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Thank goodness we had Laura Flanders to keep Andrew Breitbart in check on HBO's Real Time on Friday night, because Bill Maher sure as hell wasn't going to do it. Why he and his producers felt the need to have Breitbart on there in the first place is beyond me, but I could say the same thing about CNN, MSNBC, Fox and anywhere else that gave him an opportunity to push this book of his over the last couple of weeks, the most disgusting of which was Dylan Ratigan's fawning interview with him on MSNBC.

Sadly, Bill or Laura didn't ask him about his latest video editing hit job, which Karoli covered here -- Breitbarted Again? BigGovernment Uses Deceptively Edited Video To Smear University Professors - UPDATED. I didn't expect much from Maher after the way his prior shows in which he had Breitbart on as a guest proceeded. I think Flanders might have called him out for it if she was given more time to talk.

For a little reminder of just how obnoxious Breitbart was in one of his previous appearances, here's this little blast from the past with Breitbart defending Rush Limbaugh and getting his butt handed to him by Michael Eric Dyson. And Matt called him out for having him on last year in September -- Dear Bill Maher: Andrew Breitbart Is Not A Journalist.

But never mind that he's been a completely obnoxious guest during past appearances, or that he and his cohorts are known liars who put up one deceptively edited smear video after another, and that he is nothing but a right-wing flame thrower with no regard for truthfulness or accuracy, as Media Matters has documented. Let's bring him on one more time to do Real Time so he can play the misunderstood victim again and feign ignorance about the content that he controls that goes up at his site and what he's really all about, which is lining his own pocket while doing the bidding of the Koch brothers and company and their astroturf "Tea Party" movement.

We've done so many posts on Breitbart, I've lost count, but you can see the better part of them with a quick
Google search. Despite his history, our corporate media continues to have him on the air as though he's someone credible without laying out his history of lies and distortions and ambush "journalism", the latest of which is now Bill Maher.

You can let HBO know what you think of their decision on the HBO forum here.

And if you're on Twitter Maher's user name is @billmaher.

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After Dylan Ratigan's fawning interview with Andrew Breitbart yesterday, he got some push-back from his buddy Cenk Uygur who he helped get on the air at MSNBC in the first place about allowing someone that fundamentally dishonest come on the air and pretend like he had any interest in muckraking or going after corporate America or Wall Street.

Cenk is exactly right. The only people Breitbart goes after are the powerless and minorities with his so-called "sting operations" and highly edited tapes. What he forgot to mention or didn't get a chance to get in edgewise between Ratigan and the other panel members interruptions was Breitbart's ties to the Koch Brothers and the fact that the so-called "tea party" is nothing but an astroturf rebranding effort by Republicans to get the Bush stink off of the word Republican and for them to try to erase how disastrous their governing policies were when they were driving the economy into a ditch from our memory banks.

Ratigan should be ashamed of himself for that interview with Breitbart yesterday, but it looks like he's going to dig in and defend his actions instead. You can try to revise history all you want Mr. Ratigan, but you in no way held Breitbart's feet to the fire on anything during that little love-fest you had with him yesterday afternoon.

Media Matters did a nice job of breaking down that atrocity of an interview by Ratigan at their blog here -- Dereliction Of Duty: Dylan Ratigan Demonstrates How Not To Interview Andrew Breitbart.

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Rachel Maddow explains the difference between ad hominem and ad populum attacks, both of which have now been done by Bill O'Reilly who is not only saying he's correct because he has more viewers than she does but calling her names as well in his recent column Only far-left loons scared of Fox News:

But let’s get back to Letterman. Speaking with far-left MSNBC News commentator Rachel Maddow on his program, Dave listened as she put forth the preposterous theory that Fox News wants to frighten white Americans by reporting negatively about black Americans.

“Scaring white people is good politics on the conservative side of the spectrum, and it always has been. The idea is that you sort of rile up the white base to be afraid of an other, to be afraid of scary immigrants or scary black people.”

