Let's pretend journalists applaud Sherrod threat to sue Breitbart

Shirley Sherrod says she plans to sue conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, the Associated Press reports from San Diego: “Speaking Thursday at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, Sherrod said she would definitely sue over the video that took her remarks out of context”:

Sherrod said she had not received an apology from Breitbart and no longer wanted one. “He had to know that he was targeting me,” she said.

Does she have a winning case? Probably not.

For one thing, the alleged defamation (or, to be precise, the defamation that she would allege if she filed suit) took place while she was a public official and involved claims about the performance of her public duties. Thus she would have to meet the rigorous standard, set forth by the Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), of proving not only that Breitbart published a damaging falsehood about her but that he did so “with ‘actual malice’–that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Even if she proves that Breitbart published false and defamatory statements about her, he wins the case if he did so only negligently.

To put it in layman’s terms, she would have to demonstrate that the falsehood Breitbart published about her–the claim that the video showed “her federal duties are managed through the prism of race and class distinctions”–was a lie, not just an error. But Breitbart issued a timely correction of this statement, creating a strong presumption against such an allegation. (As to video itself, Breitbart could almost certainly defend it as truthful.)

Blogger William Jacobson notes some other pitfalls for Sherrod of suing Breitbart–the most notable is that if the case went ahead, he would be able to use the discovery process to uncover new information about her and about his other adversaries whose conduct is relevant to the case, namely the NAACP and the Obama administration.

Of course, she hasn’t actually filed a lawsuit, and our guess is that a smart lawyer will advise her against it–and that if she does sue, she will end up settling in exchange for an apology or a more emphatic correction. Her threat to sue, in short, is largely an empty one, even if one can empathize with her feeling of having been wronged by Breitbart.

But one aspect of this story strikes us as passing strange: The venue in which she issued this threat was a convention of journalists. What’s more, someone who was there tells us that when she said she planned to sue, the audience applauded. Our source was careful to note that there were nonjournalists in the audience too (PR men and corporate sponsors). Still, we have to ask: What kind of journalist would applaud the threat of a defamation lawsuit?

Sherrod affair is "a wake-up call for the White House gang..."

By Tina Brown

Shirley Sherrod’s firing isn’t a teachable moment. It was a wake-up call for the White House gang that can’t shoot straight.

Let’s NOT have a conversation about race. The calls for Obama to now make the Shirley Sherrod debacle a teachable moment fills me with panic that the president will retreat to the Oval Office and craft a soaring piece of oratory, instead of getting on with the humdrum business of firing the stumbling, bumbling members of his own team who, as the saying goes, can’t find their ass with either hand.

It doesn’t take much imagination to know how much the president must have seethed to be derailed from his policy agenda by this Republican attack mutt, Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart’s genre of dirty tricks were old news even in the Whitewater era. Public figures know from the daily incinerated reputations that any time you open your mouth near a Twitter feed, your career can go up in smoke. It remains amazing that USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack didn’t even accord Shirley Sherrod the kind of pause a minor executive in a corporate human resources department would have felt obliged to offer and have someone—anyone—listen to the full tape of Sherrod’s NAACP speech or even read the text.

When Obama heralds another “teachable moment,” it means he has already made an egregious rookie mistake.

But Obama can’t keep doing catch-up up outrage two media cycles after the fact. On the campaign trail, he was the chief executive of a laser-guided, on-message apparatus, the candidate who seemed to lead from a head that was always the most level of the people round him. Instead, he sounds as out of it as his old adversary John McCain when he said on Good Morning America that “we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles.” Yeah, right. There is something loose and jittery about the atmosphere round Obama at the moment of which Vilsack's clumsy over-reaction gives us a whiff.

It’s as if inside the White House the belief in Obama’s inspirational charisma is still such that every time the ugliness of brute politics intrudes, it’s a startling revelation.

From Big Government, owned by Andrew Breitbart

2. Goldberg: Sherrod Owes Breitbart an Apology

3. Riehl: Sherrod owes Breitbart an apology

4. Ponnuru: Sherrod owes Breitbart an apology

17. Johnson: 'Breitbart may be William Buckley of Internet Age'

Andrew Breitbart on what he is about

Max Blumenthal, You’re Being Booger-Boarded
by Andrew Breitbart

Max Blumenthal has an amazing thesis: All conservatives and Republicans are beneath contempt. He also has an amazing line of work. He is underwritten by various media organs to prove his thesis.

In a previous era, Blumenthal and said media organs (Salon, Independent Film Channel, Huffington Post, etc.) were able to get away with this pathetic arrangement. But now, we are on to Max, the spawn of Sid “Vicious” Blumenthal – he who attempted to ruin Monica Lewinsky’s life by falsely portraying her as Bill Clinton’s “stalker.”

The Blumenthal operation is now under the extremely close scrutiny of a camelid named “Retracto.”

