She said she doesn’t want an apology from Breitbart for posting the video that took her comments out of context, but told a crowd at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention that she would “definitely sue.”

Vilsack and President Barack Obama later called Sherrod to apologize for her hasty ouster. Vilsack has offered her a new job at the department, which she is still considering.

“I have many, many questions before I can make a decision,” Sherrod told the group. “I don’t know what will happen from this day forward in terms of whether I’ll be back in the department or what I’ll do.”

E-mails to Breitbart’s Web sites seeking comment were not immediately returned Thursday morning.

Obama said Thursday morning on ABC’s daytime talk show “The View” that the incident shows racial tensions still exist in America.

“There are still inequalities out there. There’s still discrimination out there,” Obama said. “But we’ve made progress.”

Obama pinned much of the blame for the incident on a media culture that he said seeks out conflict and doesn’t always get the facts right. But he added, “A lot of people overreacted, including people in my administration.”

Part of the “Obama Nation” strip by James Hudnall and Batton Lash, the cartoon shows an overweight Michelle Obama scarfing down hamburgers while telling her husband about her anti-obesity efforts. Barack, meanwhile, is shown with enormous ears (bonus points for originality) and complains that Michelle is going to undermine his reelection efforts.

The punch line? Michelle shouts back, “Shut up and pass the bacon!” Bravo, Breitbart and co. Bravo.

You can see the comic here.

Sherrod argues in the lawsuit that the clip “damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work.” Breitbart, meanwhile, denounced the suit, saying he “categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech.”

Breitbart’s media machine is doing its best to reframe Sherrod’s complaint in the most favorable terms possible. One of his websites, BigGovernment.com, posted an article, titled “New Media Entrepreneur declares that his voice will not be suppressed,” shortly after Breitbart was served. The piece referred to the complaint as the “Pigford Lawsuit” — a nod to Breitbart’s newest “obsession” and would-be vehicle for dragging Sherrod’s name through the mud. Not surprisingly, the meme does not appear to have caught on.

Breitbart’s full statement: 

I find it extremely telling that this lawsuit was brought almost seven months after the alleged incidents that caused a national media frenzy occurred. It is no coincidence that this lawsuit was filed one day after I held a press conference revealing audio proof of orchestrated and systemic Pigford fraud. I can promise you this: neither I, nor my journalistic websites, will or can be silenced by the institutional Left, which is obviously funding this lawsuit. I welcome the judicial discovery process, including finding out which groups are doing so. 

Obtained by Salon via the Freedom of Information Act, the internal emails and other documents fill out a picture of USDA officials scrambling to first get rid of Sherrod, and then, once they realized their error, to do damage control. Throughout there is an overwhelming concern with managing the media stories on the flap.

The Los Angeles Times, which also obtained the documents, has a good timeline here. Here are some tidbits from the emails and other documents, which we’ve posted in full below and which total nearly 400 pages. The page numbers in parantheses refer to the source of the quote, and the document from which it came:

• In her resignation letter, Sherrod wrote: “I feel so disappointed that the Secretary and President let a misrepresentation of my words on the part of the Tea Party be the reason to ask me to resign. … I submit my resignation but in doing so want to put the administration on notice that I will get the whole story out. My whole life speaks for my conmitment to Fairness whether white or black.” (pg. 15, Vilsack)

• In an internal timeline of events produced by the USDA, it’s reported that Deputy Ag Secretary Kathleen Merrigan on Tuesday at 2 p.m. “expressed concern that Sherrod was attacking the Administration on TV and that our jobs as political appointees is to protect the President.” (pg. 1, Merrigan)
• On that Monday, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was “absolutely sick and mad over the S Sherrod issue,” acccording to Krysta Harden, assistant secretary of agriculture. “He wants her immediately on Adm leave.”  (pg. 49, Cook)
• USDA officials thought it important to reach out to black members of Congress to help on damage control. John Berge, deputy assistant secretary for congressional relations, wrote Vilsack’s chief of staff on Tuesday, July 20: “Can S[ecretary] call Clyburn today? It’ll be a while, but we may need him to. We need his help with CBC outreach.” The CBC is the Congressional Black Caucus. (pg. 133, Jett)
• Denise Wilson, special assistant to the president in the office of legislative affairs, wrote to a few USDA officials on Wednesday, July 21, about the fear that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who has been a thorn in the White House’s side, would seize on the story and “play the race card” (pg. 53, Ross):

“Just had a conversation with Ron Stroman of the Oversight committee. [Rep. Ed] Towns is very worried that USDA took action against Ms Sherrod w/o learning the facts which resulted in her being directed to resign. He has directed his staff to prepare a letter to Vilsak along this line. Ron said that Ranking Member Issa is expected to play into the media accounts that the WH was behind the move to take action against a black woman–and that Issa will play the race card against USDA and the NH -h1gh1ighting the Fact that we took action before the Facts were in. According to Ron, [who is in touch with her) Ms Sherrod does not appear to plan on coming back to USDA because she feels so unfairly treated.”

• The USDA press shop apparently reads Wonkette, with Chris Mather, public affairs director, taking note of the site picking up a statement they sent out on Sherrod on Monday, July 19 (pg. 9, Vilsack).

