The Republican National Committee has postponed a fundraiser with right-wing media tycoon Andrew Breitbat, citing “a scheduling change.” While it’s not entirely clear why the event was delayed, Breitbart has been under heavy fire recently — even from conservatives — for his misleading and racially-tinged campaign to smear former USDA official Shirley Sherrod.

News of the fundraiser’s cancellation came on the same day that Breitbart held a “minority-based Tea Party event” in Philadelphia, which promised to show the inclusiveness of the tea party movement. Since the NAACP condemned “racist elements” within the tea party movement last month, Breitbart and other leaders have been desperately trying to show the supposed diversity of the movement.

Breitbart’s Saturday rally, held outside Independence Hall, failed in this pursuit. Reflecting polling which shows that 89 percent of tea party supporters are white, numerous media outlets reported that the event attracted only a “handful” of minorities. While there were 10 non-white speakers among the 18 total, the crowd was much less diverse, TPM reports:

Among those who did make it, for most of the time the numbers of non-white faces could be counted on two hands, and maybe a foot. [...]

David Webb, an African American top official with Tea Party Federation and the man who shamed Mark Williams and the Tea Party Express for being racist a couple weeks ago, emceed the event and told the tea party crowd that it didn’t matter if only a few minorities joined the cause.

“I didn’t realize that any movement everywhere had a minimum daily requirement of black people to be legitimate,” he said.

Perhaps the event failed to attract many people of color because it failed to attract many people. Organizers boasted that the event’s website had been visited 2 million times, and it was “clear from the large numbers of volunteers and the 1,500 bottles the organizers put on ice that they expected a big crowd to turn out.” In the end, about only 300 people bothered showing up. Organizers blamed traffic.

The highlight of the event was a paranoid screed from Breitbart, in which he warned of a “media cabal,” and accused liberals of being the true racists. Breitbart explained to reporters that their employers were “in cahoots with black politicians and the Democratic Party.” Breitbart also refused to discuss the one thing on everyone’s mind — the Sherrod video. It was Breitbart’s first speech since the controversy, but he “didn’t directly address Sherrod once during Saturday’s three hour rally,” ducking numerous questions from several reporters. Sherrod has said she will sue Breitbart over the incident.

The irony of Breitbart — who continues to insist that his video proves Sherrod is a racist — leading a rally to promote the tea party’s racial sensitivity was not lost on other organizers, it appears. “Many tea-party leaders appeared uncomfortable in the aftermath of Breitbart’s dustup with the NAACP and Sherrod,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Jeffrey Weingarten, the event’s principle organizer, was careful to note that Breitbart “had been invited to speak many months ago, ‘well before any of the recent radical pronouncements of either side.’” “In fact,” Weingarten contined, “I’ll tell you we view radical statements from anyone as extremist and not as partisan, and they should be roundly condemned by all people.”

Today, President Obama appeared on ABC’s The View, where co-host Sherri Shepherd asked him about the Shirley Sherrod controversy and whether “America is still racist.” Obama drew lessons from the Sherrod incident — including the fact that she was eventually able to talk on the phone to the President of the United States — as evidence of this country’s racial progress:

OBAMA: Look, I think that we have made so much progress. I had a conversation with Shirley Sherrod, wonderful woman. She’s the first one to acknowledge how much progress we’ve made. Think about her history and what she went through. Her father being murdered and her growing up in the Jim Crow South. Now she’s on the phone talking to the President of the United States. And she had been on the South Lawn for a celebration of federal employees just a couple weeks earlier. And that’s a testament to the progress that we’ve made.

What I do think happened in that situation is that a 24/7 media cycle that’s always looking for controversy and oftentimes doesn’t get to the facts first generated a phony controversy. A lot of people overreacted, including people in my administration. And part of the lesson that I want everybody to draw is let’s not assume the worst of other people, but let’s assume the best. Let’s make sure we get the facts straight before we act. And when it comes to race, let’s acknowledge that, of course, there’s still tensions out there. There’s still inequalities out there. There’s still discrimination out there.

Watch it:

Of course, the reason that Sherrod talked on the phone with the President is actually evidence of how far our country still has to go. Obama talked to her to apologize for the fact that his administration took the word of a race-baiting, right-wing flame-thrower to inappropriately expel a dedicated civil servant — without first investigating the facts and getting her side of the story. From the official readout of the call between Obama and Sherrod:

The President expressed to Ms. Sherrod his regret about the events of the last several days. He emphasized that Secretary Vilsack was sincere in his apology yesterday, and in his work to rid USDA of discrimination.

The President told Ms. Sherrod that this misfortune can present an opportunity for her to continue her hard work on behalf of those in need, and he hopes that she will do so.

Obama often hits the media for being irresponsible and running with inaccurate stories, but in this case, much of the media actually did the responsible thing — something his administration didn’t do. While Fox News and other right-wing outlets picked up Breitbart’s smear, both CNN and MSNBC didn’t rush to report the story and instead waited until until the Obama administration made it a story by forcing Sherrod to resign.

In fact, it was the media — particularly CNN and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution — who helped right the wrong that had been done to Sherrod by getting the true story out. Online, much of the blogosphere — familiar with Breitbart’s antics — was working to find the full video for the context of Sherrod’s remarks before coming to any conclusion. So in this case, much of the “24/7 media cycle” was doing its job, and it’s unfortunate that a woman whose story exemplifies racial progress in this country had to go through such a frustrating incident in order to talk to the President.

