Many good posts in here today. I associate myself entirely with this Shannen post. I also think Andy makes good points. Obviously, Sherrod is quite the lefty, with a hair-trigger for accusing people of racism. She also clearly still has racial baggage, but I grade on a curve here.

Back in the day, Baker County, Georgia was run by cruel and lawless men whom Andy would, no doubt, have relished putting away for a long, long time as a prosecutor. In that context, it’s understandable that Sherrod would have devoted her life to helping blacks, and blacks only–and that it would have come as a revelation to her that that was the wrong approach. This context also is important when evaluating the audience reaction. No doubt, many people in the audience had experienced routine humiliation during the Jim Crow era that is unimaginable to the rest of us. It’s understandable that they would have nodded and murmurred their assent during a story about a “superior” white getting his comeuppance. And, again, right at the beginning, Sherrod made it clear she was telling a story about getting beyond race (however imperfectly).

On the points from Kevin and Jonah on the press angle: I take a back seat to no one in admiring the brilliance and gumption of my friend Andrew Breitbart. He was literally indispensable in exposing the bogus “N-word” story on Capitol Hill. But guerilla journalism is a double-edged sword. The Sherrod mess might have been avoided with that most basic ingredients of journalistic due diligence: checking what’s “too good to check.” A call to Sherrod might have avoided the whole thing, or at least given Andrew pause. Now, as Kevin rightly says, we all make the wrong judgment calls sometimes, especially when we’re in a rush. But this was a pretty basic mistake. In general, I’m with Shannen and Jonah: Just because the Left disgraces itself with tenuous accusations of racism for political ends doesn’t mean we have to get into the same game, even if Saul Alinsky would have approved.