Near as I can tell the only guy at Fox who did the right thing was Shep Smith. All the rest should be called out personally.

Do you believe Breitbart when he says he didn't get the full video. All he got from his source was the edited video. That story doesn't sound plausible but assuming that he is, for the first time in his pathetic existence, telling the truth then he should never have published it. He should now be drummed out of "journalism" and the blogosphere for all time.

---
is to badly miss the point.
---

I think the word you're looking for is 'intentionally'.

It was never a "smart political move" to fire Sherrod in a panic. It was a stupid move that sent a clear message to everyone in the administration that these people will fire you in a second of the basis of a clip on Fox News. Who is going to fight for an Administration that won't fight for you?

Point taken, Steve ... but. The Obama team's approach to this illustrates the larger problem of classic Democratic gutlessness. Some race-baiting bottom feeder says jump; they not only ask how high but hope they jumped quickly enough. When -- WHEN? -- will our side call these vicious creeps exactly what they are, and do it every day, loudly? So yes, 'they started it.' But our beloved Democratic Party, yet again, cowered and ceded and said please don't be mean to us. Disgusting and discouraging.

Sadly, far too many seem willing to let the malicious off the hook to beat up on the hapless.

I had this same argument earlier today re Saletan's piece in Slate. He started out from a worthy premise: that politics has become so callous it is blind to the harm the base tribalism causes to real live individuals. To blame "partisanship" for this, however, Saletan went all Broder and essentially treated as equal (1) Breitbart's malicious, deceitful piece that set all subsequent events in motion and (2)NAACP's/Administration's cowardly and hapless, but non-malicious response (which never happens if Brietbart doesn't lie to begin with).

But that was much better than Navarette's piece on CNN.com that argued that Obama and Vilsack are the most blameworthy -- essentially giving Breitbart and Fox a complete pass, as if the effort should not be on a better politics, but on a better reaction to offensive politics. Navarette doesn't even much allow that perhaps we should aim for both.

If that is the response, what incentive will there ever be for the Brietbarts and Druges of the world to not try the cheap smear? If the worst that happens is it fails to catch on, but there is no downside, it becomes a numbers game: the more you do it, the better.

I call bullshit on the Times's editorial today, casting all blame on the Administration. This is particularly hard to swallow because the Times was a chief enabler of Breitbart in l'affaire ACORN, as to which it has never admitted culpability. It is because the Times and other allegedly "legitimate" news sources made cheap charges like this into "scandals" that the Administration jumped so fast, so wrong. The press ought to be taking a big share of the blame here for its past and present coddling of Breitbart -- but of course it strews the blame in other directions instead.

I think we can all agree now that the "11 dimensional chess" thing is bogus.

And whatever our own differences on whether we think the Obama White House is doing a good job or not, I think we can all agree that the Democratic party elected officials are just not that smart.

It's one thing to get ahead of the news cycle in haste, but it's an entirely another thing to do this on a piece of news generated by Breitbart and then not do a fact check.

It just says that Axelrod, Vilsack, Rahm and whoever else up there running things, really have no clue as to how their opponents operate. They don't know Breitbart's a liar and a faker. They just are not that smart. It's really that simple.

Sort of renders all the Sturm und Drang on this blog and elsewhere about their HCR, FinReg and other "strategies" moot.

I hope people can see this episode for the "smoking gun" that it is.

The people running the Democratic Party are simply *not* that smart and are definitely not smarter than their Republican counterparts.

Why should Fox or Breitbart feel the least bit of regret? The story blew up on them, but not before they succeeded in embarrassing Obama. Mission Accomplished.

...Breitbart got a piece of video he knew nothing about and published it with a central claim (that it was about Sherrod's tenure at the USDA) that he either made up or made no attempt to verify. No vetting, no calls, no due diligence, not the slightest concern to confirm anything or find out what was true. -- Josh Marshall

And, for all I'm not a betting woman, I'd bet anything that, a few weeks "down the road", the "legitimate" news media will use the case as another example of "bloggers" being irresponsible pseudo-journalists undeserving of any serious person's notice. And they'll do it, without once mentioning Breitbart by name. Ie it'll be presented not as one bad apple, but the whole barrelfull will be tarred with the same brush.

