Shirley Sherrod To Sue Andrew Breitbart

Last time we had anything to say about conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart we just dumped on him the way many websites have over the past week or so. He deserved it, so we tore him a new one, but that's probably going to stop now because he's about to get kicked in the family jewels.

Former Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod, who Breitbart consciously chose to make an enemy out of, said today that she plans to sue him for targeting her, when he posted a video to his website that was edited to look like she discriminated against a white Georgia farmer.

Truth be told, she may have a damn good case.Not that society should become overly litigious whenever someone gets bashed, but this was over the top. Breitbart took the video, which he had to see clearly was edited. He failed to check for the full context -- and if he knew there was more, that makes it even worse -- and put it up on his website to make her look like exactly the type of reverse racist villain guys like him spend their days hunting for.

Breitbart has yet to offer any apologies for the entire controversy, which caused Sherrod to lose her job, although Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has offered her another position, which she has yet to accept.

Either way, Breitbart has pretty much accomplished what he set out to do, which was attack the NAACP, and all he needed to do was just victimize a single person to achieve his goals.

For Sherrod's part, she says she holds no animus toward the NAACP or its president, Ben Jealous, for jumping the gun and publicly lashing her for what they thought was her efforts to discriminate against farmer Roger Spooner, who defended her and said loudly that she helped him save his farm. She's accepted apologies from Jealous, Vilsack and even President Obama, whom she still took to task for not understanding the experience and plight of black farmers, which is a much, much larger issue.

With that said, the legal system is complicated and can go several different ways. If Sherrod decides to go ahead with a lawsuit, the burden of proof is on her, says Bob Gaglione, a San Diego-based civil litigation attorney.

"The way she could have a case is if there was some intent to mislead, or edit or portray her speech in a false light," said Gaglione, who prosecutes libel and media cases. "It depends on the content and what his intent was. If he had malicious intent and she could prove that, then she could certainly prevail."

Breitbart has said that he really couldn't care less about Shirely Sherrod and that it was the NAACP he was going after, and in that case, she would have to be specific as to what was damaging to her.

"If you're going to put something on your website, a judge wouldn't look kindly at that," said Gaglione. "She certainly couldn't prosecute a case against him if he had intent to go after the NAACP, but if she's suffered damages, the case would have to be looked at in the light of what he did to injure her."

 

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