A lot of readers take issue with a bit of this morning’s Jolt; they insist the most important issue in the Shirley Sherrod controversy is not that someone edited a tape to make a woman appear to be an unrepentant racist, but the reaction of the crowd to some of Sherrod’s comments that suggested she wasn’t terribly interested in helping a white farmer. I concur with Shannen Coffin’s assessment, over in the Corner:

I’ve seen all the e-mails from readers who suggest we’ve missed the broader point about how some in the audience were laughing or responding less than admirably to her tale. But I really don’t find the responses to be that demonstrative — one or two “amens,” but hardly a broad indictment of a racist crowd. Nor do I think what might happen at a local meeting of a Georgia chapter of the NAACP necessarily reflects on the organization’s national agenda. (I said “not necessarily” deliberately — it might, if pervasive enough, but this video doesn’t give much indication that it does). But the real point is that whatever the reaction of the crowd, Shirley Sherrod paid a pretty stiff price to permit Breitbart to make a rather ambiguous point.

There seems to be some belief that saying “I think Breitbart made a mistake here” is somehow an act of betrayal, an empowerment of liberalism, an outright surrender to all that the Left holds dear.

This morning, thanks to Salem establishing a beachhead in the Washington, D.C., market with WRC 1260 AM, I caught the beginning of the Mike Gallagher show. For a self-described “happy warrior,” Gallagher sounded miserable and angry, and said he felt as much. He claimed that unnamed conservatives were “devouring” Breitbart. He declared, “Let’s start the reparations with Shirley Sherrod.” He said, “I think Rush Limbaugh and I are the only ones standing up for Breitbart.” He said he would not be “mentioning names, I don’t want to pick a fight,” but mentioned “other hosts on the radio.” (He is preceded by Bill Bennett, who has made some remarks critical of Breitbart; the show’s Twitter feed messages included “#Sherrod affair: Culpability rests with everyone but this grievously wronged woman. @andrewbreitbart for what appears to be hatchet job” and “in reference to @andrewbreitbart and claims of audience cheering, listen to the tapes and the applause is a minimum and not race-based.”) He said, “We do not have the you-know-what to stand up for folks we know who are right.” He invoked the media’s treatment of Trent Lott, Strom Thurmond, and George Allen.

(My quotes from Gallagher are based on hastily handwritten notes after I pulled into my parking space.)

You don’t have to like Sherrod or everything she said to think that editing a tape to create a false impression is wrong. Race-baiting coverage of George Allen doesn’t excuse it, nor Trent Lott, nor Strom Thurmond. Like many others at NRO, I don’t believe Breitbart would deliberately put out a misleading tape. I think he knows A) that it’s morally wrong and B) that doing so would too permanently damage his sites’ credibility and his ability to achieve the mission he has set out to do.

Saying that a regular ally or friend has dropped the ball does not constitute “devouring” that figure, and no conservative is served well by a mentality that even acknowledging any mistake or error represents a surrender.