Pathological: Breitbart feels "sorry" that "the media" made Sherrod fiasco "about her"
July 21, 2010 12:36 pm ET by Simon Maloy
It was already foolish to hope that Andrew Breitbart would express any sort of contrition for his starring role in the unjustified destruction of Shirley Sherrod's livelihood and reputation, but now he's saying that it was "the media" that made the story "about her," and that he "feels bad" about that.
As reported by TPM Media's Rachel Slajda:
Andrew Breitbart, who posted the clip of USDA official Shirley Sherrod that got her fired, said today that he feels sorry for Sherrod.
"I feel bad that they made this about her, and I feel sorry that they made this about her," he told MSNBC. "Watching how they've misconstrued, how the media has misconstrued the intention behind this, I do feel a sympathy for her plight."
Breitbart says his intention was never to prove that Sherrod, until this week the Georgia state director for rural development, was racist. He says the video he posted proves instead that the NAACP is racist, because of the audience's reaction to her speech.
This is absolutely delusional. There is one person who made the story about Shirley Sherrod -- Andrew Breitbart. In his blog post debuting the now-infamous cropped video of Sherrod, Breitbart attacked the "racism coming from a federal appointee," called her story a "racist tale," and wrote that "Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer." A follow-up post on BigGovernment.com called Sherrod a "racist govt official" and prodded the NAACP to "denounce the racism in the video." And just last night, Breitbart repeatedly suggested that Sherrod is a liar.
Breitbart owes Shirley Sherrod an apology, not false and pernicious sympathies for the vicious treatment she's received at his hands.
Transcript and video of Breitbart's comments to MSNBC below the jump.
BREITBART: I feel bad that they made this about her. And I feel sorry that they made this about her. I'm not sure if that was done because they rushed to judgment or whether they wanted to make it about Shirley versus me, because that's what it's become. But watching how they've misconstrued, the media has misconstrued the intention behind this, I do feel a sympathy for her plight, currently. And I do think she's gone -- when you look at the full video and you look at the video that was excerpted, you see that she mentions that she went through some type of a transformation. So I'm sympathetic to her that she's caught in this plight right now. I'm sympathetic to the fact that they went after her and not after the NAACP.
- First, by shifting the focus from a PERSON whose character has been defamed to an organization, he avoids litigation. Organizations have a higher threshold than individuals.
- Second, his real goal all along has been to promote the meme that the Tea Party (sic) is no different than the NAACP. I guess the name White People's Party doesn't seem, ah, palatable to most people, so they're using the Tea Party name as a code name.
- At some point someone will ask who supplied him this magic video and the idea that there's a story here. It will certainly come up in a deposition. Andrew better think hard today about who he's going to protect and what that's worth.
- At some point we will be able to trace the genealogy of that video, where the clip was transcribed, the transcription edited, the video conformed to the edited transcript, and then passed to Breitbart for his final edit and sweetening sessions.
- I assert that Breitbart and those for whom he is shilling are betting no deposition will be done prior to the November elections and this will gain them more than it costs them.
- If we take Breitbart at his word that he had not seen the entire video, which I think is merely narrow parsing that he only saw 44:59 of a 45:00 video, he seems to think he has plausible deniability. The GMA video demonstrates the man is swimming in flop-sweat and everything he says only sinks him deeper. He thinks he's on FauxNoise playing to a friendly crowd when in reality he's in a courtroom in a public deposition with a very angry jury.
Yep, I agree. He crapped and then stepped right in it...which is what you get when your whole life and career is based on partisan hackery.
He can't even get his "seems" right.
It really is incredible. On monday they were all calling her every name in the book and calling for her to be fired, crucified, whatever. On Wedenesday they are lecturing the white house for over reacting and throwing her under the bus without checking out the story! Who made this lie a headline again?
What were you trying to do Breitbart? Oh, I know, you were trying to get attention for YOURSELF, and to show how relevant you are.
Mission fail Andrew. You made yourself look even more dumb. You should know when to STFU. You're making it worse for yourself is what's happening here.