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In case you missed it, Fox has been agog over the release of some “exposé” video of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s sensitivity training. Needless to say, the "fair and balanced" network doesn't bother to go into the history of racism and discrimination at the USDA that led to a major class action civil rights case and settlement. On Fox & Friends Weekend, Tucker Carlson presented the training as left-wing brainwashing that violates the civil rights of white people.

In 2010, the Washington Post reported:

The USDA's relationship with minorities has been fraught for decades. Nearly eight years ago, black farmers took over a regional office in Brownsville, Tenn., to protest the agency's pace in processing their loan applications. Under the Bush administration, the agriculture secretary appointed a civil rights director, a practice that continues in the Obama era.

Plus, there was the whole Shirley Sherrod thing.

But you’d never know any of that from watching Carlson and his guest, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, “the group that exposed this tape.” It’s also the group that seems to believe no excuse is too flimsy to suggest that President Obama should be impeached.

CARLSON: The theme that underlies this whole video is that white men are bad. How is that a federal contractor gets to make a racist case like this and take federal money and no one says anything about it?

…If you swapped out ‘white males’ for any other group in American society and you held a seminar like this at a federal agency, you’d have the Justice Department on you in about 20 minutes, don’t you think?

Naturally, Fitton thought so. But, as head of Judicial Watch, he had a broader mission: to make this about the Obama administration. “This seminar is full of racial hostility,” he said. “It goes on throughout the government. This is just the tip of the iceberg. This is one component of one agency in the federal government. …This is standard operating procedure for the diversity cult that is infecting our government, major corporations.”

But Carlson, feigning bewilderment, “just wondered” why the government is doing this (without bothering to lift a finger to find out) before going on to suggest that the whole point is to make race relations worse:

I thought the whole idea of electing President Obama was that America could move past this kind of divisive talk, that we would rise above our history and yet we’re wallowing in the worst parts of it here. Why?

…If you’re a participant in one of these seminars and you spend all day hearing about how white men are bad, wouldn’t at the end you feel a little hostility toward white men? Is there any surprise that our race relations are still bad?

Fitton said, ”They highlight the differences between people as opposed to the things that unite us.”

That’s completely wrong, of course. The obvious point of the training, as seen in the clip aired in this segment, is to get people, including the white majority, to understand other perspectives and broaden their own – which can lead to unity. It speaks volumes that this would be poison to the ears of Carlson and Fitton.

Yet, as is the genius of Fox News, Fitton and Carlson didn't just argue against the training. They used it to play the racial/governmental victims in order to advance their own hostile, divisive agenda: painting the (Obama-headed) federal government as some kind of stealth Affirmative Action juggernaut riding roughshod over white people and their money.

Fitton made that point explicitly at the end: I think these types of programs lead to increased disputes about racial discrimination and hostility that are really baseless. …It’s a major problem in our federal government. …This is a lot of what goes on in Washington, in terms of everyday government and what bureaucrats do each and every day. And we need to talk about it more.

Thanks to Fox News, it's almost certain he'll have plenty of opportunity to do so.

BWAHAHAHAHA. After Andrew Breitbart filed to have Shirley Sherrod's lawsuit dismissed on fairly ridiculous grounds, the court ruled Wednesday that Sherrod had standing to go forward with it.

TPMMuckraker:

Reached on his cell phone by TPM, Breitbart said he hadn't yet heard of the judge's decision but would take a look and get back in touch if he had any comment.Sherrod sued Breitbart over an out-of-context video he posted of her on his Big Government website which made a story she told about overcoming racial prejudice sound like she was advocating for discriminating against whites.

Breitbart told TPM back in March that he stood by everything he's said about Sherrod and that he was excited for the discovery phase of the lawsuit.

I'm so looking forward to the discovery phase myself. I'd love, for instance, to find out who Breitbart's anonymous editor was.