In the past, paranoid, dishonest rants like that would have been dismissed as fringe speak. But not anymore. Without a shred of evidence, a guest on Letterman’s “Late Show” (which by the way gets trounced in the ratings by Fox News Channel every night) defines an entire news organization as a racist enterprise. And Letterman goes along with the program, adding: “These people are continuing to fan this flame, and ... that is cancer.”

Please. The only people Fox News is scaring are far-left loons who see their shining city on the hill on fire. For 18 months, the United States has been governed from the left, and things are not going well. I’m sorry if this analysis frightens some folks, but when you spend a half-trillion dollars trying to stimulate the economy and create just 600,000 jobs, well, people are going to notice

Rachel had a bit of video evidence to rebut Mr. O'Reilly with. As she said even though he continually dismisses her she must be getting under his skin since he feels the need to respond. I say good as well. He treats Media Matters that same way but there's no doubt that they drive him insane just by documenting what he does day after day. Al Franken drove him nuts just by recording his radio show and playing back parts where he'd say one thing one day and try to deny it the next and they'd mock him for it. I say the more of us that get under his skin the better. I know we wear it like a badge of honor at Crooks and Liars if someone gets a mention. If he's mad we're going our jobs since he can't seem to stop lying on the air and apparently in print either after reading his column.

Time for your weekly Driftglass and Bluegal podcast. Enjoy everybody!

You can listen to past editions here and at http://dgbgpodcast.blogspot.com/, and the podcast is also available on i-Tunes. If you enjoy these as much as I do, donations are greatly appreciated. Please consider throwing five bucks in the hat.

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This has to be one of the most bizarre things I've seen in a long time. Chris Matthews has Howard Dean and Joan Walsh on to discuss the Shirley Sherrod debacle and what Andrew Breitbart did to slime her and the Obama administration's response and when both Walsh and Dean point out to Matthews that despite his assertions to the contrary, Breitbart's video was highly edited, Matthews goes ballistic on them and claims that the nearly hour long video wasn't edited because Breitbart included this bit.

Sherrod: That's when it was revealed to me that's it's about poor versus those who have. It's not so much about white... it is about white and black but it's not, you know... it opened my eyes. Because I took him to one of his own.

Apparently in Tweety's mind, Breitbart including that somehow absolved him from the editing of the tape he did. The more Walsh and Dean tried to point out to Matthews that the tape was edited and that what he was saying wasn't true, the more agitated he got.

Digby was kind enough to transcribe some of this nonsense for us and I've got a couple of theories for why Matthews acted the way he did. Her transcript along with what MSNBC aired in place of this along with part two of the segment they apparently didn't want anyone to watch below the fold.

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Now that the media has decided to help whitewash Andrew Breitbart's hit piece on Shirley Sherrod by using what happened as an excuse to talk about race relations non-stop instead of the fact that this is not the first time Fox News and Breitbart have done hit pieces on organizations like ACORN and others that were patently false and the need for some accountability for their actions, we continually get treated to segments like this one. The big elephant in the room that is ignored is the real need for something to be done about the fact that six companies control our media and they need to be broken up. Until that happens we're going to be fed the stream of garbage that calls itself "news" like we have here.

CNN's Anderson Cooper hosted a panel segment to discuss Howard Dean's statement on Fox News Sunday that Fox's coverage of Shirley Sherrod was racist. One one side we have the Reverend Michael Eric Dyson. And on the other side Red State blogger and now CNN contributor Erick Erickson. So CNN's idea of "fair and balanced" is to make a professor of sociology at Georgetown University have to debate a right wing flame throwing racist about race. Nice. Although now that he's part of their "Best Political Team on Television" what else should we expect from them? His hire ranks right up there with that of Republican operative Alex Castellanos.

I'd like to know why CNN thinks that someone with Erickson's history should be brought in to discuss race...ever. He's the Pat Buchanan of CNN. This is a man who called Obama's Nobel Peace Prize" an affirmative action quota". He defended Rush Limbaugh and the racist "Barack the Magic Negro" song. He also defended President Obama being portrayed as the Joker. But here he is on CNN being asked to weigh in on race relations in the United States when he's part of the problem.