The movement formerly known as the “Tea-Baggers” (with their flip cameras and new media skills) and various conservatives who have had enough with the excessive Alinsky tactics used most egregiously by Max and Sid but representative of main stream media’s odious guilt-by-association, repeat-the-same-lie-until-it-sticks, smear-any-conservative-as-racist-sexist-homophobic skill set, are now fighting back.

If the last two weeks have not humiliated him enough — and this Huffington Post rage-fest from yesterday with its title “Feeling the Hate at CPAC 2010 With Andrew Breitbart, Hannah Giles and the Crazy Mob” suggests they have not – then perhaps this coup de booger will tell him that we say what we mean and we mean what we say.

Max gallivanted around CPAC looking for prey. He was treated with respect as he sought to make good and decent people look foolish on camera. He decided he would go after a 20-year-old girl, one Hannah Giles. And perhaps due to sexism or ageism he underestimated her ability. Max should have called Bertha Lewis before he went after this young heroine. Instead, he went to a gunfight with a knife – and a dirty nose.

Ladies and gentlemen, the much awaited, “Max Blumenthal Picks a Booger Out of His Nose at CPAC” video:

Freedom lovers should be lining up to honor Andrew Breitbart, James O'Keefe and Hanna Giles

The embattled liberal group ACORN is in the process of dissolving its national structure, with state and local-chapters splitting off from the underfunded, controversial national group, an official close to the group confirmed.

"ACORN has dissolved as a national structure of state organizations," said a senior official close to the group, who declined to be identified by name because of the fierce conservative attacks on the group that began when a conservative filmmaker caught some staffers of its tax advisory arms on tape appearing to offer advice on incorporating a prostitution business.

The videos proved a rallying point for conservatives who had long accused the group of fomenting voting fraud. Though the videos did not produce criminal charges, they appear to have been fatal to the national organization.

"Consistent with what the internal recommendations have been, each of the states are developing plans for reconstitution independence and self-sufficiency," said the official, citing ACORN's "diminished resources, damage to the brand, unprecedented attacks."

Andrew Breitbart is a model for individual activists tilting with collectivists and their hoodlum armies

Once again, in the midst of a triumphal celebration of collectivist certitudes, an indiviual has stepped forward with his hand up in the universal "stop" signal.

His name is Andrew Breitbart. He is the worst nightmare of ACORN, the rotten-to-the-core community organizing group that Democrats have subsidized, with tax dollars, to disrupt opponents and steal elections.

A veteran of internet news innovations, one of them the Drudge Report, Breitbart was the strategist behind the outing of ACORN's willful criminality by Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe.

Giles and O'Keefe secured promises of help from a number of ACORN offices for a scheme to import under-age prostitutes and use the proceeds to finance O'Keefe's campaign for Congress. Why so many saw O'Keefe as fit to run a whorehouse, and also fit to serve in Congress, remains a mystery.

Now, Breitbart is threatening another embarrassing information dump on the eve of the 2010 election if Attorney General Eric Holder does not undertake an investigation of ACORN.

If Holder caves, Breitbart will have engineered as complete a reversal of fortunes as any of us is likely to see. President Barack Obama once served as attorney for an ACORN affiliate.

At the moment, Democrats who control the House and Senate are pulling out all stops to enact the leading fascist proposal on President Barack Obama's agenda - government controlled health care.

Polls show that most Americans are opposed to the proposal by decisive margins.

That raises a question: why do the Democrats pursue with such zeal a proposal that may jeopardize their seats?

The obvious answer is that the Democrats don't expect to win the hearts and minds of voters. Instead, they plan to ram through a statist agenda and then turn loose two domestic armies - the SEIU union and ACORN - to register the dead and the nonexistent and  threaten, coerce and beat up voters who don't toe the line.

In Philadelphi, even the New Black Panthers have gotten into the act by intimidating voters at polling places, commiting criminal acts. They were pardoned earlier this year by President Barack Obama.

The pardon was important, but did not get the attention it deserved. It sent a signal to the Democrat street thugs that the administration would stand behind them when they are called to action again.

That will happen during the 2010 campaign and election, when Democrat incumbents will be in the cross-hairs of a growing conservative electorate infuriated by the administration's attempt to impose a fascist state.

This is why Breitbart's latest maneuver is crucial. He has responded to the implicit threat of a hoodlum-controlled election by threatening to release embarrassing new information about hoodlum-infested ACORN on the eve of the 2010 vote.

The threat is bound to cause unease because Holder does not know what Breitbart has on ACORN. But he does have a track record. This makes Breitbart a player, a skilled, experienced operator pursuing success on his own terms.

He's an antidote to the collectivists, as are all individuals who pursue life on their own terms.

Andrew Breitbart tells AG Holder to investigate or he'll release new tapes on election eve