Fox News is Lying to You -- AGAIN

Fox News reported that a video of Dept. of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod talking to an audience of NAACP members proved she was racist, and shows her saying that she was proud of withholding help for a white couple who were in danger of losing their farm.

Only one problem: When you view the whole tape, you see that this is not so.

Ms Sherrod was relating doubts she had way back in 1986, when she was working for a non-profit. She was explaining how for a while in her position there, only black clients had come through needing help. Then one day, she had her very first opportunity to help a white couple. As she explained after this controversy broke out, she was at the time "telling the story of how working with [the white client] helped me to see the issue is not about race. It's about those who have versus those who do not have."

She related how she had joined this non-profit to help other blacks, since that was all she had seen suffering growing up. So when a rare white couple in this area applied for help, she was, at this early point in her career twenty-four years ago, taken aback, and she admits, tempted to see them as not worthy of help somehow. But the whole point of the story she’s relating, as you see if you watch her whole talk, is that she saw the light, and realized it was poor people in general she wanted to help.

And another small detail left out by the makers of this video, conservative activist Andrew Breitbart, and Fox “News” is that the white couple in question -- you know, the “victims” of Sherrod’s “racism”? -- absolutely love her. When questioned on this story, the old couple were incredulous that anyone could call her racist, and talked about how great she was with them, and how she helped save their farm.

The farmer's wife, Eloise Spooner, 82, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday that Sherrod helped save their land. Spooner, who considered Sherrod a "friend for life," said that "the federal official worked tirelessly to help" the couple hold onto their farm as they faced bankruptcy in 1986. "Her husband told her, ‘You're spending more time with the Spooners than you are with me,'" Spooner said. "She took probably two or three trips with us to Albany just to help us out."

Some racist.

Look, we all experience doubts in life, and adjust our viewpoints as we mature. Shirley Sherrod was courageous enough to talk openly about her doubts, to make a point that she knows she was wrong to think that way, and that she realized it is better to unite with all races to fight the injustice of poverty.

And this is the type of person Fox News wants to smear? What are they really doing here? Just stoking racial resentment in whites?

No? Are you sure? After all, there’s a pattern here. There was the episode in September 2009 with White House Adviser Van Jones being forced to resign after it was revealed that he said some bad things about Republicans before joining the administration, basically. And what about the ACORN video circus, brought to you by the same folks who brought you this latest “creatively edited” tape?

That one was also proven to be surreptitiously edited with nefarious intent, for once again, when you view the unedited tape, you find that you are being deceived. In the ACORN case, tapes were edited to make it seem employees were helping a pimp and his whore with plans for housing underage prostitutes from Mexico. Just one problem: This too, was a big lie.

One of the employees these slimeballs were trying to frame turned out to be a guy who was actually eliciting as much information as he could from them. After all, he believed that they were criminal sex slave traders -- he bought their act -- and he wanted to report them to the police. Which he did -- immediately after these soulless “pranksters” left with their secret video “evidence.”

Which “evidence,” as you may recall, was dutifully reported by Fox News. And reported. And reported. It was all they talked about for days. Playing the clips over and over again. The heavily edited clips. The intentionally misleading, slanderous clips. Reported as news. By Fox “News.”

Now the latest is that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said his department will reconsider the ouster of Shirley Sherrod. He decided this after civil rights leaders told him they were "snookered" into believing a conservative website's charges of racism against her were true, which was what had caused them to make an earlier, rushed statement that she should resign.

So, conservatives, I ask you: Is this really “fair and balanced” reporting? Is this the “trusted news source” you want to get your information from?

Because, if it is, you must really like being lied to.

And we ain’t talkin’ no “white” lies here, either.

Yes, by now the truth is plain. It is, shall we say, black and white.

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Check out Rachel Maddow’s brilliant dissection of this story, as well as her brilliant dissection of the Obama administration’s terrible habit of kowtowing to right wing media on these character assassination attempts, before thoroughly investigating the charges. The administration is, as she puts it, “feeding the dog at the table -- and the dog is going to keep coming back.”

News report on the Shirley Sherrod story.