One of the best features of the 'Sherrod Smear'was that it successfully defected attention from the worthwhile events (Wall Street reform, etc.) of the week. One's conspiratorial fantasies wonder how long the right-wing scum sat on this, waiting to spring the trap.

This is why I so, so, SO wished that Gibbs' statement had gone more like this:

"A few months back, Fox News was all worked up because of White House comments to the effect that we didn't consider them a legitimate news organization. So we gave them the benefit of the doubt, and trusted their word in this situation, and look how it turned out. We should have known better than to believe that Fox's concern for accuracy over agenda would prevent them from airing claims they hadn't even bothered to verify themselves. We were wrong to think that information presented by Fox News was accurate. It's a mistake we won't make again."

It's nice to apologize, but saying-- we're sorry we f**ked you over and we sure do regret it, now please take this "unique" job we made up -- is cheap stuff. Obama, Vilsack & Co. basically had no choice in the matter once the facts came out. (At minimum, Vilsack should face consequences beyond a day of discomfort and a brief session of eating crow in public.)

One would hope that in the future, they would realize that anything that comes out of the right-wing media, whether Breibart, Fox, or the Nat. Review crowd, MUST be vetted thoroughly before there's any response. Good people's reputations are at stake. Stop behaving like cowards. Hell, it might even be worth treating any charges from people like Briebart with public contempt, after this week's example.

@observer

Right, because "smart" people never make mistakes. I know, I know, thousands of people died because of this mistake, but please...

What? You say one government employee resigned one day and was offered her job back the next? That's the worst that happened?

Oh, well, whatever.

Talk about Sturm and Drang...

The idea of "rapid response" is to counter quickly with the truth, not to kowtow quickly to a lie.

Come on people, Breitbart edited the video, he had an agenda, just like with Acorn & climate change etc, it is what he does, he also has no conscience.
I don't for one minute think the Obama is dumb about how they work, I think Obama feels strongly that he has a responsibility (as the first black president) stamp out any hint of racism that might hurt white people.
I think we have a super ethical president.

"I think we have a super ethical president."

No, Joan. What the Obama administration did to Shirley Sherrod wasn't "super ethical." It wasn't even "sorta ethical." It was completely unethical. And dumb.

What we have is a super-politically-sensitive president. In this case, sensitive to the wrong party.

As JMM said, Obama partly gets more heat because, unlike FOX and the MSM, we get the feeling he's redeemable, and capable of knowing better. Their quick apology was more than I had hoped for, and I am satisfied.

Will we get similar acts of contrition from the MSM? Not likely. I doubt they believe they've done wrong, and Brietbart and FOX mockingly rubbing their noses in it by critiquing the people who willingly peddle their crap, I have to admit, I'm starting to find amusing as well. Is sort of the equivelant of a bully making a kid smack himself in the face over and over and asking, "Why do you keep hitting yourself?" Except in this case, the MSM will show up the next day for more cause they think you're friends. The abuse is probably all they feel they're worthy for.

Any serious, professional journalists, I would think must be embarrassed, and the stories Karen Tumulty, et al., have done since the Washington Post atrocity demonstrates some acknowledgment of wrongdoing. Reporters with a conscience, like Tumulty, are rare, however, and don't seem to prevent these mistakes from recurring.

To all the rubes who ran with this - Brietbart and FOX are laughing at you - your unthinking credulity, your cowardice -- and are mocking you for it.

That's sad, and far more cowardly than what Vilsack and Obama have done by righting their wrong. And ABC, for instance, will never have the courage to admit their complicity in this whole affair, as Obama has done.

Obama's crime was in, again, assuming some basic level of character and professionalism among the journalism/blowhard class, decades after their complicity in the right wing megaphone has been long-established.

After all, I'm sure that "the Obama political team" keeps tabs on the status of each of the more than two million federal employees.

