Political correctness is pretending that Andrew Breitbart added, rather than detracted, from political discourse.

He’s not a hero. He peddled and sensationalized irrelevant horseshit for profit. He was good at it, but being good at something that makes society worse still makes society worse.

watch out mediaite will probably remove your comment
since they were clearly in bed with him
and they dont like freedom of expression

“Why do you grant a bully special status upon his death?”
-Andrew Breitbart

Where are you getting the “Sherrod video was heavily edited” bit?  It was a clip taken away from her full speech, but there was no edit other than the start and end time as far as I can see.  I am not the Media expert, but isn’t that called a clip?  If a clip is not “heavily edited” almost everything out there would be heavily edited. 

This is the clip in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_xCeItxbQY&feature=player_embedded

This same clip is used both in the original Breitbart story and in Media Matters attacking Brietbart timeline.  Media Matters also says the is heavily edited, but also neglects to say how, wonder why you folks keep using those words?  You think two sites dedicated to media would know the correct word to use.  Strange.

I am a layman though, and I can see no cuts or breaks in Sherrod’s speech in that video- which even includes Sherrod’s change of heart.  Are you implying that there are cuts and that Breitbart changed the context of her speaking in any way? 

Brietbart’s beef with Beck had to do with removing Sherrod’s change of heart endind- which to me  still could not really be called “edited” (let alone heavily) but just a shorter clip with little to no context.

Nobody said he was a hero. But he WAS an effective, groundbreaking activist. And sorry, but I don’t think that ACORN wasting millions of dollars of taxpayer money is “irrelevant horseshit.” Society is BETTER when a corrupt organization like that is taken down. 

You are 100% correct, contrary to popular belief, Breitbart NEVER edited the Shirley Sherrod video. He simply posted a clip of it on his website. It was CNN -not Breitbart- that took the story out of context and ran with it. It was the NAACP- not Breitbart- that fired Shirley Sherrod. In fact, Breitbart never criticized Sherrod at all! 

In regards to the ACORN tapes – I mean really, how can you argue with what you see on these tapes? It was an undercover sting operation that CLEARLY shows ACORN personnel aiding and abetting criminal behavior. And these videos were taken at several different ACORN offices in several different states. They were caught red-handed. How can you argue with what your own eyes tell you? 

Breitbart is hated by the Left not because he was a hack – but because he was so effective. If Breitbart was a liberal who exposed conservatives in a similar manner, believe me, everyone on the Left would have LOVED him. 

RIP Andrew Breitbart, a true iconoclast….

If he never edited the video then why didn’t the judge throw the case out???  BTW editing is when you “simply post a clip”!!!

A lot of the problems some are having in dealing RIGHT NOW with the idea of Breitbart are contextual. It’s totally unlike, hopefully not to stretch comparison too far, the deal with Hitchens, where he was fairly long in dying & much at his best in that state, while we expected him to do give us his best, & he colluded; the effect buried an awful lot of really crappy things Hitchens did & wrote & stood for at various times. But Breitbart, to our eye anyway, just suddenly croaked, without warning; one second, in full fight, the next: deceased: an ex-Breitbart, gone off to join the CPAC Invisible.

That’s just for starters. His life’s legacy may have been – to me, was – simply his presence at a particular period in time. 

He got plaudits over the last first day of his ex-ness, from a begrudging Drudge & a composed Arianna Huffington, for being ‘present & participating’ in the early iteration of that which we have come, in record time, to come for granted: online journalism (An entirely accurate descriptive, so long as we grant that works reeking of political partisanship, not to say screed – there, I said it – qualify as “journalism” – which I’m sure Jay Rosen would grant sometimes do.) But if you compare Drudge’s grungy grade of genius to what Breitbart produced at Big Journalism, it seems we still have dubious comfort of knowing that the real auteur behind TDR is alive &, well, still kicking down. I expect Miz H actually needed the help more than Drudge did, & she’s in a better position than we are to know how much of the $ucce$$ $he’s gained from the commercial exploitation of a legion of unpaid self-promoters is due to Breitbart’s time with her (tho I very much doubt $he’s going to cut his estate a check in recognition of that which $he claims to thank with such $howy $incerity). 

