Via digby and AMERICAblog, Politico's Jim VandeHei dishes out some common sense advice with respect to Andrew Breitbart's vicious attack on Shirley Sherrod:
Let's not forget where this thing started.
Good idea, Jim. Seriously. Too often we ignore the root causes of things. So, what does he say the root cause is?
The NAACP came out and makes this charge against the Tea Party Movement.
Alright. You're starting to lose me here, Jim. Are you saying this all started because the NAACP got uppity?
And we've probably done more stories about the Tea party movement than any other news organization. We've really tried to study this group and they are a very diffuse group. You cannot say that they are racist any more than you can say the Democratic party is racist or the Republican party is racist.
Uh, first of all, even Newt Gingrich and Michael Steele and George W. Bush have spoken about the GOP's racism. Second of all, the NAACP never said the entire tea party movement was racist; they merely said some elements of the tea party movement were racist, and should be condemned as such. And if he's denying that to be the case, he obviously needs to spend more time talking with tea partiers.
So it creates this culture and it's a dangerous topic and it's a dangerous fire to light and so this is the outcome.
I know VandeHei isn't literally defending Breitbart here. He's not that stupid. But he's arguing that it's the NAACP's fault that Breitbart smeared Sherrod. And that pretty much speaks for itself.