I can't wait to hear Breitbart defend the way his site does business:

Andrew Breitbart, the owner of several conservative Web sites, was served at the conference on Saturday with a lawsuit filed by Shirley Sherrod, the former Agriculture Department employee who lost her job last year over a video that Mr. Brietbart posted at his site biggovernment.com.

The video was selectively edited so that it appeared Ms. Sherrod was confessing she had discriminated against a farmer because he was white. In the suit, which was filed in Washington on Friday, Ms. Sherrod says the video has damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work.

Mr. Breitbart said in a statement that he “categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech.”

A gracious and healing letter.

Not long ago, I sat here in my living room in Albany, Georgia for an afternoon of deep conversation with NAACP President Benjamin Jealous. As he has done in public, Ben movingly apologized for the fact that the NAACP was initially hoodwinked by Breitbart and Fox into supporting my removal. I told him what I want to tell you.

Sorry for the picture, but you'll understand later in the post.

UPDATE: Pezzi is the King of the Internet!

When I did a panel with Breitbart, he got off on yelling the word "racist" over and over again because he felt that would weaken the meaning behind the word. Conservatives just hate being called racists for some reason. Hmmmmm, wonder why. Breitbart, after all, has only spent most of his time and resources attacking organizations that benefit African Americans and poor people -- all so he can prove that the real racists in post-racial America are black and brown people. Instead of waving the 'Bloody Shirt,' he should just be upfront about his loathing of nonwhites. You can read more about this in Chapter 4 of our book, Over The Cliff.

Breitbart's latest hire, Kevin Pezzi, represents what this man is all about. You know the old cliche, Be all that you can be? Well, he's everything a wingnut could be. And he's even cured cancer!

(corrected) Ben Dimiero & Eric Hananoki: Meet Breitbart's Sherrod writer: Racist sexual "expert" and inventor (who cured cancer)

In two posts on Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment website, Dr. Kevin Pezzi smears Shirley Sherrod as a racist, claiming that "if someone deserves to be put on a pedestal for overcoming racism, it isn't Sherrod." The racism criticism is ironic coming from Pezzi, who has repeatedly used racial epithets like "Japs" and "Chinks," and claimed Native and African Americans should have been grateful for their subjugation by whites.

Pezzi, who says that "Breitbart asked me to write for BigGovernment.com," has a peculiar self-described history. Pezzi claims to be responsible for "over 850 inventions" and schemes such as a "magic bullet" for cancer, a "robotic chef," and sexual inventions like "penile enlargement techniques" and "ways to tighten the vagina" (because "men like women with tight vaginas"). Pezzi has started multiple websites, from term paper helpers to a sexual help site that answers "your questions about sexual attraction, pleasure, performance, and libido" (Pezzi is qualified to do so because "No doctor in the world knows more about sexual pleasure than I do").

Pezzi also claims to have "beaten Bill Gates" on a math aptitude test, turned down a blind date with Katie Couric, and says he's "bigger than some porno stars."...read on

Read all about him in Eric's post, it's almost unbelievable. And for the kicker, he's a major league sock puppet to boot.

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That loud PLOP you just heard was Andrew Breitbart crapping a brick at this news:

Ousted Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod says she will sue a conservative blogger who posted an edited video of her making racially tinged remarks last week.

Sherrod made the announcement Thursday in San Diego at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention.

This is long overdue; frankly, I always felt that both Van Jones and ACORN officials should have sued Fox and/or Breitbart after they were smeared, just so that they will think twice before smearing other people in the future. So Sherrod will be carrying the burden forward for many of us on the progressive left who have been victimized by these crooks and liars.

Attoney Michael Yaki at City Brights thinks so too:

Defamation law clearly puts Breitbart in a tough position. He deliberately aired a video that was edited in a way to put Sherrod in a very bad light. Breitbart even said on Fox News that the purpose of the tape was to show that racism existed in the NAACP, even though the speech Sherrod gave was precisely the opposite -- it was about overcoming prejudice and stereotypes. Before the tape, Sherrod was not a public figure for whom a higher legal threshold of "actual malice" would be required, though in this case it would be hard to say that malice or a reckless disregard to the truth wasn't present.

