David Frum is Surprised That Conservatives Continue to Support Andrew Breitbart
David Frum seems surprised that conservative media helped Andrew Breitbart smear an innocent woman: Shirley Sherrod and the shame of conservative media.
I’m not sure why he’s surprised. I got over being surprised a while ago.
Frum calls Breitbart “the conservative Dan Rather.”
But Joshua Green thinks Breitbart is something much darker.
Breitbart focuses on race. Today’s episode with Shirley Sherrod, who was forced to resign from the Agriculture Department on the basis of a doctored and intentionally misleading videotape (see below), is an especially ugly case in point, calculated to stir the very worst racial resentments. This time the political world—the NAACP, the Agriculture Secretary—moved as quickly as the media world to unthinking response, and I suspect it happened precisely because race was involved. I don’t doubt that the administration’s understandable desire to avoid racial issues played a big part in how this turned out.
But what’s galling to me—gut-wrenching, really, like watching old news footage of blacks being beaten and clubbed at lunch counters—is that Breitbart obviously understood the powerful effect his tape would have, posted it anyway, and then assumed the role of ringmaster, expertly conducting the media circus, fanning the flames. It’s hardly the first time. But the moral ugliness of what’s just happened is glaring, and it’s hard for me to see how the media can justify continuing to treat Breitbart as simply a roguish provocateur. He’s something much darker.
Frank says: