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Shirley Sherrod's political lynching

LET'S HOPE that Shirley Sherrod gets more than her 15-minute allotment of fame. She has a lot to teach us.

LET'S HOPE that Shirley Sherrod gets more than her 15-minute allotment of fame. She has a lot to teach us.

Sherrod, of course, is the U.S. Department of Agriculture regional official who was forced to resign Tuesday night, when Andrew Breitbart, a conservative blogger, posted a 2 minute, 40 second video clip of her speaking at an NAACP event seeming to say she had discriminated against a white farmer.

The video was obviously part of a longer tape (turns out it was 45 minutes). The source, Breitbart (via Fox News), is known for his duplicity. It was Breitbart who ginned up the slanders of ACORN, now disproved by the Government Accountability Office.

Yet even though the video was suspect, leaders of the NAACP and the Obama administration panicked. The NAACP condemned Sherrod's "racism." USDA officials demanded she resign.

Suspected terrorists get more due process than she did.

Sherrod says - and hers is the only version of events we believe - that she was not permitted to defend herself. "You're going to be on Glenn Beck tonight," a USDA official wailed. Pathetic.

When the full video of Sherrod's speech surfaced, it was clear that Sherrod had been slandered and betrayed. Not only was she not a racist, but she was urging her audience to get beyond the pain of the past, so blacks and whites could work together.

Perhaps there's an upside to the manufactured controversy: Maybe now some people will get to hear and consider her larger points. (The video is posted everywhere; find a transcript at www.shallownation.com).

Here's what we took away: While white talk-show hosts and white politicians and white tea-party members like to play victim to "reverse racism," Shirley Sherrod knows what real racism looks like: When she was 17, her father was murdered by a white farmer who was never punished. A relative was lynched. So, when working for a nonprofit organization (not the USDA) in 1986, Sherrod hesitated about doing all she could to help the white farmer.

That's where the excerpt ended, but in the actual speech Sherrod went on to say that she did indeed help the farmer (which the farmer and his wife have confirmed.) Moreover, Sherrod said, she recognized a profound truth: "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. And it made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people - those who don't have access . . ."

For centuries now, Sherrod said, ruling elites have fomented racism to distract and divide the poor. " What we have to do is get that out of our heads," she said. There is no difference between us. The only difference is that folks with money want to stay in power and . . . they'll do what they need to do to keep that power."

After a 36-hour media firestorm, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters that he had apologized to Sherrod by phone and discussed another U.SDA job with her.

Malicious slur plus 24-hour news cycle plus gullible public plus a disgusting willingness to appease conservative media by the Obama administration: The story was all too predictable.

But Shirley Sherrod's courage in standing up for herself may allow something to be salvaged from this debacle. *