(They do it with the same MAGIC that they DON'T use to make recalcitrant senators vote the way YOU want.)

See Rachel Maddow's telecast from last night--she revealed the essence of the the Fox News mission as political activist for the right wing as it is most pointedly demonstrated by the Sherrod affair. It is simply brilliant.

The thing that makes me angry is that anyone stil pretends that Fox News is an actual news organization. I have heard comments such as "Fox news is at fault for not investigating, blah, blah" and ". . . no discipling of anyone in the news room" from different sources. Of course they didn't investigate or verify the video. Why would they? It proved their pre-conceived beliefs and so the ran with it. The fact that is was all a lie means nothing to them.

@ Nick, Jennifer, Bat of Moon, word. It's a given that Fox and Breitbart were out to mislead, or lie. And it was obvious to any of us. What's frustrating is that the D's continue to be so gullible. It seems that any of the posters on this thread could give Obama better advice. And that is truly frustrating. The glee on the right isn't about smearing Sherrod, it's about making the Obama administration look like fools. They win either way. They get to smear and race bait, and they get to demoralize Obama's base. When does it end?

Zeitgeist hit one of the key points above. A key feature of today's pseudointellectualized, pretentious, false-equivalence commentary is to blame things on impersonal forces like "partisanship" instead of specific actors and plans. This abstracting is thus conveniently detached from ever having to say much about who did what. It's a perfect way to protect guilty parties - and an ironic twist on the old charge (somewhat valid) against liberals (or those being a caricature of the movement) that they blamed social forces for e.g. what criminals did. I didn't hear the words "Breitbart" or "Fox News" in any of NBCs nightly reporting.

Brietbart is still spreading his made up hate, Mark Williams is still head of the TEA party express and spreading his hate, Vilsack is still head of the USDA, all the media outlets have tried to blame Obama instead of taking responsibility for not fact checking a story.
So the only thing that has changed is this very nice lady who has shown herself to be a better person then all of Washington and the entire news media is out of work.

Paul Gottlieb wins the thread. Exactly.

TV suggests that they'll try to smear her further by suggesting her Black family made money "wrongly" (remember "Black welfare queens" and another bad association for our Black prez -- from POV of white racists) for her part of a settlement for bias in govt ag loans that led to her mortgage on GA farmland to be foreclosed. Jeez. Is anyone looking into who did edit the video and give it to Breitbart? Can't we reveal and embarrass some of these jerks? Too bad the trying to investigate these bad actors and turn around the lies can work against the left by leaving the topic on the table longer. I hate politics.

My "good friend" Howard Kurtz?

Bye Josh.

Sorry, not a "good friend." Just a "friend."

Still too close to the hack, but at least the record is now straight.

Agree on Mr. Gottlieb's comment being a winner. As far as I'm concerned this is just another in a long line of cowardly actions by the President and his Administration. Not to mention stupid, shortsighted, and feckless.

Oh, and Josh Marshall can go pound sand. Since he became a blogospheric mogul TPM has covered more with considerably less perspicacity. I'll pay attention to him again when he takes real notice of the Catfood Commission.

Vilsack explained exactly why he and USDA leaped as fast as they did. USDA is dealing with a billion-dollar attempt to make good on years of discrimination against black farmers -- the funding is under discussion _right now_. Under those circumstances, USDA chose to be extremely sensitive to a report, with audio and video, that a USDA administrator, who was a part of that very suit, seemed to be suggesting that she was disinclined to help white farmers because black farmers had suffered more. They wanted to be extra reassuring that they weren't going to redress bias in one direction with bias in the other direction, because that's the way conservatives (mis)understand affirmative action and civil rights. Yes, they fucked up by taking the Breitbart tape seriously and not doing due diligence on the rest of the story, but, honestly, that's not usually too important to how stories like this play out: they were dreading weeks worth of "government protects black racists" vuvuzela droning on Fox News, like they've been seeing with the New Black Panthers. And, frankly, I'm surprised that the story took the turn it did; I've almost never seen a defense that a dicey remark was taken out of context _work_. This time, it did, and it's a tribute to the obvious strength of character possessed by Shirley Sherrod and the Spooner family she helped that it played out that way.

