Shirley Sherrod critic humiliates himself on definition of 'lynching'

I thought I had seen it all when it comes to the Shirley Sherrod debacle.

At first the incident was an embarrassment for the Obama Administration and the NAACP, but apparently members of the right are getting jealous. Some are obviously trying to outdo both parties in terms of  humiliating themselves:

From Talking Points Memo comes this:

On Monday, former Reagan administration official Jeffrey Lord astonished the left and the right by penning an article in the conservative American Spectator attacking former-USDA official Shirley Sherrod for using the term "lynching" to describe the murder of one of her relative years ago. The problem, according to Lord, was that the victim, Bobby Hall was beaten to death by a blackjack, rather than being hanged by the neck. "It's...possible that she knew the truth and chose to embellish it, changing a brutal and fatal beating to a lynching."

Critics, even at his own magazine, pounced, noting that a lynching is an extrajudicial murder by a mob, whether or not the weapon of choice is a rope.

Lord was referring to the story Sherrod told about the murder of her relatives in the infamous speech which was truncated to make it seem as if she was a racist:

I should tell you a little about Baker County. In case you don't know where it is, it's located less than 20 miles southwest of Albany. Now, there were two sheriffs from Baker County that -- whose names you probably never heard but I know in the case of one, the thing he did many, many years ago still affect us today. And that sheriff was Claude Screws. Claude Screws lynched a black man. And this was at the beginning of the 40s. And the strange thing back then was an all-white federal jury convicted him not of murder but of depriving Bobby Hall -- and I should say that Bobby Hall was a relative -- depriving him of his civil rights.

 Because of the criticism his piece received from both the left and the right, Lord goes farther in his criticism of Sherrod:

 . . . Lord later expanded his critique of Sherrod by arguing that Hall wasn't beaten to death by enough people to constituted a mob, and therefore it couldn't have been a lynching in two different ways. He stands by that assessment.

"Certainly the image in my head of a lynching is rope around the neck," Lord told me. "And when we really got into this, it was quite apparent to me that there was all sorts of other things. That there has to be a mob -- mob action. Well what is a mob? Is it two people? Is it three people?"

Unbelievable. I have always believed that electing a black man  as president would bring all sorts of strange people out of the woodwork.

And here is Jeffery Lord bending over backwards to prove my point. 

Give it another week and they will be saying that Sherrod isn't an African-American.


Related posts:

360 degree turn - Now the right is attacking Shirley Sherrod for calling Breitbart a racist

Andrew Breitbart - the NAACP's best friend and the Tea Party Movement's worst enemy

Peter LaBarbera obsesses about bathhouses (again) and other Tuesday midday news briefs

NJ Library Removes LGBT Book, Calling It “Child Pornography” - For those who think that Glenn Beck's nonsense won't touch the lgbt community, think again.

NOM's hurtful voices: 'One hand, one woman' edition - More proof of the National Organization for Marriage's hypocrisy. It's joining forces with a pastor who lied about "gays teaching children to masturbate."

What Is the Cause of LaBarbera's Ignorance? - Peter LaBarbera thinks about bathhouses more than any gay man I know.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck Cracks Lesbian Code - Okay I have NOW officially heard everything.

Sherrod To Speak At Black Journalists Convention; Breitbart Backs Out - Bullies generally chicken out when they are challenged.

Court knocks down latest religious right cause celebre

A religious right cause celebre has been knocked down by federal courts on Monday:

A federal judge today dismissed a lawsuit brought against Eastern Michigan University by a master's student who said she was removed from the school's counseling program because of her strong religious views against homosexuality.

As part of her course work, Ward had refused to counsel homosexual clients, saying she believed homosexuality was morally wrong.

The university removed Ward from the counseling program after determining her actions violated university policy and the American Counseling Association (ACA) code of ethics.

Julea Ward sued the university in 2009, alleging violation of her First Amendment and religious rights.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh ruled in favor of the university and granted it summary judgment.

"The university had a rational basis for adopting the ACA Code of Ethics into its counseling program, not the least of which was the desire to offer an accredited program," Steeh said in a 48-page opinion.

"Furthermore, the university had a rational basis for requiring its students to counsel clients without imposing their personal values.

"In the case of Ms. Ward, the university determined that she would never change her behavior and would consistently refuse to counsel clients on matters with which she was personally opposed due to her religious beliefs -- including homosexual relationships."

The judge said Ward's "refusal to attempt learning to counsel all clients within their own value systems is a failure to complete an academic requirement of the program."

Ward had been touted as the lastest "victim" of the so-called homosexual agenda by members of the religious right, including your friend and mine, Peter LaBarbera.

My feeling is that if you can't do the job completely and for everyone then we have a serious problem, especially if you are seeking to be a healthcare worker.

Let's hope that the court's ruling is the last we hear of this nonsense.



Hat tip to Ray Whiting, one of my new online buddies.