And here are the documents as released by the USDA. They are mostly emails and are labeled by the name of the official involved (usually either the sender or recipient of the email). Tom Vilsack, secretary of agriculture, here. Kathleen Merrigan, deputy secretary of agriculture, here. Cheryl Cook, deputy under secretary (and the woman who called Sherrod and asked her to resign), here. Karen Ross, chief of staff to Vilsack, here. Dallas Tonsager, under secretary for rural development, here. Carole Jett, deputy chief of staff, here and here.

Vilsack, who apologized to Sherrod for pushing her out, had offered her a position in the Office of Advocacy and Outreach, which works in the civil rights area.

“I think I can be helpful to him and the department if I just take a little break and look at how I can be more helpful in the future,” Sherrod said.

Vilsack said that “Shirley has unique opportunities here.”

Vilsack said he had worked hard to get Sherrod to return.

She was forced out earlier this year when an excerpt of a speech she gave several years ago was posted by a conservative blogger on the Internet, remarks that seemed to show Sherwood giving shortshrift attention as a local agriculture to a poor white farmer’s plea for financial assistance.

The incident proved embarrassing for the Obama administration.

(This version CORRECTS Corrects spelling of Sherrod. UPDATES with quotes.)

Ah, but I had, you see. And therein lies an instructive little tale.

First, here’s the offending passage from last week’s column: “The assault on Sherrod … was so mean-spirited, crass and dishonest, not to mention so astonishingly stupid, that even Fox News provocateurs like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck — after initially falling for the hoax — were pretty much forced to apologize. I expect O’Reilly actually meant it.”

I gave O’Reilly the benefit of the doubt out of personal experience. The man can be a blowhard, and frequently goes off half-cocked. Having appeared as a guest on his program, however, I know that he also has the self-confidence to book dissenters from his worldview, and lets them finish sentences. That’s more than you can say about Beck, Limbaugh and talk-radio cult leaders generally.

What got Beck’s fans stirred up, however, was that his “apology” took the form of an elaborate falsehood. Because, in reality, the self-proclaimed “rodeo cowboy” (has anybody ever seen him in an arena?) had fallen for right-wing provocateur Andrew Breitbart’s deceptively edited video of Shirley Sherrod’s speech hook, line and sinker.

But something funny happened in between Beck’s morning radio program on July 20 and his afternoon TV show. Thanks to the Atlanta Journal Constitution and CNN, Breitbart’s little hoax had begun to fall apart. Sherrod had vigorously contested the mischaracterization of her speech to the NAACP. The “white farmer” whose property she saved defended her honor.

No sooner had a craven Obama White House forced Sherrod’s resignation than she began to look like an American heroine.

So Beck went on television to cover his tracks. “I don’t think Shirley should have been fired — or, I’m sorry, forced to resign,” he manfully announced. “Based on the facts that we have right now, this is something that I wouldn’t air and demand a resignation on.”

Beck said a fair-minded journalist like himself wouldn’t have broadcast the video clip of Sherrod because “context matters.”

Hence the barrage of furious e-mails from Beck’s credulous followers. Why, far from piling on Shirley Sherrod, he’d stood up for what the old Superman TV show called “truth, justice and the American Way.” Unlike me, Beck deals in facts, not innuendoes and lies.

Yeah right.

Alas, the fact is that Beck had already aired snippets of Breitbart’s tape on his radio program — out-of-context renderings of what was already out of context. Don’t believe me? You can still hear the fool thing on Beck’s website, or alternatively at Media Matters.

Here’s my transcription:

“We have videotape of a USDA administration official discriminating against white farmers,” Beck announced. “And she says ‘I just stood there and looked at this white farmer. And I sent him to one of his people.’ Excuse me? Have we suddenly transported into 1956, except that it’s the other way around?

“Does anybody else have the sense that there are some that just want revenge? Doesn’t it feel that way? That there are some, and I believe we are talking about a minuscule amount — I don’t think African-Americans buy into this at all — but the people like the Black Panthers, and whites like the Weather Underground … it goes to what we were talking about, this collective salvation. Make them pay. Make them pay. That’s not what salvation’s all about. … You tell me what part of the gospel is teaching that?”

There was more, all in the same vein.

No context, no skepticism, no journalism whatsoever. Hook, line, sinker.

Exactly one of the angry e-mailers to whom I forwarded the URL saw fit to apologize. Boo hoo hoo.

Time was when a journalist dissembling about his own recorded words, for heaven’s sake, would have fallen into disgrace and out of a job. At the provincial level, that’s still true. I’d expect to be sacked for such egregious misbehavior, which, possessing a sense of honor, I’d never imitate.

For the national political press, those days ended during President Clinton’s first term. Much of the “mainstream” media now operates by Hollywood rules: Stardom brings big money and freedom from accountability. So long, that is, as one can avoid offending the Soviet-style propaganda apparatus that’s arisen on the Republican far right.

But no, “both sides” don’t do it. Berated for years about “liberal bias,” many otherwise sensible citizens don’t understand that for better and worse, the Democrats have nobody like Andrew Breitbart or Glenn Beck.