Shirley Sherrod Update

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I’ve written a bunch of updates to my post this morning about the video of USDA Director of Rural Development Shirley Sherrod — the one posted Monday at BigGovernment.com where she allegedly fesses up to treating white people poorly — but you might have missed them if you don’t routinely revisit posts you’ve already read. So here they are:

UPDATE: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who quickly fired Sherrod after the video was posted, stands by his firing. The White House says they had nothing to do with it. The NAACP condemned Sherrod but then mysteriously deleted their statement from their website and announced they were “conducting an investigation.” Andrew Breitbart says he doesn’t have the entire video, just the edited version he put up. The guy who shot the video says he’s sent the whole thing to the NAACP and hopes to post it when he gets permission.

That’s the latest for now.

UPDATE 2: The NAACP backtracks: “With regard to the initial media coverage of the resignation of USDA Official Shirley Sherrod, we have come to the conclusion we were snookered by Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias. Having reviewed the full tape, spoken to Ms. Sherrod, and most importantly heard the testimony of the white farmers mentioned in this story, we now believe the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans.”

Jeez. Fox News and Breitbart ginning up a phony outrage over some alleged liberal atrocity? Helluva hard thing to believe, isn’t it?

UPDATE 3: The full video is here. The segment in question starts at 16:30 and goes for about five minutes. “You know,” she starts, “God will show you things, and can put things in your path, so that you realize that the struggle is really about poor people.” Then, after telling the story of Roger Spooner, she ends with this: “Working with him made me see that it’s really about those who have versus those who don’t. And they could be black, they could be white, they could be Hispanic.”