Dan Riehl: Hey, Since We're In There's-No-Evidence-For-This-Charge-of-Racism Mode, How About Noting There Is Less Evidence for Tea Partiers' Racism?

Legal Insurrection made this point; but Dan Riehl makes it well, too.

The media and progressive-left Democrats now appear in a rush to convict Andrew Breitbart of shoddy journalism, while exonerating Shirley Sherrod and the NAACP from charges of abiding racism within their ranks. Both Sherrod and the NAACP have charged the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party with racism, while offering less proof than Breitbart did of the racism he correctly alleged. In many cases, the Left has outright manufactured evidence of racism regarding Tea Party events, yet no one has raised a voice about that slander at all. If one didn't know better, this wouldn't be today's news, but an Orwellian script circa 1984.

At approximately 17 minutes into the now-released full video of the event, Sherrod can be heard relaying a tale from her past in which she initially failed to help a white farmer with the full effort she would reserve for a black farmer.

The assembled crowd of card-carrying members of the NAACP took great pleasure in that, their laughter was not nervous at all. That is a contemporaneous expression of racism by today's politically correct standards, not racism from some 40 years ago.

Sherrod later says, "It's not so much about white…" then catches herself and says, "It IS about white and black." Perhaps Sherrod should explain why, even today, color is so centrally important in her work, be it at the Agriculture Department or elsewhere.

Breitbart’s web-posting of the speech showed more racism at one NAACP event than those charging Republicans and Tea Parties with racism have yet to produce after making accusations for months on end. The people making that charge include both Sherrod and the NAACP, neither of which has produced any proof. But it is Breitbart who should be convicted for false charges in the court of public opinion? That is totally absurd given the actual facts.

Indeed.

In case you're getting whip-sawed about my opinion on this -- when I say or link something that agrees with you, then something that disagrees -- let me say I kinda think Sherrod is a racist. My problem is that we (well, "we" generally) got caught using a deceptively edited tape to establish that, and thus we can no longer push the tape as evidence.

My general opinion on all of this remains: The left manufactures claims of right-wing racism on a daily basis, sometimes, because, like Sherrod, they are in fact racists who cannot conceive of a world in which decisions are made according to any other criterion but skin color, and sometimes, as Spence Ackerman advocates, just because you want to rough up an opponent.

And yeah, my general belief is that the NAACP is so race-obsessed it frequently is actually racist -- you can't sit there and obsess over the Sins of Whitey 24/7 and maintain an objective and nonprejudiced attitude towards the white man -- and that the Tea Party is largely, you know, not.

I believe these things: I just think the videotape here is a singularly bad vehicle to use to "prove" them given that it was deliberately falsified.

It's like framing a guilty man by planting a murder weapon, but then the judge discovers you planted that murder weapon.

Look, it's simple: The man is still guilty, and you've still got to make that case to the jury, but damnit, give up on trying to introduce that planted "murder weapon" as evidence.

You got caught. Drop it. And move on to the non-falsified evidence, which does, in fact, exist.

And yeah, Riehl continues using the tape as evidence, but I'm quoting him for his broader point, the one that doesn't really depend so much on the doctored tape.

And... Once again, no, I'm not beating up on Breitbart. I think he's completely honest when he says the tape was delivered to him in this condition and he did not have the complete tape.

As a general matter, I think he's doing what he needs to do -- putting up a defense. But I think he will let the actual issue of the tape itself drop when the media gets over the feeding frenzy.

Because, in the end, it's too hard to defend, and, as they say, If you're defending, you're losing. He is best on attack.

Hell, everyone's best on attack. But he in particular.

(And yes, I do note, boy, the media loves it when a conservative makes a mistake. Still waiting, as Legal Insurrection noted, for a prominent statement from the MFM that that census worker wasn't killed by Tea Partiers!)

Corrected! This is Dan Riehl writing, not Jason Mattera.

Thanks to steve.

posted by Ace at 03:00 PM

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