Former Reagan White House political director accuses Shirly Sherrod of lying.

[sufrommich]

Why, because Sherrods father was beaten to death, not lynched. Which apparently in wingnutland is proof of a lie. A warning, this is from American Spectator, does anyone else think it's speaks volumes that a former Reagan groupie is writing for a John Birch like publication??


http://spectator.org/people/jeffrey-lord/all

Sherrod Story False
By Jeffrey Lord on 7.26.10 @ 6:09AM

It isn't true.

Shirley Sherrod's story in her now famous speech about the lynching of a relative is not true. The veracity and credibility of the onetime Agriculture Department bureaucrat at the center of the explosive controversy between the NAACP and conservative media activist Andrew Breitbart is now directly under challenge. By nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court. All of them dead.

But first, it's important to say this.

After Shirley Sherrod's firing I wrote a column congratulating Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for removing her -- based on a viewing of the now infamous edited Breitbart clip. I was wrong. I should have waited to see the entire video or read the transcript before writing a word. So my apologies to Ms. Sherrod.

The problem?

I have now done exactly what I should have done originally. So there's no mistake about "selective editing" of videos or speech transcripts, here is a link to the website of the NAACP, where they have made a point of posting the full video of Shirley Sherrod's speech. I have seen the entire speech as supplied by the NAACP. The now-famous speech runs just over 40 minutes. If you don't have the time, here is a link to the printed transcript of her speech supplied by a site called American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank. The transcript is taken in full from the video version of her speech, which American rhetoric also supplies. I have read the transcript as well.




Let's get to this.

In her speech, Ms. Sherrod says this:

I should tell you a little about Baker County. In case you don't know where it is, it's located less than 20 miles southwest of Albany. Now, there were two sheriffs from Baker County that -- whose names you probably never heard but I know in the case of one, the thing he did many, many years ago still affect us today. And that sheriff was Claude Screws. Claude Screws lynched a black man. And this was at the beginning of the 40s. And the strange thing back then was an all-white federal jury convicted him not of murder but of depriving Bobby Hall -- and I should say that Bobby Hall was a relative -- depriving him of his civil rights.

Plain as day, Ms. Sherrod says that Bobby Hall, a Sherrod relative, was lynched. As she puts it, describing the actions of the 1940s-era Sheriff Claude Screws: "Claude Screws lynched a black man."

[MichiganVote]

1. That poor woman...who could imagine a firestorm like this.

Shame on all of the people who would denigrate a fellow citizen like this.

[Xipe Totec]

2. He's arguing about how many pinheads can dance on Sharron Angle's head

In other words, an attempt at distraction.

A lynching is a mob execution without trial.

To argue otherwise is to be an imbecile.

[sufrommich]

5. Of course it is. King Reagan surrounded himself with

some real evil nut jobs.

[DevonRex]

3. K&R nt

[EFerrari]

4. Lynching does not mean hanging. This man is a disgusting idiot. n/t

[livingonearth]

8. You are correct.

A lot of people associate the act of lynching with hanging, but it does not always mean that. I've read accounts of "lynchings" in which victims were burned alive and/or beaten to death. I think a more accurate definition of lynching would be mob violence, or execution by a mob without a trial. Sherrod was correct to call it a lynching.

[Dappleganger]

11. Being kicked to death by a mob was quite common.

And I don't recall anyone every referring to those acts as anything other than lynching.

[gordianot]

6. Proof there is no bottom to RW sheer hatred and stupidity. n/t

[robertpaulsen]

7. Wonder if KO read this in time to say...

Worst Person In The World!!!

[handmade34]

9. just read the entire article

and this man's argument is beyond any sort of comprehension...he is a small minded, little man. His attempt at an argument, is that it was progressives that allowed the perpetrators of crime towards black people to go unpunished (therefore progressives are bad). He apparently has no concept of history and social change...

[3waygeek]

10. Look at the author's name...

of course the righties are going to take his word as Gospel.