Posted on 07/26/2010 10:17:09 PM PDT by This Just In
Sherrod Story False
By Jeffrey Lord
It isn't true.
Shirley Sherrod's story in her now famous speech about the lynching of a relative is not true. The veracity and credibility of the onetime Agriculture Department bureaucrat at the center of the explosive controversy between the NAACP and conservative media activist Andrew Breitbart is now directly under challenge. By nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court. All of them dead.
But first, it's important to say this.
After Shirley Sherrod's firing I wrote a column congratulating Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for removing her -- based on a viewing of the now infamous edited Breitbart clip. I was wrong. I should have waited to see the entire video or read the transcript before writing a word. So my apologies to Ms. Sherrod.
The problem?
I have now done exactly what I should have done originally. So there's no mistake about "selective editing" of videos or speech transcripts, here is a link to the website of the NAACP, where they have made a point of posting the full video of Shirley Sherrod's speech. I have seen the entire speech as supplied by the NAACP. The now-famous speech runs just over 40 minutes. If you don't have the time, here is a link to the printed transcript of her speech supplied by a site called American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank. The transcript is taken in full from the video version of her speech, which American rhetoric also supplies. I have read the transcript as well.
Let's get to this.
In her speech, Ms. Sherrod says this:
I should tell you a little about Baker County. In case you don't know where it is, it's located less than 20 miles southwest of Albany.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Lyin like a rug....married to an open racist..
Like Hillary and EVERY other liberal liar, she just “misspoke”
I think it’s rather generous to assume that she knows exactly what the word ‘lynching’ means.
Hola crapola, another twist.
Father, uncle, brother, friend - circumstances no less depraved nor gruesome.
Maybe Shirley is truly related to Crystal Mangum-—she of Durham, NC. false allegations of rape against some white boys Duke lacrosse team. Liar, pants on fire!
What about her story about her father being murdered by white men even though there seems to be no proof? Was that exaggerated or fabricated as well?
Couldn’t Sherrod’s use of the term ‘lynch’ be considered a colloquial usage?
I would certainly interpret it that way.
No trial. And beat to death before he was even placed in his cell.
Hold on there. This man is saying that her relative was not “lynched” because he was only he was arrested by a sheriff and then *beaten to death on the courthouse steps while allegedly resisting arrest while handcuffed*.
And this is supposed to be a lie because the man wasn’t HANGED?
M dictionary, the venerable Webster’s Fifth, defines “lynch” thus:
To inflict punishment, especially death, upon, without forms of law, as when a mob captures and harms a suspected person.”
To call her a liar because her relative wasn’t hanged is just plain ignorant, ignorant as well as petty and mean. Either you don’t know what the meaning of the word “lynched” is, or you do and don’t care, because you get to insult the woman some more.
Beaten to death in front of the courthouse. Not strictly a lynching, close enough I think. The Spectator should pull this story.
Sounds like a typical RAT liar at work to me.
FReepers would do well to read this article before posting. Glancing at the thread heading won’t tell you what you need to know.
“.....almost sounds like nitpicking, in the context of it all.”
Well, aside from the fact that Sherrod may have lied, which should always be a big deal, and especially when we are talking about public officials, “nitpicking” is putting it mildly. We are talking about a woman who may have intentionally used inflammatory language to be divisive and continue the progressives race-baiting tactics in order to insight animosity towards white people.
Furthermore, her statements expose a public official who is morally bankrupt; to mislead the public by using her own relatives death, and worse yet, to describe that death, no less tragic as it was, is reprehensible.
Lynching-beat to death are “semantics”? No wonder Republicans and conservatives have an uphill battle.
“Lynching” was sometimes used as a broader term for the various means and schemes in which black people were illegally and evilly offed in the white supremacist heyday. If this is the worst “error” she ever caused to meet the air, it would hardly be worth a batted eyelash.
What she is, is a garden variety racist leftist dabbling in the same poison that fueled those who killed her father, except the movie music has been transposed from the white keys to the black ones.
What was the full name of Sherrod's father?
Who killed him?
How was he killed?
There is no statute of limitations on murder. If her father was murdered, and assuming it was racially motivated, should not Eric Holder start an investigation?
Pull this story? You’ve missed the point. Are you afraid of the truth about the man’s death? Racism is no secret, but to allow such individuals as Sherrod to use such incidents, and to lie about it in order to further her progressive agenda in race baiting blacks against whites is irresponsible journalism. Frankly, we would be just as guilty of bias if we did not expose Sherrod. Lest we forget, Obama may reconsider appointing her.
If you’re concerned that the Left will use the incident to further attack the “white man”, I’ve got news for you; the Left’s agenda has been to attack the white man for over 40 yrs. now.
I spit on PC, and on the thought that my tax dollars must pay such a political activist so she can spit on me.
Don’t pull this story for the following reasons:
1. Memory can change over time. There is a need to go to all possible primary documents/sources whenever possible, such as the Supreme Court decision.
2. Sherrod enhanced this terrible murder by using a well-known word/image of “lynching” instead of a beating. Her fault.
3. It was not her father but another relative. This is important. It was a deliberate distortion of the truth.
4. Remember, the three civil rights workers in Mississippi were beaten to death in a most horrible way. Murder is murder and should be acknowledged as such no matter what weapon or manner was used.
5. Sherrod comes from a family with some heavy racial luggage in it. Her husband is definitely anti-white, just as Mel Gibson’s father is a raving anti-semite. Hate is catching.
6. The mainstream media is totally incompetent, biased, and unwilling to go after the truth, and Breitbart proves it all the time.
7. Someone might have been trying to set Breitbart up, and the leftist media fell for it hook, line and stinker.
8. We must be very diligent in what we write about people and events, providing documentation whenever possible. (Some of my editors hated my listing many citations in my columns but I had to show my readers that I had done my homework and that my writings would withstand any challenges on accuracy and authenticity).
9. If apologies are due, give them.
Freepers should read the entire article because this black man was beaten to death by the sheriff and two thugs. Not a lynching in that he was not left swinging from a tree. But close enough for me.
A minor exaggeration by Shirley Sherrod and maybe she equates a beating with being lynched and she’s not too far off on that.
FROM THE ARTICLE-——>>>>>
It’s also possible that she knew the truth and chose to embellish it, changing a brutal and fatal beating to a lynching. Anyone who has lived in the American South (as my family once did) and is familiar with American history knows well the dread behind stories of lynch mobs and the Klan. What difference is there between a savage murder by fist and blackjack — and by dangling rope? Obviously, in the practical sense, none. But in the heyday — a very long time — of the Klan, there were frequent (and failed) attempts to pass federal anti-lynching laws. None to pass federal “anti-black jack” or “anti-fisticuffs” laws. Lynching had a peculiar, one is tempted to say grotesque, solitary status as part of the romantic image of the Klan, of the crazed racist. The image stirred by the image of the noosed rope in the hands of a racist lynch mob was, to say the least, frighteningly chilling. Did Ms. Sherrod deliberately concoct this story in search of a piece of that ugly romance to add “glamour” to a family story that is gut-wrenchingly horrendous already?
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