Fox, by way of offering Breitbart a forum, may be similarly at risk. Under the "republication" doctrine, Fox may be as liable as Breitbart for recklessly running (and rerunning) the doctored footage.

There is no excuse for those liberals who so quickly threw Sherrod under the bus without the benefit of hearing her side of the story. But while inexcusable, the fact remains that but for Andrew Breitbart, who deliberately manufactured this story and dressed it up with racist overtones, people today would have no idea who Shirley Sherrod is or what she does. And she'd still be at her old job.

Sometimes in the law you get the perfect test case. Shirley Sherrod's high tech railroading by Breitbart offers an unprecedented opportunity to make an example of the right wing's repeated distortion and discoloration of the facts. At the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights I've watched my right-wing colleagues and their media friends misrepresent and inflame the paltry facts that constitute the New Black Panther Party investigation. But while my conservative colleagues flail around like psychotic berserkers in the Panther proceedings, they have yet to cause collateral damage to anything but the truth. That is not the case with Ms. Sherrod, who suffered public vilification, private harassment and humiliation, and who was pressured to leave her job.

Instead of discrediting Andrew Brietbart for being a lying liar that hurts people, CNN's Kyra Phillips thinks the Shirley Sherrod story means we need to attack anonymous bloggers for their indiscretions. WTF? If a liberal blogger had released a phony video that targeted a Republican in the same way as Breitbart did, the outrage that would have followed from the media would have been cataclysmic. But when it's done by a conservative hitman ... crickets.

Phillips calls anonymous bloggers cowards, but what does that make Andrew Breitbart? I wonder if MSMers are really that naive? Breitbart smeared ACORN and essentially destroyed the one organization in this country dedicated to enrolling minority voters with doctored videos -- and yet he was positively celebrated for his efforts, and never faced any accountability when the entire smear was proven a fraud. Then he led the video smear of Sherrod. Who has been anonymous in any of these stories? We know all too exactly who smeared Sherrod. Why is CNN focusing on a nonexistent issue?

Anchors Kyra Phillips and John Roberts discussed the “mixed blessing of the Internet,” and agreed that there should be a crackdown on anonymous bloggers who disparage others on the internet. “There are so many great things that the internet does and has to offer, but at the same time, Kyra, as you know, there is this dark side,” Roberts said. “Imagine what would have happened if we hadn’t taken a look at what happened with Shirley Sherrod and plumbed the depths further and found out that what had been posted on the internet was not in fact reflective of what she said.” But Phillips replied that the mainstream media “can’t always do that.” “There’s going to have be a point in time where these people have to be held accountable,” Phillips said. “How about all these bloggers that blog anonymously? They say rotten things about people and they’re actually given credibility, which is crazy. They’re a bunch of cowards, they’re just people seeking attention.”

Matt Yglesias writes:

The whole reason you might think anonymous bloggers would be a problem is that they could make stuff up and nobody would know who they were in order to sanction them. In this case, though, there’s nothing anonymous about Andrew Breitbart so this problem shouldn’t exist. Except instead of sanctioning Andrew Breitbart, a specific individual with a specific name, and the other specific institutions (who employ specific individuals with names) CNN’s team is lashing out vaguely at “the internet” and “anonymous bloggers.” The issue here, however, is primarily Andrew Breitbart. To a secondary extent, it’s Fox News and conservative talk radio. And to a broader extent it’s a conservative movement that continues to celebrate Breitbart and Fox News despite their legacy of inaccuracy and race-baiting. Anonymous bloggers have nothing to do with anything.

The rage used to be focused on people leaving anonymous comments on websites, but CNN uses a false equivalency to turn it into bloggers. Why doesn't CNN denounce Breitbart and lead the way to discredit any such political operatives who act in a dishonest way?

Paul Krugman catches Mort Zuckerman engaging in the Mini-Breitbart.

