Always On Watch Two: Damage All Around

Recently, Andrew Breitbart of BigGovernment posted "Video Proof: The NAACP Awards Racism–2010," in which he stated:

Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

In my view, that point about the NAACP audience is being missed by those who don't visit "the right-wing blogosphere" or watch Fox News.

Despite Breitbart's protestations to the contrary, CNN has turned "Shirley Sherrod's Story," as that edition was entitled, into a tale excoriating Fox News Channel, specifically Bill O'Reilly, who called for Ms. Sherrod's resignation on his show earlier this week.

Yesterday afternoon, CNN showed the full video of Ms. Sherrod's speech to the NAACP, a special show that I watched on the plasma television at the car dealer, when I took in my vehicle for scheduled service. Several others were also in the customer-service area at the car dealership.

I could see it on their faces: they are now discounting "the right-wing blogosphere" and deeming Fox News as unfit sources of information.

Now, while I was waiting at the car dealership, sometimes I couldn't always quite hear what CNN was saying. But the best that I recall now, CNN didn't cover the audience's sounds of approvals to what appeared to be the racist statements Ms. Sherrod was making in her speech to the NAACP, although CNN did, at the top of the video-loop screen, print in words the text of that portion of Ms. Sherrod's speech. Furthermore, the two black women I was sitting across from, were nodding their heads in agreement to every point that CNN made, including that Andrew Breitbart is a major player in the Tea Party Movement. Let me also add that a large part of yesterday's broadcast was self-congratulatory (paraphrase): "We at this network didn't fall for the scam because we don't broadcast a story until we fully investigate that story" [as in watching the entire video].

Over at this thread at MSNBC, the following comment well summarizes the reactions, black and white, in the customer-service waiting area:

When did this sort of stuff become OK? How is it possible in a country that claims to be the "best in the world"? How does this blog clown sleep at night? Oh, that's right, he's conservative.

For the record, HERE is the full video of Shirley Sherrod's speech at the NAACP. The video is long, but I do recommend that you watch it in its entirety.

This video clip of Keith Olbermann pretty much sums up the way the Shirley Sherrod story is playing out in the mainstream media, albeit not always so condemnatory of Obama:

Let's keep in mind that a lot of American voters base their decisions at the ballot box upon information they glean from the mainstream media.

Maybe there is plenty of loss of credibility to go around, including for the Obama administration, which was quite willing to throw Mr. Sherrod under the bus before watching the full video of her NAACP speech. However, based on what I saw yesterday in that waiting area at the car dealership, conservatives have taken a big hit on this one.

How many of those in the waiting area at the car dealership and how many American voters will see the Bill O'Reilly's rebuttal, which aired last night?