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(July 22) -- As the Shirley Sherrod scandal continues to play out, the man who started it, right-wing media entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart, has yet to apologize. He now maintains that the edited footage he showed on his site, BigGovernment, was meant to expose the racism of those in the audience who applauded Sherrod when she described her slights against a white farmer.
His aim, Breitbart says, was to mimic those who besmirch the tea party by identifying the racist elements in the crowds of its various rallies across the country. It's a shaky analogy, since recently self-appointed tea party leaders like Mark Williams have also been in the media crosshairs for their apparent racism. But logic is not Breitbart's strong suit. As a disciple of Matt Drudge, he's much more interested in scoring political points than revealing the truth. He's a propagandist, not a journalist.
And with this latest episode, Breitbart may have eclipsed Drudge as the biggest presence in right-wing Internet media. While Drudge is reclusive and camera-shy, Breitbart is a ham. And the Drudge Report, once a unique presence, is now just another news aggregator, rarely delivering juicy scoops.
Then again, many of Drudge's previous scoops have had the benefit of proving to be true -- most notably during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In contrast, Breitbart now has the nation's attention for posting an excerpt of the Sherrod speech and claiming she was racist when the full speech demonstrated precisely the opposite.
An earlier "scoop," footage of an undercover sting of an ACORN office, was even more flawed. The undercover videotapers, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, heavily edited their footage, implying they dressed as a pimp and prostitute when they went to seek financial advice on their illicit activities from ACORN employees. But they actually never wore such flamboyant attire to the ACORN office. O'Keefe and Giles are now facing civil suits from ACORN employees.
The New Yorker recently published a long profile of Breitbart that's worth checking out and fortunately available online. While it appeared before the Sherrod affair, after reading it you'll fully appreciate how likely it was for Breitbart to be behind it all.
Read more at The New Yorker.
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