Thankfully Dyson did point out just how dishonest Fox has been on the time line of when they ran with the Sherrod story but apparently Erickson doesn't want to let a little pesky thing like facts get in the way of his spin. Erickson also slammed Media Matters as "nothing but a left-wing hit job". Yeah, whatever you say Erick. That's some severe projection you've got going on there buddy.

I'm sure Erickson has a lot of disdain for Media Matters since they do a good job of documenting his hackery day in and day out. I have little doubt that sunshine is not something Erickson appreciates very much.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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The Obama administration clearly deserves most of the blame for misinterpreting a video clip to mean that a black USDA worker withheld help from a white farmer, according to Comedy Central's Jon Stewart.

While Andrew Breitbart is responsible for posting the edited video of Shirley Sherrod on his BigGovernment.com website, the Obama administration did not take the time to obtain the full speech before calling for her resignation.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack essentially forced Sherrod to resign. Stewart joked that she had been "Vilsacked." The Agriculture Secretary apologized but at least one statement reflected a lack of contrition.

"It should have been done in a much more personal way. It should have been done with far more thought and it should have been done in far less haste," said Vilsack.

"I shouldn't have been done," Stewart said to cheers from his studio audience. "We're not angry about how you fired her. We're angry that you fired her."

"I'm sorry I hit your dog with my car. I should have smothered him with a pillow," Stewart joked.

The NAACP was also forced to backtrack after initially condemning Sherrod. "We were snookered by Fox News and Tea Party activist Andrew Breitbart into believing Sherrod harmed white farmers because of racial bias," the NAACP said in a statement.

"First of all, Fox News is too busy to busy with their Black Panther hard-on to bother with this and the guy who leaked this tape may be the most honest person in this entire story," said Stewart.

Only five months ago, Breitbart said, "I want it to be in the history books saying I took down the institutional left."

"He didn't say I want to be in the history books as a paragon of honesty," Stewart noted. "He didn't say I would like to be in the museum of broadcasting and be known by children around the world as Arnold B. Truthington of Accuracy Lane. No, he said out loud, 'I want to bring down the institutional left.' So, if you are on the institutional left and you receive a package from him, watch the whole f**king tape!"

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Looks like someone's none too happy about Fox being called out for their race-baiting. Brit Hume does his best to attempt to turn ClusterFox into the victim and claims Shirley Sherrod "got off easy" after they got caught helping Andrew Breitbart push his doctored tapes of her speech at the NAACP.

HUME: As victims of unfair media treatment go, Shirley Sherrod got off easy. Within 24 hours or so, from her forced resignation from the Agriculture Department, she'd been apologized to, offered a new job and later even, as Bret mentioned, got a call from the president himself. All of this a consequence of a truncated Internet videotape that made it appear she had once done less than her best for a white farmer because of his race. It was unfair and the apologies were deserved, but the initial rush to judge Sherrod was not the only rush to judgment in this affair.

Consider: Sherrod herself say she was ordered last Monday to resign immediately by a senior agriculture official who said Sherrod was going to be on Glenn Beck's FOX program that night. In fact, Beck did not say a word about Sherrod until the next night when he defended her. Bill O'Reilly called for her to step down on Monday but by her account, she had already quit before he spoke. And O'Reilly apologized the next night.

Indeed, Shirley Sherrod was not mentioned on FOX News Channel or on foxnews.com either until after the Obama administration had forced her out. And no news as opposed to opinion broadcasts on FOX ever accused Sherrod of racism. But she blamed FOX and accused the network of racism. So did numerous others, including the NAACP and former Democratic Chairman Howard Dean on "FOX News Sunday," though it became clear from Chris Wallace's questioning that Dean had no idea what the facts where.

You might think all these would be the stuff of further apology. But somehow I'm not holding my breath -- Bret.

BAIER: So, Brit, do you think this is the end of this?

