For good clean fun, go read this Ed Morrisey post and count the factual errors and outright lies.
Here’s a partial list of lies and errors from just a quick reading:
1.) Ben Jealous was in the audience for the speech (Way to go Ed, trusting Jim Hoft!).
2.) It was an accident that Sherrod was “caught in the middle” when she was specifically targeted.
3.) That the NAACP “started” things by pointing out racist elements in the tea party.
4.) That the NAACP claimed the the entire tea party movement was racist.
5.) That the point of showing the speech was the audience reaction.
6.) That the WH demanded her resignation.
7.) That Sherrod has no role in the controversy (the first sentences in the original Breitbart piece accuse her of being racist).
I’m sure I’ve missed a few. I’m hard pressed to figure out how Ed could get more shit wrong in one post. Is he jockeying for a job with Fox News or the RNC?
TR
There’s a difference?
strandedvandal
I am hearing #6 repeated more and more from liberals as another reason Obama is teh suck. The phrase used to be, “Facts have a well known liberal bias.” Not so much anymore it seems.
Kryptik
Don’t worry, he’ll never be called on it in a way that holds him accountable. Not like he said he had experienced racism and it changed the way he acted, after all.
No consequences for absolute bullshit.
Bobby Thomson
Not a clear lie or error. This is still She said/She said territory. And I’m more inclined to believe Sherrod, frankly.
MattF
There’s also the way racism in the Tea Party is all due to “fringe elements that have been repeatedly and loudly repudiated by Tea Party activists.”
‘Cept, um, when they’re not, um, fringe or repudiated.
superking
CNN
Comrade Mary
I believe that she is truthfully repeating what she was told by someone at USDA. I am not yet convinced that person was telling the truth. Big difference.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Here’s another logical inconsistancy I just realized from this story:
If Briebart is now claiming that it was some random “citizen journalist” who handed him the video, how did he have the full video and was waiting for “approval” to post the full video? And If he did have the full video, when did he get it?
cleek
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac:
i’d love to know the answer to that, too.
Bobby Thomson
@Comrade Mary: Fair point, but until Cook is forced to walk that back (whether truthful or not), it’s quite a stretch to say that it’s an outright lie.
danimal
The rout is on. They (the Wurlitzer) always come up with a stable full of horse manure when they are caught. Often, they get away with it; this time it won’t work. Keep calling BS on them while people are paying attention.
Bella Q
@Bobby Thomson: But believing Shirley Sherrod doesn’t change that. I don’t doubt her; what I doubt is that Cook was *actually* acting on behalf of the White House as she told Sherrod. It doesn’t ring true the way a panicked decision by Vilsack and Cook does. Of course they claimed it was on behalf of the White House – Sherrod was resisting.
Warren Terra
It’s a sign of progress when he says the NAACP started it by being mean to the Tea Party, because his readers surely believe the NAACP started it much earlier when they criticized American apartheid.
ellaesther
That NAACP! Damn them for starting all this! What with the slave ships and the whip and the Jim Crow laws and the racist signs at Tea Party rallies! Damn them all to hell!
Bobby Thomson
@Bella Q:
I disagree, but I agree that you may be right that this is the way things went down.
However, as I remarked above, unless and until Cook says “Yes, I said that to Ms. Sherrod, but it was a lie,” it’s hard to say that #6 is a baldfaced lie – at least without implicitly calling Sherrod a liar.
Bill Murray
@Bella Q: and of course White House could mean many different people. But in the end the buck stops with the President, it’s the bad side of Unitary Executive power
Allison W.
@Bobby Thomson:
Sherrod said she was told the WH wanted her to resign. She was told this by Cook or Vilsack. when did she directly accuse the WH?
El Cid
Please front page the Obama ice cream black power Kenyonesian jihad that the librul media is ignoring, [a threat we here at B-J are aware of] thanks to Davis X. Machina.
How many frontal attacks on whites in this country are we willing to allow?
Allison W.
@Bobby Thomson:
why is it a stretch?
wyliecoat
Fixed.
Mnemosyne
@Bobby Thomson:
How is it calling Sherrod a liar if we say we think she was lied to?
Allison W.
@wyliecoat:
not if breitbart gets there first.
matoko_chan
@Cole,
this is how they think. the reason Breitbart is about to stroke out over this is that Williams PROVED there are racists in the tea party, and they can’t weasel word around it anymore. They had to issue retractions, which means there are racists in the TPM.
Citizen Alan
I don’t know whether the White House played a direct role in Sherrod’s firing and neither does anyone else here. But I don’t think it’s terribly controversial to point out that that the Obama administration has worked since about five minutes into his presidency (remember Rick Warren) to establish a culture and practice of preemptively groveling before various hard right constituencies in a futile effort to win their support or at least their non-hostility. That none of this ceaseless and embarrassing supplication has ever won Obama any support from the right nor even the slightest cessation of hostility has not deterred the man and his supporters from continuing their fruitless quest to win the favor of bullies by preemptively giving away their lunch money.
Davis X. Machina
“The White House” can be anybody on pages 4-7 of the Plum Book (PDF file). The interns use “The White House” when they order pizza, and want it to arrive still hot.
“The President wants…”, “The President told me to telll you…” — that’s different.
We’ll know all when the memoirs come out.
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid: Obama ordered vanilla. How do you explain that, sir?