Transcript: Read more

This morning, President Barack Obama apologized to former USDA official Shirley Sherrod for her forced resignation based on a highly misleading video produced by right-wing media tycoon Andrew Breitbart. Obama “expressed his regret” in a phone call with Sherrod, which she described as “a very good conversation.” Sherrod also said she is considering suing Breitbart — who has refused to apologize or retract the story — for defamation, noting, “He was willing to destroy me…in order to try to destroy the NAACP.”

But Sherrod isn’t the only one denouncing Breitbart’s deceitful tactics. Speaking to the Daily Caller, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) called it “unfortunate” that Breitbart “didn’t lay out the whole story, as opposed to a part of it.” “They only put a little piece of the story out there and people make judgments and they rush and they make bad decisions. They make rash decisions,” Boehner said.

Meanwhile, Fox New anchor Shep Smith — whose network breathlessly promoted the smear campaign — slammed Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com as “widely discredited,” and blasted the White House for acting on its video. Smith even called out his own employer, saying, “The video, taken completely out of context, it ran all over the Internet, and television, including on this network:”

We here at Studio B did not run the video and did not reference the story in any way for many reasons, among them: we didn’t know who shot it, we didn’t know when it was shot, we didn’t know the context of the statement, and because of the history of the videos on the site where it was posted, in short we do not and did not trust the source. [...]

[The White House based its decision on] an edited videotape on a widely discredited website that has had inaccurate postings of videos in the past–edited to the point where the world was deceived. … What in the world has happened to our industry and the White House?

Watch it:

As Media Matters documented, a number of high-profile journalists have joined Smith in condemning Breitbart. CNN’s Anderson Cooper said Breitbart’s video was “clearly edited to deceive and slander Miss Sherrod.” Cooper added that Breitbart’s efforts to “weasel his way out of taking responsibility for what he did to Miss Sherrod is a classic example of what is wrong with our national discourse.” Politico’s Ben Smith noted that “Breitbart’s sites now have a growing credibility problem.”

Even conservative journalists, like the Weekly Standard’s John McCormack, denounced Breitbart. “Breitbart’s posting of the partial clip, which leaves out crucial information, was unfair to Sherrod,” McCormack wrote. “Sherrod deserves an apology from Breitbart for posting the edited video.” The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg agreed, writing Sherrod is “owed apologies from pretty much everyone, including my good friend Andrew Breitbart.”

However, Breitbart has at least one defender in hate radio host Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh attacked Shep Smith for “cav[ing]” and said the NAACP should now be spelled “R-A-C-I-S-M,” Limbaugh added.

Two white farmers who were supposedly discriminated against by former USDA official Shirley Sherrod spoke out on her behalf yesterday, saying “no way in the world” is she racist.

But last night, the right-wing blogger who instigated this faux controversy questioned the white farmers’ honesty and repeated his false racist charges. In interviews with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and CNN, the Iron City, GA couple Roger and Eloise Spooner described Sherrod as a “friend for life” and a “good person” who helped save their farm. Speaking with CNN’s John King, right-wing provocateur Andrew Breitbart challenged Eloise Spooner’s “purported” story, accusing King of trusting Sherrod “that the ‘farmer’s wife’ is the farmer’s wife”:

You tell me as a reporter how CNN put on a person today who purported to be the farmer’s wife? What did you do to find out whether or not that was the actual farmer’s wife? I mean, if you’re going to accuse me of a falsehood, tell me where you’ve confirmed that had this incident happened 24 years ago. [...]

You’re going off of her word that the farmer’s wife is the farmer’s wife?

Watch it (full interview, part one and part two):

Of course, CNN wasn’t just going off Shirley Sherrod’s word, but also the word of Eloise and Roger Spooner themselves. Just for the record, if the “purported” Spooners are a hoax, they’re a quite involved one:

– Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Marcus Garner confirmed to ThinkProgress that the paper independently found Eloise Spooner for her interview.

– Eloise and Roger H. Spooner are listed in the Iron City, GA phone book.

– The Spooners’ 62nd wedding anniversary, according to a blog post of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, was celebrated at the 2009 Tennessee Truck Show.

– Roger Spooner has been cited in “mainstream” news reports, including a 2002 Associated Press story in the Lexis-Nexis database, claiming to be a “survivor” of the USS Yorktown at anniversaries of the Battle of Midway, which purportedly happened in 1942.

– In a 2009 article, USS Yorktown survivor Roger Spooner claimed to have “discharge papers” from the Navy in his “wallet.”

In his desperation to defend his ugly tactics, Breitbart is resorting to dragging an innocent family’s name through the mud.

This morning, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that he is now reconsidering his decision to fire Shirley Sherrod, after taking the bait of a deceptively edited video that appeared on BigGovernment.com meant to make the Georgia USDA official appear racist. From Vilsack’s statement:

I am of course willing and will conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts to ensure to the American people we are providing services in a fair and equitable manner.

This certainly isn’t a promise that Sherrod will get her job back (despite overwhelming evidence that she was set up and is the victim of injustice), but it’s a significant step forward. After all, yesterday afternoon, Vilsack was standing by his decision, saying, “The controversy surrounding her comments would create situations where her decisions, rightly or wrongly, would be called into question making it difficult for her to bring jobs to Georgia.” The NAACP has apologized to Sherrod for initially rushing out a statement saying it was “appalled” by her “shameless” actions and has called on Vilsack to reinstate her.