I think this is telling. This is the only actual example of Obama’s alleged demonization of business that Zuckerman offers — and it’s essentially a mini-Breitbart, a quote taken out of context to make it seem as if Obama was saying something he wasn’t. That’s typical of the whole argument.

Oh, and one more thing: are there no copy editors at the FT? When I quote someone in my column, I supply the source material, and my copy editor checks, not just to be sure that the quote is accurate, but that it’s not taken out of context. But I guess such rules don’t apply if you’re a conservative.

And now we have the Perpetually Wrong Megan McArdle applying the mini-Breitbart in her own fashion.

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Aren't we all so very grateful for privileged white men who have never known what it's like to be an oppressed minority to inform us what is or is not racism? It's so nice not to have to worry my pretty little mind about things like this, but just let those smart white guys tell me when to worry.

On Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz is charged with looking at the way the media covers news events of the day. Since it was the major story of the week, it was no surprise that the Shirley Sherrod case came up from discussion.

But, as with David Brooks on Meet the Press, the discussion really wasn't about the failures of the media in covering the case. Both Joan Walsh and Jane Hall try to make that point and get interrupted by Kurtz and Matt Lewis, eager to keep pointing the finger at the White House. In fact, they push even further the same false equivalency theme, with Lewis (who writes for Breitbart's BigGovernment.com) claiming that the real victims are Andrew Breitbart and the Tea Party.

They even go so far to ask if Shirley Sherrod had the right to call Andrew Breitbart a racist and is the media giving her "a pass" for using that kind of language.

WALSH: The woman's father was murdered by a white farmer, and there were witnesses. And the white justice system never found the murderer guilty. She's entitled to talk about race any way she wants to.

LEWIS: Any way she wants to?

WALSH: That's not giving her a pass.

LEWIS: So if you've had a bad experience in your background, you can say just anything you want?

WALSH: Yes, any way she wants to. A bad experience in your background? I'm talking about murder. Murder, Matt.

And the fact of the matter is, the woman turned out to be the antithesis of Andrew Breitbart, who told a story of racial reconciliation and healing and forgiving white people, and going on to help white people --

LEWIS: I just don't think any of us should get --

WALSH: -- and going on to -- the issue in this country --

LEWIS: I just don't think any of us should get a pass to talk about --

WALSH: -- is class as much as race. I'm not giving her a pass. But I think the idea that she shouldn't be able to say Fox or Breitbart is racist preposterous. She gets to say that because it's true, and because from her vantage point it's especially true.

KURTZ: Well, in fairness, it's certainly debatable.

Excuse me, but WTF, Howie? There is nothing fair about that statement. This is a woman who has endured INSTITUTIONALIZED racism her whole life--watching the murderer of her father go free by a white grand jury, who organized and was then denied the ability to create a cooperative for black farmers, who ultimately lost her family farm because of Lester Maddox denying loans to black farmers, who was part of the largest successful civil rights violation lawsuit in the US, whose husband was a leading member of non-violent coordination in Georgia during the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, as the visibly seething Joan Walsh points out. Shirley Sherrod has lived with and tried to rise above the oppression and bigotry that you can't even contemplate, taking responsibility to make the world better for those who come after her.

But privileged Caucasian Howie Kurtz, sitting comfortably in his DC digs with his Republican fundraiser wife, can decide that it's "debatable" whether Shirley Sherrod, who has spent her life trying to help those who are poor and oppressed (rather than navel-gazing on the role of the media), knows racism when she sees it.

Howie Kurtz is earning scorn from both the right and the left for his grasp of the Sherrod firestorm. I'm sure he'll say that it proves he's right, since he's angered both sides of the aisle.

But Howie, it just proves that you're wrong, and EVERYONE can see it. Except you.

Transcripts below the fold:

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You can tell that Keith Olbermann scored some serious points in his special comment of last week attacking the wingnuts at Fox News, because Glenn Beck and his radio cohort, Pat Gray, spent a long, long time attacking and deriding it and giggling at it the next day.

