On his show on Fox yesterday, July 20th, Glenn Beck's understanding about the Shirley Sharrod video was that "context matters," but on his radio show in the morning, it was a completely different story. What, or more precisely who, changed Beck's thinking about the Sharrod video? On his morning Glenn Beck Program on Premier Radio Networks, he said that they "have a video of tape of a USDA administration official discriminating against white farmers." He asked, "Have we suddenly transported into 1956 except it's the other way around? ... Does anybody else have a sense that there are some that just want revenge? Doesn't it feel that way?" He played the audio of the tape and said, "You tell me what part of the gospel is teaching that." By 5 o'clock that same afternoon, before the full video of the speech Sharrod gave to the NAACP back in March had been made available, but after she had been forced to retire, Beck's story changed completely. since when? The obvious question to ask here is when did the context of someone's words or texts start to matter for the master of decontextualizing? One of Beck's primary means of distorting ideas and misinforming his listeners is to take video or text out of the context they were spoken or written in. Media Matters has listed nine examples of Beck doing this, and it's been documented on this site. See: "Beck completely misinterprets President Obama's words." To have Beck come on his program as seen above and announce multiple times that "context matters" was disingenuous at best and one of his most flagrant hypocrisies to date, but that's not the big story from his Fox show yesterday. How did someone, who had no problem using the tape as presented on Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com website in the morning, know that there was a bigger context at play even though Beck was still using the same recording? This story is actually a question that only Beck and one other person can answer. Who knew that there was more to the video? Who did Beck know who knew that? Andrew Breitbart has been an honored and respected guest on Beck's show in the past. Glenn Beck frequently states conjecture as if it were fact because he has no journalistic principles or training. On this page it is going to be made clear: it is just a guess - but a guess based on logic - that Beck and Breitbart were in contact during the day yesterday. That would explain how Beck knew, apparently for the first time in his career, that in this one case, "context matters." Who else in the world was in the know that would have conveyed this to Beck? Occam's razor comes to mind. The simplest explanation is the most likely. However strange it may sound, Glenn Beck may have spent some of the afternoon watching CNN where Sharrod was telling her side of the story. The conspiracy seems more likely, but it's possible that even Glenn Beck will watch an actual news station when he needs reliable information.
This reasoning also suggests that Andrew Breitbart knew about the contents of the whole recording all along. Someone knew. Someone who knows Beck knew. Circumstantial evidence suggests that this edited video was just another dirty trick by the master of the smear job: Andrew Breitbart. On Fox, he's in good company.











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