I wonder about the four phone calls that Ms. Sherrod spoke of on the day of her forced resignation. She said that she received four calls which claimed that the White House wanted her to resign.

If this is true then the White House was involved in her firing and those responsible should be called out and possibly forced to resign themselves.

If this is not true then those who falsely used the authority of the White House to force her resignation should be called out and forced to resign themselves.

I'm confounded by the fact that the administration in this case was very quick to jump in exactly the direction indicated by Fox News, et al. They called for a firing of Ms. Sherrod and they got it very quickly. No due process. No one (apparently) even asked her about the video, even though she herself had alerted the agency about it last week.

An incredible episode which shows how our system of media and government really work. I would wager that on any given day the Obama White House receives hundreds or thousands of letters from citizens with good suggestions or requests for specific action that could actually help those in need and advance the greater good. Instead of heeding the pleas of ordinary folk, we get this shameful episode.

SERIOUSLY, WTF is wrong with people?

Yes, Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture overreacted, or perhaps reacted too quickly, to accussations from a source known to be biased and unreliable. Someone from the White House may have been involved, but that is NOT confirmed.

Once the truth came out, the Obama administration acted both quickly and with grace to make things right. Yet some of their critics on the left STILL want to give them more of the blame that the known liars and their MSM enablers who not only created this controversy but who created the poisonous atmosphere through their handling of all the previous made-up "scandals".

P.S. one of the criticisms given above is that the Sherrod's firing proves Dems are spineless. I submit that your reaction proves that Democrats and Liberals can always be counted on to fight among each other given the least provocation and that that is just as big a benefit to the Republicans as any spinelessness.

The USDA officials who fired Sherrod need to go. They trampled over due process for political points, and it backfired on them. They are not anyone's victims. They are political hacks, the wrong sort of people to be in charge of anybody or to have any meaningful responsibility.

"As she was asked for her resignation, Sherrod said, she pleaded with USDA officials to look at the whole speech, but got nowhere.

And "the last thing I said with that last call ... I said, 'You know, the fight hadn't been in me before, but it's definitely here now, and you have not heard the last from me,'" she said. "I really didn't know exactly what that meant when I said it. But I knew -- I know I'm a fighter, and I knew at that point I would not take this lying down."..."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-sherrod-resignation,0,3560240.story

Great post. Great summation and analysis. Great links.

Awhile ago on a news channels (CNN, MSNBC?), I watched Ed Henry going after Vilsack to get to Cheryl Cook to try to talk to her to find out who her contact was in the White House who was pressuring to have Sherrod turn in her resignation (per what Sherrod said she was told by Cheryl Cook).

The news host in the studio said that this was the only question that remained unanswered, who Cook was talking to in the White House.

Forgetting, I presume, that there is another unanswered question: who was it that gave Andrew Breitbart the doctored video segment that he posted, that ignited this whole race-baiting travesty? He has claimed someone gave it to him, but neither will he apologize nor will he reveal who this purported person is that handed him this highly misleading and toxic video segment. Maybe someone from the Fox News research, video-editing department? Someone in the employ of Roger Ailes?

(I think I might have just solved this mystery: someone at Fox News found this speech by Sherrod, edited it down to fit their right-wing racist agenda, then handed it off to Dumbbart to post, at which point Fox News took back this racist video ball and ran with it. This is why Dumbbart is hiding the identify of the person who gave him this racism-based selectively-spliced videoclip that started it all, because it would reveal that there was a circle-jerk between him and the jerk-circle at Fox News. Voila. Of course, Dumbbart might have done the video-editing at Fox News headquarters himself, late one weekend night, which would be just as damning, especially with him being such a frequent guest on the jerk-circle at Fox News. Whichever. Mystery solved).

" Ugh: "Nonprofit BlueCross and BlueShield health plans in several states, including Tennessee, stockpiled billions of dollars during the past decade, yet continued to hit consumers with hefty premium increases that could have been reduced in some cases, a new consumer study contends."