Somehow, the doofuses at the Right Scoop concluded that this display destroyed Olbermann and made Beck look good. Watch the video and judge for yourself.

Some things stand out as pretty obvious:

1. Beck really is stupid. Who else would purposely conflate Alfred Dreyfus with Richard Dreyfuss? Obviously Beck knows the difference -- the fact that he knows this is French history makes clear he knows about the Dreyfus case. (And in fact Dreyfuss made a film, Prisoner of Honor about the case -- though he actually played the attorney who obtained Dreyfus' exoneration.) If Beck thinks this kind of obscuranist humor is funny to anyone outside of the control room, he's every bit the moron he seems to think Olbermann is.
2. Speaking of which, Keith Olbermann did indeed graduate from an ag school -- at Cornell. Considering that Glenn Beck couldn't even make it through a single semester of college ... well, let's just say he's not exactly in any position to deride anyone else's education. (And besides, what does Beck have against agricultural colleges? Sarah Palin graduated from one too, dude.)
3. The Dreyfus affair was not just French history, nor even merely world history. It was one of the more significant points in history, period -- a seminal point in terms of institutionalized racism, specifically anti-Semitism, in government, and one of the most significant precursors of the Holocaust. The fact that the analogy just blows right by Beck and Gray -- them with their giggling and exaggerated rolling "r"s of Breitbart -- just shows them to be the ignoramuses they are proud of being.
4. Finally, we know Beck said he dried out, but are we sure? This looked more like two stoned teenagers finding everything they say hilarious when no one else does.

Beck thinks he can just laugh at his critics and everyone will just laugh along. But first he has to explain what's actually funny. Which, of course, is never very funny to anyone else.

[H/t Nicole for the input.]

Joe Conason points out that the New York Times never quite got around to reporting the revelations that showed Andrew "Dim" Breitbart's ACORN videos were carefully edited to show wrongdoing. This nasty, scum-sucking piece of work has gotten away with it one too many times and I think this would be a really good time for them to rectify that omission, don't you?

For months, Breitbart continued to resist every request that he release the full, unedited ACORN videotapes, which ought to have alerted editors and producers that something was wrong. But then in the course of the California investigation, Brown struck a plea deal with O’Keefe, who was in jeopardy of indictment for violating the state’s privacy laws. (According to Brown’s final report, "the facts presented here strongly suggests that O’Keefe and Giles violated state privacy laws and provides fair warning to them and others that this type of activity can be prosecuted in California.") The plea agreement deal forced O’Keefe to turn over the complete set of tapes to state investigators. Brown’s verdict on their misuse was scathing. "The evidence illustrates that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality," he said. "Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor."

Meanwhile, Times public editor Clark Hoyt, like his colleagues in other mainstream outlets, has been forced to acknowledge gross errors in the paper’s coverage – such as the false claim, encouraged by Breitbart and Fox, that O’Keefe went into the ACORN offices "dressed so outlandishly [as a pimp] that he might have been playing in a risqué high school play." In fact, the filmmaker never wore his ridiculous pimp regalia into a single ACORN office, always dressing instead like a buttoned-down junior accountant.

Amazingly, the New York Times never covered the Harshbarger report and gave little or no coverage to the other deconstructions of the Big Government “scoop” by law enforcement. Last March, when Hoyt finally offered an excuse for the failure of the Times to adequately correct and explain the complex truth behind Breitbart’s ACORN scam, it sounded weak:

The report by Harshbarger…was not covered by The Times. It should have been, but the Acorn/O’Keefe story became something of an orphan at the paper. At least 14 reporters, reporting to different sets of editors, have touched it since last fall. Nobody owns it. Bill Keller, the executive editor, said that, “sensing the story would not go away and would be part of a larger narrative,” the paper should have assigned one reporter to be responsible for it.”

Since then much more evidence has emerged, without generating the kind of reassessment that is overdue. Now Breitbart has struck again, manipulating a gullible media establishment and a frightened administration in an attempt to destroy the reputation of an innocent federal employee.

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