# Who looks worse? Breitbart or Obama WH? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 21, 2010, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448 "2010-07-21T11:20:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/21 "2010-07-21T14:50:33Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > So YOUR position is, no matter what Beck said, he’d have been at fault? Do you disagree that if the White House hadn’t fired her he’d have been all over them for the opposite reason? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/22 "2010-07-21T14:53:46Z")
> [@kingbighair](#): > > Well it looks like he did his own selective video editing in order to go into another anti-communism diatribe. Perhaps, but his “selective” edit doesn’t seem to obscure the message. In other words, a full and reasonable summary of Sherrod’s speech is that her experience taught her that it wasn’t racism, but poverty, that was the greater divider, and that her job was to help those in need by reason of poverty no matter their race. Beck himself, or his audience, may cavil over whether that’s a proper role for government, but it’s not an unfair summary of Sherrod’s speech. And more to the point: all but the most hard-core, “racism against whites isn’t possible,” crew would be appalled at the Breitbart edit. But the Beck “edit,” doesn’t present a picture that would bother most liberals – I daresay that many, if not most, on the left would AGREE that a major issue in our country is how unevenly wealth is distributed, and how a proper role of government is to soften those inequities. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/23 "2010-07-21T14:56:01Z")
Breitbart already looks as bad as he’s going to. He’s a liar and a creep, and everyone who turns to him for “news” is a fool and a creep. The White House and the USDA acted unconscionably in this. Fox News is still saying that Obama surrounds himself with suspicious characters like Ayers and Wright and _Sherrod_. The only one who looks remotely good in all of this is Shirley Sherrod, and she’s righteously pissed. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/24 "2010-07-21T14:56:42Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > So YOUR position is, no matter what Beck said, he’d have been at fault? No-it’s rather obvious that _Beck’s_ position is that no matter what they said or did, _The White House_ is at fault. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/25 "2010-07-21T14:59:54Z")
Beck has his sights set on NAACP. The Sherrod story was convenient ammunition for him to fire away. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/26 "2010-07-21T15:00:00Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Do you disagree that if the White House hadn’t fired her he’d have been all over them for the opposite reason? Yes, I do. Look at O’Reilly. He was demanding that she be canned. It boggles the mind to say that both O’Reiily’s and Beck’s positions are wrong, since they are essentially opposite. I have bee excoriated on these boards more than once for advancing a flavor of this precise argument: _If something else had happened, you’d have done the reverse._ Here, people readily acknowledge that O’Reilly was wrong for precipitously calling for her ouster. It seems the only way you can ALSO criticize Beck is to say, as you’re doing, “I’m criticizing him not exactly for what he did, but what he surely WOULD HAVE DONE in other circumstances.” But I notice you don’t praise O’Reilly, reasoning that in other circumstances, he wouldn’t have called for Sherrod’s ouster. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/27 "2010-07-21T15:01:29Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > Beck has his sights set on NAACP. The Sherrod story was convenient ammunition for him to fire away. And he was right to do so, since the NAACP itself now acknowledges they were in error. So are you saying Beck was wrong to point out that the NAACP was wrong? ---
**Author:** ![Cinebar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Cinebar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cinebar)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/28 "2010-07-21T15:01:53Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Beck doesn’t “take positions”. Beck throws shit in whatever direction will bring in the most viewers. If the White House _hadn’t_ fired Sherrod he would have been maligning her non-stop. I agree. But I’m still very disappointed in the Obama administration for falling into the trap and rushing to judgment. I really feel for this poor woman. Even the white couple from the story are coming to her defense, saying she’s a “friend for life” and they would have lost their farm if it hadn’t been for her help. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/29 "2010-07-21T15:04:25Z")
The NAACP comes out of this looking like fools. This was a speech that Sherrod made at an NAACP event in March, if I’m not mistaken. This means that the NAACP’s position went from “we didn’t care about this when she made the speech, but now that more people know about it, we immediately denounce her” to “we got snookered into hasty action by video of our own event, and we’ve reversed our position in less than a day.” PR win for the Tea Party. Imagine what they can say: “Do you think the NAACP put any more careful thought into denouncing us than it did to denouncing Shirley Sherrod?” ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/30 "2010-07-21T15:06:04Z")
