The
USDA/Andrew Breitbart/Fox News race-baiting story has so many angles.
The basics: Shirley Sherrod, a USDA employee, told a story at an NAACP gathering in March about an incident 24 years ago in a previous job where she had to help a white farmer stave off foreclosure. She describes how the incident helped to to overcome her own biases and help the white family to save their farm. Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted an edited version of the speech that made it seem as Ms. Sherrod was a racist who wouldn't help whites.
You should be familiar with Breitbart, the guy who hired two people to pose as a pimp and a prostitute to frame community organization ACORN. As a result of Breitbart's actions, Congress defunded ACORN and forced it out of business. It was later revealed (though scantly reported, especially by the New York Times - presumably out of embarrassment) that the videos were a heavily-edited scam seeking to make ACORN look bad.
After Breitbart posted the video, Fox News predictably jumped on it. Fox has been pushing a racial agenda in the last few weeks, between the
fear-mongering over the New Black Panther Party and the
NAACP's resolution condemning racism in some elements of the Tea Party.
Following the Fox News leap, someone in government - and who that "someone" is is in doubt - almost immediately forced Ms. Sherrod to resign.
This issue hopefully brings to a head several disturbing trends in American politics. Let's examine:
1) The rise of 'gotcha' politics based on edited materials or outright set-ups. The most obvious of these is the Breitbart ACORN hoax where a motivated political blogger was able to set up and bring down an organization not for criminal activity, but simply because he disagreed with their agenda.
Breitbart posted this heavily-edited video in response to the NAACP finally going after the racist elements in the Tea Party movement. He's part of a disturbing trend to try to paint blacks as oppressors holding white America down. In a real way, the Tea Party and Fox News are mainstreaming the agenda of the white supremacists.
2) The media's insistance on playing every issue as if there are two legitimate sides. Make no mistake, these movements have always existed. It's the national exposure that is different. The rise of the Internet and Internet-based media has given these people exposure. Couple that with the media's insistence on treating every issue as having two equal sides, like SportsCenter for politics, has given these hate-filled people a platform.
There are not always two equal sides. There certainly are not here. There is the truth and there is a lie and there is a woman whose life has been thrown into chaos because Breitbart lied and the media didn't do their job.
3) The media abdicating their traditional role as a watchdog. In many ways, this is the most troubling. Breitbart is a known and proven liar and Fox News is an obvious Republican shill. Yet the rest of the mainstream media runs with his claims with no checks, no investigation, no vetting. In pursuit of being the first, they neglect their basic duties. When investigative journalism is no longer the role of the mainstream media and in a world where Rolling Stone is now breaking major stories (and doing excellent analysis - this means you, Matt Taibbi), there is an obvious problem.
Murrow is spinning like a dynamo right now.
4) The media's lack of acceptance of their role once the lie is uncovered (by someone else) and their insistance on playing every issue as if there are two legitimate sides. Watching MSNBC's Tamryn Hall in the 11 o'clock hour today, she embarrassed herself. Even at this late hour, when the scope of the lie and the duping of the media is exposed, she still pretends that there are two sides. In introducing an "interview" with Breitbart, she mentions the ACORN tapes but fails to mention that Breitbart has been proven a liar and that the ACORN tapes are a hoax.
Even when pressed on the media's role, she constantly shifts blame to the administration. While the administration - if it did get involved (which is not proven yet) - is wrong, the administration was pushed by the huge media coverage of what turned out to be a non-issue. the media sreadfastly refuses to accept their roles as investigator and gate-keeper. They'll rightly take praise when they get it right, but they will not accept blame when their Pavlovian reactions are at the center of the problem.
Of course, in order for the situation to improve, the media as a whole will have to take a look at itself and it's practices, accept blame and responsibility for their failings and, most importantly, make the hard steps necessary to change. This includes risking the wrath of Fox News and the hard right.
Which means the situation isn't going to improve.
*******UPDATE********
Andrew Breitbart
responds:
"I’m sympathetic that they went after her and not the NAACP. ... For the NAACP to conspicuously play the race card for political purposes is wrong, and the goal was to show that here’s evidence of racist behavior"
Right. It's about the NAACP. It's about a 12% minority holding back a 75% majority. Sure it is.
In his own way, however, Breitbart is telling the truth. It IS about the NAACP, and his desire to do to them what he did to ACORN. It's about removing obstacles to power. It's about removing those voices that tell us what we ought to be doing. It's about removing anything that might inspire guilt in the American psyche. It's about accumulating as much wealth and power in as few hands (as long as two of those hands are yours) as possible.
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