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.