BREITBART’S VERSION OF REGRET…. There’s been some talk about whether Andrew Breitbart would get around to apologizing for the Shirley Sherrod fiasco. It’s even been a topic for conservatives — Jonah Goldberg thinks Breitbart should apologize; David Frum predicts he won’t.
We got a better sense of Breitbart’s perspective today when the right-wing media activist told MSNBC, “I feel bad that they made this about her, and I feel sorry that they made this about her. Watching how they’ve misconstrued, how the media has misconstrued the intention behind this, I do feel a sympathy for her plight.” He added that he’s “sympathetic” to the fact that the media “went after her and not after the NAACP.”
So, in Breitbart’s mind, the media is to blame — apparently because news outlets ran with the story that Breitbart gave them.
David Kurtz calls the remarks “almost sociopathic.” Simon Maloy labels Breitbart’s response “pathological.”
These aren’t unreasonable responses. Breitbart pushed a deliberately misleading video that went after Shirley Sherrod for no reason. He proceeded to label her a “racist” who “racially discriminates against a white farmer,” and demanded that the NAACP “denounce the racism in the video.” That, of course, would be the racism that didn’t exist when listening to the remarks in context.
Breitbart’s racially-motivated media stunt cost Sherrod her job, at least for now. But he regrets that “they went after her”? That he said this with a straight face is disconcerting.