And that’s pretty much it in the way of leaving shoulders on which others might stand. He was loud, but in that, the ultimate irony: he shared more with the Occupiers he was jeering at than with any professional journalist, now or, I suspect, in the future. He was prepared to put up with being labelled an ass, & certainly anyone who attempts to emulate that feature will have the opportunity to thank him for THEIR being labelled even WORSE asses, in only for their being derivative of his bouche. 

Oh, there’s one other thing: his angle, his grift – hatin’ on libs. But it’s not really important; it was just a schtick, & there’s certainly no reason to expect his ex-ness to have even the slightest noticeable effect on that. 

You two are in a colloquy of the self-deluded.

How so?  I am asking questions, not stating anything as fact.  How is the clip heavily edited? 

I used two sources from opposite sides in the argument- Media Matters and Brietbart.

They both used the same youtube clip- Brietbart posted it and Media Matters (and Mediaite) say it was heavily edited.

Media Matters and Mediaite (judging from the “Media” in their name) are much more knowledgeable about such things than I, and I figure Mediaite is a less biased source than Media Matters.

Exactly, the White House knee-jerked and fired her before they even bothered to go to research or view the (available) full tape.   The left are always looking for a boogie man, nothing could possibly ever be their fault when they do something wrong, its always because of some conservative…

delete

If you saw the original video, which you obviously have not, you would see how Sherrod was taken seriously out of context.  Breitbart’s tape was a slanderous statement against Sherrod. 

Stupid Liberals.
Being nice to someone who just died.

Where are all the people talking crap about Toure, Goldie and LOD today?

Pretty sure th video I posted, from July 18th was the original video. 

So, not edited and in context as far as I can tell.

I will give the 3 in the above clip kudos for how they handled this situation.  Also, the majority of the Liberal folks who post here acted much better than I would have though given their often pugnacious method of posting. 

 That Breitbart edited the video has been falsely repeated so many times it is a case of perception becoming reality.  You still see people like M_Baker lying about there being an “original video” you realize people are so wrapped in this false narrative you they cannot things as they actually happened.

Not the White House: the Secretary of Agriculture. Keep your few little concessions to the truth straight, then maybe your big lies will be easier for some to swallow. Not by ME, you understand, Chuckles: just by “some”, as in, the people BillO causes “the folks”.

It doesn’t stop me from saying that racists like Taylor and Sherrod take a helluva lot more off the American table than they put on since they are endemic liars obsessed with race. Or in the other words, the exact people they purport to despise.

Bullies shout down conversation with catch-all words like “racist” and “profiling.” That doesn’t describe the GOP or Breitbart no matter what you think of their political stances, that describes the Left. Not on board with gay marriage, “bigot”; not on board with affirmative action, “racist”; not on board with illegal immigration, “profiler.” Thoughts of the greater good and justice for all, really all, still resides with women and gay hating racists. I leave you to state where that leaves the DEMS. And then there’s this thing called reasoned debate but why shock anyone with too much info all at once?

Or in other words how liberals view reality.

They didn’t knee-jerk: they could see the nodding heads in the audience and the way Sherrod pandered to their racist views of whites the same as anyone; except you.

You do realize that Breitbart was wrong and the Sherrod tape was edited. Civil action is still ongoing.

 In fact, Breitbart never criticized Sherrod at all!

That’s a lie. This is from Breitbart’s first post on the video:

In this piece you will see video evidence of racism coming from a federal appointee and NAACP award recipient…

In her meandering speech to what appears to be an all-black audience, this federally appointed executive bureaucrat lays out in stark detail, that her federal duties are managed through the prism of race and class distinctions. 

Eventually, her basic humanity informs 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.

http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2010/07/19/video-proof-the-naacp-awards-racism2010/ 

If that’s not criticizing her, what is? Now, there’s a correction in that post regarding the statement that she was a federal employee at the time of the incident she relates (she wasn’t), but that’s about it.

