Andrew Breitbart, the owner of several conservative Web sites, was served at the conference on Saturday with a lawsuit filed by Shirley Sherrod, the former Agriculture Department employee who lost her job last year over a video that Mr. Brietbart posted at his site biggovernment.com.
The video was selectively edited so that it appeared Ms. Sherrod was confessing she had discriminated against a farmer because he was white. In the suit, which was filed in Washington on Friday, Ms. Sherrod says the video has damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work.
Mr. Breitbart said in a statement that he “categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech.”
Yeah, ya know funny thing: slander and libel are not constitutionally protected. So, thanks for playing.
Hacks like Breitbart are no better than thugs and criminals. Worse, actually, because their slanderous attacks are politically motivated. It’s a craven attempt to swing power to their ideological side.
Seriously, who the fuck is Shirley Sherrod? Why pick on her? Who had even heard of her before Breitbart’s little stunt? Except that she’s black, and serves a Democratic president.
I never understood why John Kerry didn’t sue John O’Neill and Jerome Corsi over the Swift Boat smears. The lies cost Kerry the election, but it was also the most egregious smear campaign in political history: to take an actual war hero and somehow turn his military record into a negative, while at the same time pretending to be rah-rah support the troops, was just astounding. Our media and political establishment were truly asleep at the wheel on that one. It was probably as egregious a media fail as the non-existent Iraq WMD claims. And the failure of John Kerry to sue just opened the door for the professional right to turn these smears into a regular part of our political discourse.
So I for one and thrilled that someone is finally pushing back against the professional mudslingers.
