Just when we thought we had put the Shirley Sherrod saga behind us the story reemerges in yet another form. The most recent chapter in the story involves an Andrew Breitbart blogger and Glenn Beck. Lee Stranahan of Big Government, a website operated by Andrew Breitbart, accuses Beck of participating in a “large series of lies about his participation in the Shirley Sherrod story that broke back in July, 2010.” The dispute is not entirely new, as Breitbart himself had accused Beck of not being truthful about his role, and essentially throwing Breitbart under the bus once the story went bad. However, what is new to the story are a number of audio clips Stranahan found which do, in fact, seem to prove that Beck pushed the “Sherrod is racist” theme on the radio before suddenly changing his tune on television.
The Sherrod story developed on July 20th, 2010. At the beginning of the day the media was operating with an edited clips of Sherrod’s remarks which made it seem as though she refused to help a white farmer based on race. By the end of the day the video of Sherrod’s full speech had come out, and it showed that she actually helped the farmer.
As Stranahan explains, Beck has always claimed that he played no part in defaming Sherrod, and that he instead helped defend her. Beck even went as far as to claim that God told him not to pursue the Sherrod story. Beck’s television show does not air until 5 pm EST. On television Beck did come to Sherrod’s defense, saying she was a victim of media distortion. Beck’s radio show airs in the morning, and the audio clips Stranahan found show Beck had a much different viewpoint on the morning of July 20th.
One of the audio clips can be heard on the left. The other two can be found within Stranahan’s article here. Among other things, Beck and his co-host accuse Sherrod of “discriminating against white farmers" and declares that it is the 1950’s in reverse while playing the edited clip of her speech. When Beck is informed that Sherrod has been forced to resign he plainly concludes that this is a “good” result, and Beck never comes to her defense during the entire 10 minutes of air time. At the end of his show Beck actually suggests that he will be criticizing Sherrod on his television show. Instead, something changed while Beck headed over to the Fox News studio.
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