This is the only (dishonestly distorted) mention he made of the audience:

Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

So- yes, he did criticize Shirley Sherrod. Not only that, but he criticized her more than he did the audience. It was only after people began to point out that it was a story of redemption and rejecting intolerance that Breitbart began to claim that he was criticizing the audience rather than Sherrod. Here’s one more dishonest criticism of her:

Shirley Sherrod, a federal appointee who oversees over a billion dollars of federal funds, nearly begs black men and women into taking government jobs at USDA — because they won’t get fired.

If you watch the video just beneath that text, any honest person will recognize that:

- She’s not begging them to do anything. She’s just informing them that there are job openings.

- She didn’t say that they “won’t get fired”. She just opines that federal government jobs are secure jobs, and talking about government jobs being more secure than private sector jobs is hardly a “black thing”.

I think this is what happened: Breitbart (like myself) was sick to death of all of the unsubstantiated accusations of “racism” being hurled at the Tea Party by the NAACP and the racial double standard that conservatives and white people in general are held to. 

So one day, someone sends him a tape. The tape shows a woman talking to the NAACP and IT APPEARS that she is talking about denying benefits to the white farmer and the NAACP audience titters about it (which they did – before THEY knew the context of her story.) 

So, sensing an opportunity to expose the hypocrisy of the Left, Breitbart immediately posts this video for the world to see and then comments on Sherrod’s “racism” and the double standards of the NAACP. 

So Plantsmantx – I stand corrected. You are right, Breitbart DID criticize Sharrod, at least initially. However, at this time I believe that Breitbart himself had not seen the full video and was not aware of the full context of her story. I could be wrong, but it seems reasonable that Breitbart, who’s pretty media savvy, would not risk ruining his reputation lightly. 

Breitbart never called for Sherrod’s dismissal. His larger target was the NAACP (who was attacking the Tea Party at the time) and the hypocritical Left who wails and moans about even the slightest hint of conservative “racism.” 

In short, Breitbart’s instincts were right – but he jumped the gun. He should have checked the full video – but then again, so should have Fox news, CNN, the NAACP who condemned Sherrod and the USDA that fired her. 

it seems reasonable that Breitbart, who’s pretty smart and pretty media savvy, would not have accused Sherrod of “racism” if he had seen the full video. I don’t think he would risk his reputation so lighty.

You must be kidding. I agree that he was smart and media-savvy…enough to know that he could say damn near anything and not risk his reputation with the people he pandered to. For instance, he knew that he could go on CNN and call into question whether or not Mrs. Spooner actually was Mrs. Spooner, without risk to his “reputation”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JScZLaUi9H0&feature=fvwrel 

His larger target was the NAACP (who was attacking the Tea Party at the time) and the hypocritical Left who wails and moans about even the slightest hint of conservative “racism.”  

His larger target certainly was the NAACP…and the CBC. That’s why his “concerns” with them take up most of the post. It’s also obvious that his approach to getting back at those two orgs was to smear Shirley Sherrod personally. Once again, I’ll point out how little criticism was directed at the audience in that video. His (again, dishonest) criticism of them didn’t ramp up until the “Shirley Sherrod is a racist” meme fell through.

Shirley Sherrod, now there’s a piece of shakedown work. She effectively used a bogus racial issue to extract $Billions from taxpayers. She was able to push the racial issue far beyond it’s original phase, where it did have some merit, and extend it to nothing more than a shakedown. And no one in this gutless government challenged this creep on the matter.

I didn’t see any “reasoned debate” in your response just the usual right wing nonsense. Our Consitution has a Bill of Rights to protect minorities from the tyranny  of the majority. Just because most people think something should be a certain way does not give them the right to force their beliefs on everyone else.

Jesus taught tolerance and the Bill of Rights protects it. Be tolerant of others’ views, someday soon you might be in the minority.

I think you are missing the point. While I agree that “heavily edited” is a gross exaggeration, the “clip” only shows part of the statement. Taken as a whole the message is entirely different from that shown in the clip alone. This is a type of deception often used to try and avoid legal action, but it is still deception. It is wrong no matter who does it.