New Interview With Shirley Sherrod Confirms USDA Knew

by | Aug 24, 2024 | Interesting | 2 comments

Shirley Sherrod has a book coming out next week and she’s doing a promotional tour for it. She spoke to the Associated Press and reiterated one of the least covered aspects of the Sherrod saga — the fact that she told the USDA about the supposedly ‘heavily edited videotape’ nearly a week before it came out.

When blogger Andrew Breitbart published in 2010 an edited clip from a speech Shirley Sherrod made before an NAACP gathering and accused her of anti-white racism, the resulting outcry reached all the way to the White House. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack initially asked Sherrod to resign, then rescinded his request after it became clear Breitbart had broadcast an edited clip whose content made it appear racist.

Sherrod refused to return to her position with USDA and eventually sued Breitbart.

“I think back on that time, and I was just doing my job to try and help rural communities, staying under the radar,” she said. “Then, out of the blue, I’m being vilified. I don’t know why they were targeting me. I tried to tell (officials at) USDA that the story I was telling was about helping white farmers, but no one would listen to me. I found out that the clip was going to be released five days before it went national and told them, but no one listened.

This is not widely known, but it should be. For one thing, I wrote about it back in May, 2011. Back when I was guest blogging at Patterico, I wrote a piece called Untangling Sherrod: When Was The USDA Told? and said:

Here’s what really happened. Shirley Sherrod knew about the video excerpt on Thursday, July 14th – five days before Breitbart published it on BigGovernment. She immediately let the USDA know about the video. And she also thought she knew where to get the entire video, five days before the clips went public.

Let this sink in for a moment. Shirley Sherrod told the USDA about the video FIVE DAYS before it was released and she was ‘suddenly’ fired. The USDA had plenty of time to think about Shirley Sherrod and whether they wanted her to become the subject of public scrutiny.
Why didn’t the USDA want the public to know much about Shirley Sherrod? Why did they fear a Breitbart style drip-drip-drip, the same sort of thing that took down ACORN?
Pigford, that’s what. The fraudulent black farmers settlement.
Here’s what I wrote in The Huffington Post back in February, 2011 in an article called

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this lawsuit comes just as things are starting to heat up in thePigford investigation. Mrs. Sherrod is connected to Pigford. She’s the largest recipient of a Pigfordclaim; she, her husband Charles Sherrod and the New Communities farm won over thirteen million dollars while most other farmers only got $50,000. Mrs. Sherrod was hired by the USDA after this award. Prior to being hired, she worked to help keep angry black farmers from pulling out of the lawsuit after they objected to the terms of the consent decree. And despite her hero status with many, the farmers I have personally interviewed about Mrs. Sherrod have decidedly mixed feelings about her.

So, why now? What I know for sure is that a couple of days ago Andrew Breitbart and I put on a press conference at CPAC that released a two-hour, unedited audio clip that showed how easy it was to commit fraud in Pigford and that people are coached on exactly how to do it. A week ago Friday, theNational Review released a 4,000+ word article detailing the Pigford scandal. Other major media outlets have pieces in the works and politicians are looking seriously at investigating Pigford. The USDA has been stonewalling me for weeks. And after Media Matters published a deceptive piececalling the Pigford investigation a ‘smear’ against Mrs. Sherrod, this lawsuit comes. I have a number of questions I’d like to ask Mrs. Sherrod about Pigford but now that seems highly unlikely as she’s sure to lawyer up on the issue.

And trust me; things about to heat up in the Pigford investigation again…

By the way, the USDA had no way of knowing this at the time but Andrew didn’t have a drip-drip-drip planned. His focus was on the NAACP crowd’s reaction, not Shirley Sherrod. The irony is that Breitbart didn’t know about Pigford until after the Sherrod story went nuts.

Illegitimate: The Left’s Hypocrisy On Rape

by | Aug 24, 2024 | Uncategorized | 2 comments

“The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

— Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

As the institutional left and their media have gone into feeding frenzy mode over the “legitimate rape” comment by Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, they have banked on two things. First, that conservatives will have standards and that many will call Akin out. This has come to pass as the GOP establishment, right wing blogs and conservative pundits have all lambasted Akin. The second thing the left is counting on, however, is that nobody will call out the left;s own hypocrisy. This has turned out to also be a very safe bet. The result is the spectacle of a bipartisan attack on Akin over a comment he made. To reiterate, this was over words.

Let’s look just a few months back, however, and see how well the liberal media, blogs and pundits measure up on the issue of proper outrage about rape.

When it came to the issue of of numerous actual rapes surrounding the Occupy movement – not comments but legitimate, real sexual assaults –there wasn’t just silence from the left about the issue. Sure, there was lots of silence but it went beyond that. In the case of those rapes Current TV, the new media network co-owned by Al Gore, the former Vice President of United States of America, is alleged to have been fully aware of the assaults and not only not reported them at the time but to later have allowed Keith Olbermann and his Countdown show to have actively denied that they ever happened at all.

Further, these allegations come from a fairly unimpeachable source – a member of the Occupy Wall Street movement who was on the security team and whose take it was to deliver memos to Current TV producers.

I reported the story on Breitbart News a couple of weeks ago in a piece entitled Occupy Activist Alleges Olbermann Show Knew About Occupy Rapes, Failed to Report Them. The story was completely ignored on the left, despite being sourced to a recognizable figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement and including audio of that individual making the allegation.

For those who might claim that Keith Olbermann is irrelevant, especially since his Countdown show is now canceled and he’s in a legal tussle with his former employersI’ll stress the obvious again. Current TV is co-owned by former V.P. and presidential candidate Al Gore. I have not been aware of a single call to hold the former vice president or anyone at Current TV accountable

This is exactly the sort of hypocrisy that the institutional left can count on every single time. They are able to sit in there see no evil, hear no evil stupor and ignore actual, honest to God rapes confident that the J School cone of silence will protect them from being held accountable to any sort of standard whatsoever.

Did anyone ask : Is statutory rape “legitimate rape”?

Keith Olbermann didn’t think so.

This is what Olbermann said on both Current TV and the popular leftist website DailyKos.com about a situation at Occupy Dallas where a 23-year-old former convicted sex offender was sleeping with a 14-year-old.runaway who was camped there:

Despite the Breitbart headline: “Police Investigating Possible Sexual Assault Of Teen At Occupy Dallas,” the alleged assault victim told police the sex in question was consensual. She would not press charges nor cooperate with authorities. The claim that there was an assault originates with one local tv station’s anonymous source in the Dallas police department.

And Olbermann also described it this way:

One story turns out to have been about consensual sex.

Why are Olbermann and Gore and Markos given a free pass on this? Why was there absolutely no outrage on the left about these comments?

The answer is cringingly simple: as liberals, Gore, Olbermann and Moulitsas all believe that the 14-year-old who we being sexually assaulted by the 23-year-old has a complete, unquestionable right to an abortion had a pregnancy resulted from that crime. That belief is their “Get Out Of Judgement Free” card. As long as they are solidly pro-abortion, they are excused from serious liberal critique, much less banishment.

Is any of this to suggest that conservatives should not have standards? Of course not. In fact, it’s the principles of conservatism that are its primary appeal, since our current culture currently doesn’t get out cool points for being on the right.

However, it might be wise remember how the left operates in these kinds circumstances and not aid them in fighting the battle with any expectation that they will show a similar decency when one of their own makes a questionable comment. They have amply demonstrated that they will not only show no such decency, but they will use the decency of conservatives and a form of judo against them.

So where criticism of Akin is valid, make it — as long as in the next breath you point out a few examples of obvious blatant and disgusting hypocrisy on behalf of the left on the very same issue.