http://www.slate.com/id/2261271/
The Lynching of Shirley SherrodThe human price of indiscriminate politics.
By William Saletan
Posted Wednesday, July 21, 2010, at 7:38 PM ET
Twenty-four years ago, Shirley Sherrod helped Roger Spooner save his farm. She was black, and he was white, but they were more than that. They were two people working together to keep a South Georgia family on its land.
This week, they were flattened into a political cartoon. To score points in a fight between the Tea Party and the NAACP over which side is "racist," Sherrod and Spooner were caricatured: she as a black bigot, he as a white dupe. The nuances of their story were erased.
and further down in the article:
The video never supported the accusation. It dealt with events 23 years before Sherrod's federal appointment. Nevertheless, it destroyed her. It was replayed everywhere. The NAACP denounced her. The USDA forced her to resign. Nobody asked her to explain herself or looked at her job performance to see whether she had practiced discrimination. The video was enough. The NAACP, having secured the right of all people to sit at the front of the bus, threw Sherrod under it. In his statement, NAACP President Ben Jealous claimed "she gave no indication she had attempted to right the wrong she had done" to Spooner.
But there were many indications that she had righted her wrong. The evidence was in the memories of Spooner and his wife and in the full video of Sherrod's speech, which the NAACP possessed but hadn't bothered to consult. The Spooners began to correct the record, explaining how Sherrod had followed up and saved their farm. Tuesday evening, the NAACP posted the full video of her speech, demonstrating that after Breitbart's excerpt ended, Sherrod had gone on to describe what she did for Spooner when his white lawyer failed to help:
"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. … Working with him made me see that it's really about those who have versus those who don't. You know—and they could be black, and they could be white. They could be Hispanic. And it made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people. … God helped me to see that it's not just about black people. It's about poor people. … I've come to realize that we have to work together. … We have to get to the point, as Toni Morrison said, [where] race exists, but it doesn't matter."
These wise and moving words had been excised from the original clip. They gave the real context of Sherrod's remarks—what had happened 24 years ago between her and Spooner and what she had learned from it—not the fake political context in which, to Breitbart, she was just another weapon.
--i read that Sherrod may sue Breitbart. many times i think we are too litigious a society, but in this case, i hope she sues the pants off him.