The Weapon of Unlimited Victimhood: Pigford and Shirley Sherrod’s Vengeance

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Heads are still shaking about the unspeakable cruelty of Shirley Sherrod suing Susie Breitbart, a widow with four kids, as a substitute defendant for her late husband, because Sherrod blames Andrew Breitbart for her ouster from the Department of Agriculture.

Tom Vilsack demanded Sherrod’s resignation in July 2010 because Democrat political operatives at the White House panicked after Breitbart released the video of an NAACP audience’s enthusiastic approval of Sherrod’s story about how she denied assistance to a white farmer. The political panic occurred after that video got played in edited form on a Fox News broadcast, but Breitbart was not responsible for how Fox News depicted the story, nor was he responsible for Tom Vilsack acting as a political hatchet-man:

White House officials were in close contact with the Agriculture Department in the hours leading up to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s decision to fire USDA employee Shirley Sherrod in 2010, according to nearly 2,000 pages of internal emails released by the administration.
[T]he White House and Agriculture Department officials were sharing information and advice from the first minutes after the scandal began to emerge until Sherrod submitted a resignation hours later at the request of a senior USDA official.

And here’s the key fact:

Vilsack apologized and asked her to return to the department — an offer she declined. President Barack Obama also offered an apology after her ouster created a racial firestorm.

In other words, Vilsack and Obama admitted they wronged Sherrod.

It wasn’t Andrew Breitbart who did her wrong, it was two Democrats, and she would still be employed at the Department of Agriculture if she wanted a job. Instead, she’s suing Susie Breitbart.

Because getting $13 million in Pigford lawsuit cash isn’t enough:

Georgia Farmer Eddie Slaughter . . . says he knows Mrs. Sherrod well and that she knew all about the Pigford fraud and that the people behind Pigford actually view it as reparations. . . .
The biggest claimant by far in the Pigford Settlement was the $13,000,000 that went to Shirley & Charles Sherrod and their former New Communities farm and land development project in Georgia.
It bears repeating: Shirley and Charles Sherrod and New Communities got thirteen million dollars from the Pigford settlement. That’s about double what the second largest winning Pigford claim was.
And then just days after New Communities won that huge claim, Mrs. Sherrod was offered a job with the USDA.

Yeah, you hit the Federal Tax Money Giveaway Powerball, but becoming an overnight millionaire isn’t enough to satisfy your infinite greed, and once you learn that victimhood can be lucrative, it is your natural instinct to continue playing the victim, even if it means pushing a self-evidently bogus lawsuit against a widow and her orphaned children.

(Unnecessary Legal Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and my estimate of Shirley Sherrod’s tort claim as “bogus” is no more defamatory than my estimate of her character as selfish, cruel and dishonest.)

The Culture of Victimhood encourages people to turn every grievance into a license to inflict harm on others. Flimsy accusations rooted in dishonesty or self-pity (or both) are applauded as “courageous,” and exploitation of the system is hailed as “social justice.” A sex offender turns her crime into a fable about homophobia, a notorious convicted felon claims to be a victim of “malicious prosecution, conspiracy to abuse process, defamation, false light invasion of privacy, harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and stalking,” and we have become so accustomed to this evidence of pervasive moral decadence that we are not even outraged by it.

I’m past the point of being angry at the people who do this stuff.

I’m angry at everybody who is not as angry about it as I am.

Forget about the endless budget kabuki theater in D.C., you idiots.

Stop letting cable TV producers tell you what news is really important.

Shirley Sherrod is suing Andrew Breitbart’s widow.

Let that sink in. Think about what Andrew Breitbart meant. Think about what Andrew Breitbart did. Ask yourself, what Andrew Breitbart would ask his friends to do for his widow and children now?

Is there any story more urgent — is there any story that better illustrates how the leftist worldview has warped our nation’s culture in the Obama Age — than this story? Wake the hell up, people.

Shirley Sherrod’s Malicious Pro-Bono Suit
Against Andrew Breitbart’s Widow

That’s Aaron Walker’s headline on the incredible news that Kirkland & Ellis, the big-money law firm that has now made Susie Breitbart the defendant in Sherrod’s bogus lawsuit, is actually representing her for free — pro bono, as the lawyers say. Aaron is a lawyer, not a reporter, and so he “buries the lead,” as editors say. He also buries the news of a connection between Kirkland & Ellis and George Soros:

You will have to pay to read this entire article, but here is the relevant passage:

“We almost converted the debt into an acquisition finance structure,” says Erik Dahl, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, legal advisers to Soros Capital Partners.

That could be a coincidence. Or perhaps not.

Please read Aaron’s entire article carefully and remind me (once we’re finished “conspiring” to put the sociopathic creep Brett Kimberlin back in prison where he belongs) to talk with Aaron Walker about the “inverted pyramid” lead. Once he’s mastered that, perhaps, Walker will be ready to attempt The Total Gonzo Trip.

“In the context of journalism, here, we are dealing with a new kind of ‘lead’ — the Symbiotic Trapezoid Quote. The Columbia Journalism Review will never sanction it; at least not until the current editor dies of brain syphilis, and probably not even then.
“What?
“Do we have a libel suit on our hands?
“Probably not, I think, because nobody in his right mind would take a thing like that seriously — and especially not that gang of senile hags who run the Columbia Journalism Review, who have gone to great lengths in every issue during the past year or so to stress, very heavily, that nothing I say should be taken seriously.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing in Washington: The Boys in the Bag,” Rolling Stone, July 4, 1974 (collected in The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time)

What the hell? Why did I quote Hunter Thompson’s bitter sarcasm, nearly 900 words into a rant about Shirley Sherrod and the vicious gang of serial killers bad lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis?

Two of the people in that lineup are immoral monsters whose infamous names are forever synonymous with cruelty and evil.

And two of them are serial killers.

 

121 comments

  1. Sorry that you need this pointed out to you, Shirley, but Andrew Breitbart didn’t make you an irredeemably hateful b***h — that’s all on you.

  2. The intricacies of survival of claims and substitution of parties are determined by the various states. While a claim against someone may survive the defendant’s death, dead people cannot be sued. Hence, there has to be a substitution of a “live” party for that purpose, which party however has no personal liability for any judgment. In my jurisdiction, an estate must be opened and the plaintiff may force it to be opened to continue a suit. If there’s nothing in the estate, which is likely in the case of a married couple where marital property passes to the surviving spouse at the instant of the decedent’s death by operation of law, it’s kind of stupid to continue. Stated differently, there’s got to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

    I cannot speak to California law, so I don’t know the specifics of its procedure. I infer, however, because Mrs. Breitbart was not sued initially, she’s standing in solely as a representative and not as one who’s vicariously liable as a partner, joint venture participant or employer. (I disagree with Worthing that employers cannot be liable for employees’ torts committed in the course and scope of their employment. The doctrine is respondeat superior.) The fact that there’s no formal estate opened implies that Andrew did a good job protecting his family from the possibility of this sort of thing. Also, California is a Community Property state which is different than my jurisdiction. I don’t know what role, if any, that may be playing here.

  3. In haste:

    You wrote, “In other words, Sherrod and Obama admitted they wronged Sherrod.”

    You meant, “…Vilsack and Obama admitted they wronged Sherrod.”

    There were a couple other moments of possible antecedent confusion, but I must dive head-first into my job.

  4. Dang Gummit McCain! That tears it……… I was reading the caption under the line up “And two of them are serial killers”.

    I just spit Red Bull all over myself and spilled the can.
    That’s a classic man. Thanks for the laugh.

    Oh, and you owe me one can of Red Bull. 🙂

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