I'll bet CEO pay there soared at the same time from merely excessive to truly exorbitant.

Spot on, Steve.

The Obama administration showed political cowardice, the kind that frustrates -- but sadly doesn't surprise -- loyal Democrats and encourages dishonest Republicans.

But Breitbart and the conservative media showed their usual bad faith and demonstrated once again the slimy Tinker-to-Evers-toChance of the right-wing propaganada machine that Joe Conason, Al Franken and others documented more than a decade ago, but the so-called "liberal media" still doesn't seem to have figured out.

She said that she received four calls which claimed that the White House wanted her to resign. ... If this is true then the White House was involved in her firing

No, if this is true then the person calling her claimed that the White house wanted her to resign.

They *may indeed have* indicated as much to the person calling her, but then again the person calling her may have simply assumed it, or made the claim in order to increase the pressure on Sherrod's reluctance to resign.

Vilsack and the USDA jumped to conclusions. Let's not do the same.

Four separate phone calls?! She pleaded with USDA officials to look at the whole video?!

I'm sorry, but some USDA heads have to roll on this. Unless Vilsack can show he was intentionally misled, his should be one of them.

To the people who just want to "move on": this episode exemplifies the core weakness of the Obama administration (and by extension the Democratic Party). If they can't completely eradicate this chickenshit attitude, they will NEVER control the political agenda.

I want the Obama administration to feel serious pain on this one so hopefully they won't do it again. You would have thought they'de learned their lesson from the ACORN debacle.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." What happens the third time?

Unless Vilsack can show he was intentionally misled, his should be one of them.

Much as I hate to defend Vilsack, he was intentionally misled; Breitbart intentionally misled everybody with his bad faith presentation of the video.

There's no question that Vilsack and the USDA is guilty of political cowardice, but it was sparked by yet another phony smear job by right wing propagandists.

Congratulations bdop4, thanks to those who think like you, Breitbart has won. This story is no longer about him, it is about the Obama administration. No corrective action or mea culpas they make will satisfy you and your ilk.

P.S. Grow up.

btw, I agree with both of Gregory's last two comments. Thank you.

Yes, Gregory, yet ANOTHER smear job. How many does it take for these guys to figure it out?

I'm not minimizing Breitbart's deception. Everyone knows (or SHOULD know) that the guy's a total scumbag. It's no excuse to say, "but it was a smear job!" Of course it was a fucking smear job. That's all these assholes do.

It's not just cowardice, it's gross incompetence.

Trying to pin Breitbart now involves a long game of "yeah, but . . . ". You know how well that plays in the press.

That's where a lot of the rage comes from: that by reflexively firing Sherrod, the Obama Administration is more worried/scared of the right-wing noise machine than concerned for the CAREER of this woman. They threw her under the bus WITHOUT A SECOND THOUGHT.

Tanstaafl,

Fuck off. Breitbart won when Sherrod was fired. There's nothing anybody can do about it now. Pointing at Breitbart and screaming just comes off as whining now.

All we can do now is make sure the next time it happens (and it will happen again, sooner than you think), the Dems don't shit in their pants again.

Fuck you too bdop4... " that by reflexively firing Sherrod, the Obama Administration is more worried/scared of the right-wing noise machine than concerned for the CAREER of this woman."

There you go making unfounded assumptions and completely ignoring for the second time in a row Gregoy's post at 8:59AM.

The only two people we know to have been involved in forcing Sherrod to resign are Vilsack and one of his deputies, but you are ready to blame Obama himself and nothing he does now will satisfy you. Of course, nothing Obama does will satisfy you on any other issue so what else is new?

"to make Obama and/or Vilsack out to be the principal culprit in this fiasco is to badly miss the point."

Wrong! Completely dead wrong!

You go to war with the media you've got, not the imaginary media you dream of that might be "fair and balanced."

Obama and his administration NEVER FIGHT BACK against their enemies! AND that includes their media enemies.