[Here is the original video excerpt.](http://www.breitbart.tv/video-proof-the-naacp-awards-racism/) There’s more than this, but I think this is the part that caused the controversy: The Breitbart video begins with text that says she oversees a Georgia agency that gives out $1.2 billion in aid a year, and says she admits she discriminates based on race. The video is from a speech she gave in March 2009. > [@](#): > > “The first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm, he took a long time talking but he was trying to show me he was superior to me. I know what he was doing, but he had come to me for help. What he didn’t know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was, I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him. I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough.” At that time she says she took the farmer to a white lawyer and assumed the lawyer would help the farmer because they were both white. [Here is the full speech.](http://www.naacp.org/news/entry/video_sherrod/) Maybe I can find the text online, because I can’t transcribe the whole thing. But she starts by talking about the murder of her father 45 years ago. He was killed by a white man, and even though there were three witnesses, an all-white grand jury refused to indict the man who killed him. (She later talks about her father being denied the home loan he wanted because of his race.) She says that when she was young she was determined to get away from the farm, but after his murder she committed to staying in the South and making things better. She stuck to that even though the Klan burned a cross on her family’s lawn three months after her father died. But she admits that at the time, she thought was thinking about helping black people and that she has learned it’s really about helping poor people. Then she tells the story about the farmer. She says the lawyer took the farmer’s money but didn’t help. The bank was about to foreclose on the farm, and the lawyer said “why don’t you just let the farm go?” She says she was stunned, and about a week before the farm would have been forclosed on and sold, she did everything she could to help the farmer and in the end he was able to keep the farm. So she realized the wealth disparity was more important than race. She’s telling a story about realizing that discriminating based on race is wrong, and Breitbart used a fragment to make her look like a racist and he blatantly misrepresented the content as well as the context. That’s really shameful. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/31 "2010-07-21T15:06:37Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > No-it’s rather obvious that _Beck’s_ position is that no matter what they said or did, _The White House_ is at fault. Perhaps, but this is a poor example of Beck’s being in error with these claims, since in this instance it’s true that the White House is at fault. If you wish to show how much of a jerk beck is for constantly blaming the White House for screwing up, it would be wise to identify another instance of Beck’s attacking the White House, one where his attack wasn’t so well grounded. Even if Beck is a psycho that blames the Obama White House for everything from the loss of the Chicago Olympics to the cancellation of “As the World Turns,” a stopped clock is right twice per day, and this is one of those times. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/32 "2010-07-21T15:08:42Z")
> [@kingbighair](#): > > It is in the second link - Assuming that you were responding to my request about the lie… I’m not seeing it. Can you underline the lie and explain why it is a lie? ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/33 "2010-07-21T15:09:07Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > And he was right to do so, since the NAACP itself now acknowledges they were in error. > > So are you saying Beck was wrong to point out that the NAACP was wrong? When he follows it up with comments like, “Since the NAACP hasn’t released the tape in its entirety yet, maybe there are things that are even more incriminating on it?” you’ll have to pardon me for doubting his sincerity on the issue. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/34 "2010-07-21T15:11:40Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > She’s telling a story about realizing that discriminating based on race is wrong, and Breitbart used a fragment to make her look like a racist and he blatantly misrepresented the content as well as the context. That’s really shameful. Agreed, although there’s a nuance that I think deserves discussion, and I think the reason I think it’s shameful is slightly different than what you mean. As I understand it, Breitbart’s target was not Sherrod, but rather the NAACP itself. He sought to show racism there by the audience reaction to the revelation that Sherrod chose to dial back the help she could give the white farmer. And that’s valid, as far as it goes. However, what was shamefully despicable was the refusal to then supply the rest of the video to rehabilitate Sherrod. In other words, he simply didn’t care about destroying this woman’s image in order to advance his little pet project of NAACP hatred. He was perfectly willing to sacrifice her to the goal. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/35 "2010-07-21T15:11:41Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Assuming that you were responding to my request about the lie… I’m not seeing it. Can you underline the lie and explain why it is a lie? See my post from a few minutes ago. Breitbart said Sherrod was admitting she discriminates based on race in her current position. In fact she was telling a story from many years ago about how she initially didn’t make a full effort in helping a white farmer, but saw she was wrong when he was about to lose the farm. She then did her utmost and helped him keep his farm. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/36 "2010-07-21T15:13:04Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > See my post from a few minutes ago. Breitbart said Sherrod was admitting she discriminates based on race in her current position. In fact she was telling a story from many years ago about how she initially didn’t make a full effort in helping a white farmer, but saw she was wrong when he was about to lose the farm. She then did her utmost and helped him keep his farm. In addition the farmer himself is saying she helped him to the utmost of her ability and vigor. ---
**Author:** ![kingbighair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/13edae/32.png) [@kingbighair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kingbighair)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/37 "2010-07-21T15:14:15Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Perhaps, but his “selective” edit doesn’t seem to obscure the message. In other words, a full and reasonable summary of Sherrod’s speech is that her experience taught her that it wasn’t racism, but poverty, that was the greater divider, and that her job was to help those in need by reason of poverty no matter their race. Beck himself, or his audience, may cavil over whether that’s a proper role for government, but it’s not an unfair summary of Sherrod’s speech. That may be a fair summary of her speech, but that is not what Beck gave. He used one line of her speech in a video to pivot into his prepackaged Obama is a racist Marxist who pals around with communists and is slowly using government to take over your life, so be afraid and stay away from the mainstream liberal media bit. It was not a discussion on the role of government. But my own biases make me see whatever I want with Beck, so we are both wrong. 😉 > [@](#): > > And more to the point: all but the most hard-core, “racism against whites isn’t possible,” crew would be appalled at the Breitbart edit. But the Beck “edit,” doesn’t present a picture that would bother most liberals – I daresay that many, if not most, on the left would AGREE that a major issue in our country is how unevenly wealth is distributed, and how a proper role of government is to soften those inequities. Ok. Maybe we disagree on the message Beck was presenting. Because I thought it was not a reasoned argument that government is not the proper tool to reduce inequality, but, rather, Reverend Wright, Van Jones, Mao-loving Anita Dunn, czars, czars, no fair trials, execute Americans, Marxists are running health care, White House controls mainstream media… ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/38 "2010-07-21T15:17:47Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > [Here is the original video excerpt.](http://www.breitbart.tv/video-proof-the-naacp-awards-racism/) There’s more than this, but I think this is the part that caused the controversy: > > The Breitbart video begins with text that says she oversees a Georgia agency that gives out $1.2 billion in aid a year, and says she admits she discriminates based on race. The video is from a speech she gave in March 2009. OK, I can agree that it’s a lie. Breitbart clearly uses the present tense, and associates her actions from over 20 years ago with a claim that she actively engages in those actions today. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/39 "2010-07-21T15:21:00Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > OK, I can agree that it’s a lie. Breitbart clearly uses the present tense, and associates her actions from over 20 years ago with a claim that she actively engages in those actions today. It’s more than that. She didn’t even actually fuck those people. She was tempted to and realized that skin color doesn’t matter. Breitbart showed a clip that made it look like she actually did something wrong. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448/40 "2010-07-21T15:21:57Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > …and how a proper role of government is to soften those inequities. She wasn’t working for the government at the time, but for a non-profit. And speaking as a native-born peckerwood, raised by Texans because the wolves wouldn’t have me…I find her story inspirational. And this Breitbart creep is a slimeball of the first water, a transcendent douchebag who ensuckens dead donkey balls. That you might wish to deflect attention from him and Fox Gnaws is perplexing. And I’m wearing my charitable hat this morning. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-looks-worse-breitbart-or-obama-wh/547448.md?page=3)