HUME: Well, I think it's the end of the Sherrod case, you know, except for whatever she decides to do. She's in pretty good shape right now. As whether it's the end of this kind of hurling about the charge of racism willy-nilly, I have my doubts. For example, last week, we saw in these stories and accounts of the journal list web communications among basically liberal journalists, some of them in the mainstream media. And one of them suggested at one point during the Reverend Wright affair affecting Barack Obama's campaign that they ought to just call some conservatives, Fred Barnes, Karl Rove "Who cares" this journalist wrote, a racist. With that kind of use of the term "racist," willy-nilly is a weapon. I don't think we've seen the end of it.

BAIER: OK, Brit, thanks.

HUME: You bet.

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Brit Hume does his best to try to gloss over Fox's role in helping Andrew Breitbart attack Shirley Sherrod with his hit piece on the NAACP. Although Fox might not have mentioned Breitbart's edited tape on the air before she was fired, as Media Matters noted, they did have it on their web site.

WALLACE: So, Brit, what do you -- what do you make of the Sherrod case? And what do you make of this argument that this is one more example of a 24/7 media culture run amok and that we're all guilty?

HUME: Well, if this wasn't so depressing, this whole episode, it would make a wonderful farce. I mean, the misinformation that has emanated from this event, beginning with the misleading videotape or portion of videotape that started it all, although it should be noted for the record that the Breitbart version of the video did contain mention of how she came to see things in a different light -- so part of the redemption story was there. It just was completely overlooked in the -- in the early going by everybody, principally the administration, which reacted to this before it was reported really anywhere outside of the blogosphere and the Web.

The misinformation then, obviously, led to her firing. But then there were all kinds of myths about how that came about. And you heard -- you heard Governor Dean here on this program this morning spouting one of the principal elements of that misinformation, which was that Fox News had been deeply involved in causing this, when Fox News, as you pointed out, Chris, hadn't even aired the woman's name until after she was forced out.

So you know, this has been depressing. Yes, it's partly the 24/7 media cycle, but the 24/7 media cycle really hadn't gotten fully cranked up until after she was -- after she was forced out.

LIASSON: Well, this was done in part out of a concern that they would be engulfed -- the administration would be engulfed by a 24/7 media cycle, and they were trying to do what they thought all smart communication shops do, which is to make a story not happen.

HUME: They got engulfed, all right.

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Newt Gingrich made the mistake of calling Shirley Sherrod "viciously racist" but the White House is at fault, the former House Speaker said Sunday.

The Obama administration called for Sherrod to resign from her position at the USDA after a selectively edited video clip of her allegedly admitting racism appeared on the internet. The administration apologized after the NAACP released the unedited video showing Sherrod actually explaining how she overcame her racist tendencies to help a white farmer.

After Sherrod resigned Monday, Gingrich appeared on Fox News' Hannity and said, "I often disagree with this administration but firing her after that kind of viciously racist attitude was exactly the right thing to do."

"Was that irresponsible, calling her viciously racist based on an internet clip that had been taken out of context?" Fox News' Chris Wallace asked Gingrich Sunday.

"No. I was operating in the context of the Secretary of Agriculture having summarily fired her and therefore there was no reason to disbelieve the clip and what you see is one more example of the Obama administration's continuing incompetence," said Gingrich.

"Apparently, she didn't even get the courtesy of a chance to talk to the Secretary of Agriculture who I suspect fired her under pressure from the White House and she said they were firing her under pressure from the White House," he continued.

"So, my comments were in context of a clip that had been validated by the Secretary of Agriculture who had fired her. Clearly, when you look at the complete clip and when you look at the background information and when you listen to the white farmer say she had actually been very helpful, I think a fair case can be made that this administration acted with destructive irresponsibility and the way that they fired her," he said.

ADDENDUM: (Jon Perr) As it turns out, history is repeating for Newt Gingrich. Sixteen years before he call Shirley Sherrod “viciously racist,” he blamed Democrats for the murders of two children in the racially-fraught Susan Smith case.