Another Failed Attempt To Defend Breitbart's Smear Attacks on Sherrod

A blogger who calls herself "Liberty Chick" attempts to respond to my post schooling Breitbart-defender Lee Stranahan as follows:

This links to the following:



So she's falling back on the already debunked claim that Breitbart *did* include Sherrod's redemption by mentioning the following quote in his original post:

Eventually, her basic humanity informs her that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from "one of his own kind." She refers him to a white lawyer.

Two problems. First, Glenn Beck actually did include that quote in the radio program, including in the clips played in Stanahan's post claiming that Beck was "lying." This makes it especially ironic that the Breitbart crowd is now claiming that Beck, not Breitbart, is the guy who originally edited the clips out-of-context, since the entire Breitbart defense is based on the claim that Breitbart said she sent the farmer to "one of his kind".

Second, that clip is *not* the part of the story that redeems Sherrod. It pretty clearly is designed to make Sherrod appear racist, as it claims that she referred the farmer to "one of his own kind." I suppose this is why Breitbart continues to call Sherrod "racist" in subsequent interviews. But the actual redemptive part of the story is as follows, and was left out of Breitbart's original video:

SHERROD: So, everything was going along fine -- I'm thinking he's being taken care of by the white lawyer, then they lift the injunction against USDA in May of '87 for two weeks and he was one of 13 farmers in Georgia who received a foreclosure notice. He called me. I said, well, go on and make an appointment at the lawyer. Let me know when it is and I'll meet you there.

So we met at the lawyer's office on the day they had given him. And this lawyer sat there -- he had been paying this lawyer, y'all. That's what got me. He had been paying the lawyer since November, and this was May. And the lawyer sat there and looked at him and said, "Well, y'all are getting old. Why don't you just let the farm go?" I could not believe he said that, so I said to the lawyer -- I told him, I can't believe you said that. I said: It's obvious to me that he cannot file a Chapter 12 bankruptcy to stop this foreclose, you have to file an 11. And the lawyer said to me, I'll do whatever you say -- whatever you think -- that's the way he put it. But he's paying him. He wasn't paying me any money. You know, so he said -- the lawyer said he would work on it.

And then, about seven days before that man would have been sold at the courthouse steps, the farmer called me and said the lawyer wasn't doing anything. And that's when I spent time there in my office calling everybody I could think so to try to see -- help me find the lawyer who would handle this.

I'm not surprised that Liberty Chick would try to jump into the conversation without even being up to speed on the discussion. A typical Breitbot.

Difference Between Media Matters and Stranahan? Media Matters Backs Up Claims

Breitbart coffee-fetcher Lee Stranahan wrote a response to my post debunking his claim that he exposed Glenn Beck lying about his role in the Shirley Sherrod fiasco. Stranahan writes the following:

But here’s the real irony of these idiot “liberals” saying how bad this story makes me look – Eric Boehlert’s employer Media Matters reached exactly the same conclusion I did with LESS research than I included in my post; they put in one short clip, I included 3 from the radio show and 4+ from Beck on TV. And Media Matters for America also used it as an example of Beck making ‘false claims’ in a second post, too. So apparently MMfA is working for Andrew Breitbart now.

What Stranahan doesn't realize, however, is that Media Matters, unlike him, actually found a false statement from Beck to back up their claim that Beck made a false statement.

Recall that Beck spent the beginning of his radio program going along with Breitbart's false narrative of Sherrod being a "racist," but then at the end of the program Beck's co-hosts played Sherrod's statement and said that it looked like it was "taken out of context." Stranahan claimed that this showed that Beck had been lying about his role in the story. However, this is the quote Stranahan used to back up his claim that Beck was lying:

Shirley Sherrod, is the next example. We didn’t rush to condemn her. This is another seemingly “redistribution of wealth” woman — who I would bet that I vehemently disagree with on probably everything. But she asked for the rest of the tape to be heard, the farmers in the story backed her up. It was a turning point story. We defended her and said her side of the story demanded to be heard — because context matters…