Can you even imagine what the Bush administration would have done if some News media were as openly hostile to THEM as Fox News is to Obama? They would be using the FCC to yank their licenses coast to coast!

They would be counter-attacking every single day!

Obama has been doing this since day ONE! This isn't the first employee he's fired because some right-wing hatchet man did a hit piece on them! There have been several other cases.

Overall, this President:

1. Cowers and rushes to "distance himself" whenever the right wing attacks a member of his administration for some imaginary failing.

2. Blatantly contradicts himself, first attacking Fox News and then going on their network and legitimizing them.

3. Endlessly blathers about "bi-partisanship" instead of fighting back against his enemies which is endlessly frustrating and depressing to his allies and supporters!

THIS IS A WAR. They started it, and "our general" isn't leading the fight! That's what pisses me off the most! He's like Chamberlain at Munich -- instant total grovelling and unilateral disarmament in the face of threat.

So the usual "We need to have a national conversation on race" keeps popping up.

I agree, as long as the conversation includes the topic:

"The modern Southern Strategy - how Republicans are using their media infrastructure to peel off white Democratic voters by stoking racial fears"

Tanstaafl,

I had a more complete response, but this stupid thread chewed it up. WM needs to get a better commenting platform, like at DKos or TPM.

Anywho, the skinny is that Vilsack represents the Obama administration. All a part of "The buck stops here."

If Vilsack didn't consult with the higher-ups, he must have thought that the Inner Circle would have wanted him to fire her. At best, it's a horrible miscommunication. A worse scenario is where Rahm or someone actually advised him to fire her. Pick your poison.

The truth in American politics is this: If you act like the opposition is more powerful than you, THEY ARE MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU.

Do I think Obama gave the order to fire Sherrod? I doubt it. But somewhere in his administration there is an attitude that places placating the rightwing noise machine above the career of a dedicated public servant. He need to eradicate that train of thought immediately, and ruthlessly.

It's killing him politically.

Here's some of what the NAACP said: We concur with US Agriculture Secretary Vilsack in accepting the resignation of Shirley Sherrod for her remarks at a local NAACP Freedom Fund banquet.
The reaction from many in the audience is disturbing. We will be looking into the behavior of NAACP representatives at this local event and take any appropriate action.
We thank those who brought this to our national office’s attention, as there are hundreds of local fundraising dinners each year.

"The reaction from many in the audience is disturbing" -- that is a part of the story that critics of Breitbart don't appreciate. Breitbart's story was directed against NAACP, as he clearly announced before he released the video.

MatthewRMarler,

Wrong on a couple of points.

""The reaction from many in the audience is disturbing" -- that is a part of the story that critics of Breitbart don't appreciate."

The reaction from many in the audience wasn't disturbing in the least. They were listening to and applauding an inspirational tale of how one black lady once realised that she was doing less than she could for someone based on his attitude to her and the colour of his skin, and quickly realised how wrong that was. The hack-job Breitbart did on her stripped out all the context and made it look like anti-white racism. There's nothing you can 'appreciate' about that, you can only condemn it, as the NAACP quickly did. When the truth came out, the NACCP turned their condemnation on the people who deserved it.

"Breitbart's story was directed against NAACP, as he clearly announced before he released the video."

Both true and false. He was certainly trying to deflect the NAACP's earlier condemnation of the obvious racism within the Tea Party Movement, that's his job, but his vehicle for doing so was the deliberate destruction of a woman's life and reputation using maliciously re-edited video clips. He was the one accusing Sherrod of racism when he released it, he was the one saying how this 'proved' the NAACP was biased against white people.

I appreciate that Breitbart is a shameless and race-obsessed liar, but that's about it.

Typical MathewRMarler... use a quote from the NAACP from before they reviewed the full video of her speach and determined that Sherrod was telling the truth about her speech and that... A) the video clip left out the part that came after in which she described going out of her way to help them despite her initial inclination not to do so... and B)the video clip also left the part that came before in which she indicated to the audience what the ultimate outcome would be.