Mike Goetz
I’ve just seen a summary of Gibbs’ daily briefing. Apparently, Gibbs offered her an apology from the podium and said that Vilsack is attempting to get in touch with her. When he does, he will also apologize and they will “discuss further steps,” presumably the restoration of her job.
Pseudonym
@Omnes Omnibus: And yet he refuses to put the controversy to rest by releasing the long-form receipt. I wonder why that is, hmmmmm…
Warren Terra
@ El Cid
This delicious frozen creamy racism shall not stand!
Omnes Omnibus
@Pseudonym: It is irresponsible not to speculate. The helicopters are not laughing.
El Cid
@Omnes Omnibus:
An obvious signal to the gelato sleeper cells to continue preparing for their all-out double churned assault.
Bobby Thomson
@Mnemosyne: My original point was that #6 is different in kind than everything else on John’s list. Every other point on that list is undeniably wrong.
You think that #6 is wrong, and you have pointed to facts that are consistent with your (plausible) conclusion. You may even be right. But at this point, it’s impossible to say that #6 is conclusively wrong. And the harder you press the point, the more that at least some of the focus swings back to Sherrod, rightly or wrongly.
Davis X. Machina
Remember, comrades, Chairman Mao teaches us that power comes from the muzzle of a waffle cone. That guerrillas must move like jimmies (that’s ‘sprinkles’ for you flatlanders) across the surface of a two-scoop.
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid: Channeling Beck, are we?
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina:
They must sink in and stay in place? I am but a simple man from the land of frozen custard and your dialectic reason is beyond me. But I will follow your glorious lead in the name of the Party and the Revolution.
Davis X. Machina
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, shit — they’re not jimmies, they’re ants!
Bender
Why would you call The Sainted Ms. Sherrod a liar?
SANCHEZ: Did she [agriculture undersecretary Cheryl Cook] tell you that the White House wanted you out –
SHERROD: Yes.
SANCHEZ: — because a right-wing commentator was about to do a story about you?
SHERROD: The last time when I asked her, when she told me, I said, “Cheryl, what happened?” She said, “Well, when Glenn Beck said you would be on his show tonight, that did it.“
Obama acted stupidly.
cleek
@Bender:
it’s not about questioning Sherrod’s story, i think everybody assumes she’s reporting what she heard. rather, people are wondering if perhaps the person on the other end of the phone invoked “The White House” as a way to apply pressure to Sherrod even though the White House itself might not have been directly involved.
maya
@Citizen Alan: Exactly!
When, Mr President, can we expect you to stand and fight rather than appease, November 3rd?
gypsy howell
@Citizen Alan:
In a related story, slipping by under the radar are the new federal regulations eliminating abortion coverage in state high-risk insurance pools. Wouldn’t want to risk pissing off the people who are never, ever in a million years going to vote for you anyway, while tossing all the pro-choice folks who did vote for you by the wayside.
maya
cleek,
WH Press Sect. Gibb’s apology to Sherrod at the WH briefing today answers the question, doesn’t it?
frankdawg
I spent some time in a Congressional office & saw an sr. aide talking to some functionary at the VA. The conversation was about resolving a conflict between a veteran in the Congressman’s district & the VA. The aide said several times “Can you look into this for me? or Can you fix this for him?” and was getting nowhere. He was transferred to some higher up & after explaining the problem said “We
want this taken care of” BANG – it was done.
My guess is the assholes in Vilsaks office used the same stunt – maybe because some asshole in the WH pulled it on them.
Years later I thought about that conversation after hearing that mob guys would introduce someone they knew as a friend of MINE and a fellow mobster as a friend of OURS.
Bender
@cleek:
Then they aren’t listening to the White House its-own-self:
The speed of the White House response isn’t something they’d praise themselves for if the White House didn’t have anything to do with the speed of the response, would it? And the speedy response was demanding Sherrod’s resignation.
Bender
@maya:
Did he say that the White House “acted stupidly?”
kommrade reproductive vigor
You know, I really hope they don’t think “The brown people was pickin’ on us so we retaliated by scalping one of them” is orginal or clever (or not racist).
Since they’re bent on repeating history I may have to repeat some family history. The part that involves my great-grandparents, a shot gun and staying up all night because the Klan was roaming the neighborhood.
Bender
That’s the funny-in-the-tragedy. The White House fired her because they were afraid Beck was going to crucify her for being racist…but instead he defended her against Breitbart and criticized the administration for wrongly and hastily firing her.
It’s like a plot written by Larry David.
Gus
@matoko_chan: Breitbart is always on the verge of stroke. That’s one disturbed, angry motherfucker.
irritable
Ann Coulter has explained Breitbart’s error.
He was set up.
An (imaginary) Commie Liberal God-hater persuaded him (against his better judgment, and with great reluctance) to defame Sherrod.
Little did he know (because he was somehow forbidden to see the whole video tape) that the excerpt was grossly misleading.
You see, the CLG-Hater unfairly exploited Breitbart’s inability to refrain from promulgating a falsehood! Typical!
So like, is that clear now?
Graphictruth
@cleek: Hah.
…and how, exactly, could we know that the date stamps on the evidence provided was credible. I don’t think I’d take the word of anything short of an independent computer forensic lab on that one.
But that’s what subpoenas are for!