Adam, along with many others, has criticized Jeffrey Lord's appalling smear of Shirley Sherrod. But apparently this isn't the first time that Lord has tried to run interference for Andrew Breitbart's vile, dishonest attack campaign on Sherrod. His previous effort isn't quite as offensive as asserting that the extrajudicial, state-sanctioned murder of an African American doesn't count as a "lynching" if it isn't done in the right way, but it is equally untenable.
Lord cites the case of Earl Butz, the Ford administration agriculture secretary who was forced to resign after telling a disgusting racist joke to several people (including John Dean and Pat Boone). To summarize the argument, according to Lord, liberals have a double standard when they object to Sherrod's forced resignation on completely bogus charges of racism because a Republican Cabinet member was forced to resign after entirely accurate charges of racism. You'll forgive me if I don't see the liberal double standard here.
He goes on to add some further non sequiturs about Jimmy Carter -- it probably won't surprise you to learn that when you ran for governor in Georgia in 1970, you needed to seek the support of newspaper editors who had expressed racist and segregationist views. Given that Carter didn't appoint any of these people to his Cabinet, I fail to see how it's relevant.
The smear campaign against Sherrod is completely indefensible, and the quality (or lack thereof) of attempts to defend it makes this even clearer.
-- Scott Lemieux