Jim Hightower

The Shirley Sherrod Story started as a beautiful anecdote of redemption and personal growth, which she recently related at a meeting of the Georgia NAACP.

Her story would have ended there, unnoticed by the rest of us. But it was picked up in a malicious political wind that swept it all the way to Washington. There, it sucked up an enormous volume of hot air, then burst into the national news like a furious tornado, ripping the roofs from several big houses of power to reveal a mess of ugliness within.

Ugly Number One is Andrew Breitbart, a far-right-wing blogger who is striving for his 15-minutes of infamy by intentionally distorting, manipulating, and lying about the actions of unsuspecting people to create explosive political tales. He took a 38-second, edited clip that perverted Sherrod's Georgia speech, making it look like she and the NAACP are anti-white racists. The guy is a creep.

Ugly Number Two are the Becks, Hannitys, O'Reillys and other foam-at-the-mouth Fox TV blatherers. These shameless media muggers eagerly grabbed Breitbart's crap and hurled it across America as "truth."

Ugly Number Three is the Obama White House, which swallowed the Breitbart-Fox false story whole and immediately dismissed Sherrod from her federal job. They literally tracked her down in her car and forced her to phone in her resignation, without letting her tell the true story!

To me, the Obama ugiliness is the worst, for it reveals a shameful lack of loyalty, fairness, and feistiness. Like ACORN and Van Jones before, Sherrod was under vicious and false attack from Obama's enemies – but the Obamacans are so afraid of right -wing smear artists that they instantly run from them, cravenly abandoning their friends. Hello – if you don't stand for your friends, who'll stand for you?