This quote, however, is not false. Beck's claim that "we defended her" is true because they did defend Sherrod at the end of the radio program. The other quote Stranahan claims is a "lie" is Beck saying he was "sitting in his office" and decided that there was "something wrong with the story" and therefore decided not to "do" the Sherrod story. First, it's not clear what point Beck was talking about: was he referring to his TV show on Monday, where he did not talk about the story even though it had been up since 11:30 AM that morning? Was he talking about his TV show on Tuesday, when questions had been raised about the veracity of Breitbart's smear tapes but the full tapes had not yet been released? If either of those were what he was referring to, then Stranahan has no proof that he was "lying." And since it's impossible to look into people's minds, he never will have proof that those claims from Beck were lies.

On the other hand, Media Matters actually did locate a false claim from Beck. First, the post Stranahan pastes on his blog post does not claim Beck was lying; it merely points out that Beck did play Breitbart's heavily edited Sherrod clip on his radio show. However, the different post that Stranahan uses to point out that Media Matters said that Beck made "false claims" about the story actually uses a different quote from any of those that Stranahan uses. That post includes the following quote from Beck's radio program:

Instead, the outlets say -- I'm the one jumping to conclusions. I'm the one smearing and lying. Oh, man! You know, last night, they were talking about how I damaged this woman. And I hurt her career. I'm sorry. I think the only time I talked about her, I supported her. That's weird. That is weird.

Since Beck included the hedge words "I think," the bolded text isn't strictly false, but for practical purposes it's false enough since Beck did not support Sherrod at the beginning of his radio program. So Media Matters, unlike Stranahan, correctly identified a clear example of a "false claim," from Beck about the story.

So it turns out that Beck did make a false claim about his role in the story. As you might imagine, I'm not overly upset about this revelation. However, Stranahan accused Beck of "lying" on this issue before he was even able to actually identify an example. So Media Matters still engaged in responsible coverage, and Stranahan did not. And of course all of this is really a distraction from the main point that Breitbart pushed deceptively edited video to try to portray Shirley Sherrod as racist. All of Stranahan's clumsy jumping jacks are really nothing more than a lame attempt to attract attention away from Breitbart's credibility-destroying role in smearing an innocent woman.

Conservative Blogger Exposes Breitbart/Stranahan's Latest Dishonesty About Sherrod Story

Of course, everyone by now knows the story of Andrew Breitbart's websites presenting highly edited video of Shirley Sherrod designed to make her look racist while leaving out the redemptive arc that was the whole point of her original story. But one thing you might not be aware of is that Glenn Beck was actually given credit on that story for acknowledging that the original videos were out of context and correcting the record on his Fox News Show. For example, here's what the New York Times wrote:

The administration’s haste to fire Ms. Sherrod was unfair and unseemly. She told of how an agriculture under secretary phoned her to demand she resign instantly via her BlackBerry. The official anxiously cited the likelihood the furor would “be on Glenn Beck tonight.”

By the time the conservative commentator took up the issue, the full transcript of the speech was out and Mr. Beck was citing Ms. Sherrod — but as a victim of administration recklessness. This time, he was right.

Beck's website The Blaze was also later credited with revealing the fact that James O'Keefe's smear job against NPR was also based on an out-of-context clip where the person was actually quoting someone else (sound familiar?). For these reasons and because Breitbart thinks Beck is trying to grab his share of the conservative media market, Breitbart and his minions have been working overtime to attack Glenn Beck lately.

The latest example was a piece by Breitbart's resident faux liberal Lee Stranahan claiming that Beck told "Out of Control Lies" about the Sherrod fiasco. Actually, it's not really important whether Stranahan is liberal or conservative, because what is beyond doubt at this point is that Stranahan is a completely untrustworthy source of information who endlessly distorts reality to try to defend his employer Breitbart. And his latest on Sherrod is a great example of this.

Stranahan claims that Beck was "lying" when he said that he "didn't rush to condemn" Sherrod and that he held off on the story. Here's Stranahan:

As you’ll see, both of those statements are totally false. Glenn Beck not only didn’t initially defend Sherrod but he actually dropped the entire context that Sherrod’s video clip was originally presented in. Close to a year later, Beck still hasn’t been honest about his initial context dropping attacks on Sherrod.

And later:

This is patently false. Yes – on his TV show on July 20th, Beck defended Sherrod…but as you’ll see, this was after Beck has attacked Sherrod for three segments of his radio show.

And worst of all:

At no point during Beck’s radio show does he do anything that could possibly be construed as defending Shirley Sherrod. Nor does he say anything about waiting to hear her side or waiting to see if more of the video will be released. In fact, at the end of the show Beck taunts Sherrod and says she will be the focus of his TV show that night.

So Stranahan is claiming that Beck attacked Sherrod throughout the radio show, but later pretended that he had reservations about the story from the beginning. Stranahan does acknowledge that he's heard there is a "Fourth Hour" of Beck's radio show available for subscribers, but like a true "Breitbart schmournalist," he doesn't bother to check what's in that fourth hour before declaring that Beck is a liar. Unfortunately for Stranahan, it turns out that, contrary to Stranahan's claims, the radio show did in fact defend Sherrod and say that it looks like the videos were out of context. Here's a short clip showing them doing just that just released from conservative Joe Brooks:

Here's the full fifteen minute version for those who are truly dedicated:


Stranahan also claims at various times that Beck's show used "clip-job" editing. However, Beck included Breitbart's line that Sherrod sent the farmer "to his own kind," which of course is the basis of Breitbart's claim that he included the redemptive arc of Sherrod's story in his original post. In fact, Breitbart tried to make her sound racist even in that part of his post, and the actual redemptive arc was something else entirely.

So while Beck's radio program on July 20th was initially critical of Sherrod, they defended her at the end of the show and, in fact, argued that it looked like she had been wronged and that this was an example of the media taking stories out of context. In other words, Stranahan's attempt at attacking Beck to defend his employer Breitbart was based entirely on falsehoods.

h/t to Joe Brooks for releasing the relevant video.

Shocker: Either Breitbart or Stranahan Isn't Telling the Truth

Not a huge deal, but just to illustrate that these folks have a chronic issue with being dishonest...

In a recent article, Andrew Breitbart claimed that Ariana Huffington reached out to him about blogging at the Huffington Post:

According to Breitbart, the idea for him writing for HuffPo’s front page came directly from the website’s founder, Arianna Huffington herself.

While he was at her house a month or so ago, Huffington floated the idea of her conservative friend writing some more prominent pieces for her site. After thinking about it for a few weeks, Breitbart agreed and published “NPR Is Collateral Damage in Battle to Brand Tea Party” on March 11.

However, Breitbart's blogger Lee Stranahan, whom Breitbart regularly promotes as "the Huffington-Post-blogger-who's-totally-liberal-except-for-hating-Planned-Parenthood-the-NAACP-ACORN-poor-people-Color-of-Change-President-Obama-the-Democratic-Party-Daily-Kos-public-schools-and-NPR" (by the way, if you think this means that maybe Stranahan isn't a liberal, that makes you a "facist"), claims that it was his idea and that he encouraged Breitbart to reach out to Ariana Huffington:

Stranaplant:

The Breitbart thing is partially my fault. I suggested to Andrew that he reach out beyond his normal base and spend a little time writing to people on the other side, specifically at HuffPo. I’ve had a few months now of seeing up close how Andrew has been badly maligned and viciously misrepresented by his critics and I thought that liberals deserved a chance to hear what he had to say without a filter.

More Stranaplant:

A couple of weeks back, I encouraged Andrew Breitbart to reach out a little to the other side and write something for The Huffington Post. He wrote a piece about the just breaking NPR scandal and he brought up those video tapes again that show that stories about the Tea Party’s racism were fake as the recent ‘poor people can only carry $20’ story.

So one of them isn't telling the truth. Which is it? Was it Stranahan's great idea? Or did Ariana Huffington reach out to Breitbart?