This week Andrew Brietbart passed away. Voices on the political left have expressed happiness, or even gloating elation. They understand the contempt in which Brietbart held liberals, and the damage he could do to their causes.

His reply eighteen months ago to slanders from the NAACP is outstanding in my mind. That was the summer Congress voted in President Obama’s health care bill. A tea party crowd was gathered in front of the national capital building.  The day before the final vote in the House of Representatives, members of the Congressional Black Caucus, led by Andre Carson and John Lewis, staged a walk through the crowd and then claimed they were threatened with violence and subjected to racial slurs.

Brietbart refuted this account with videos taken on the scene. The media ignored his investigation, as well as the CBC’s silence in responding, preferring to air accusations made by the NAACP of racism in the tea party movement.

So Brietbart announced racism within the NAACP, by posting a video from a NAACP fund-raising event of March 2010.

To summarize, USDA offical Shirley Sherrod gave a righteous and meaningful speech at the event in March; but by posting a clipped excerpt, Brietbart made her appear as a racist. His real point, however, was to capture the response of the audience — because while she was appearing to be a racist, the audience appeared to support her racism.

Brietbart’s deceptiveness in excerpting Sherrod’s remarks can be taken as a ruse de guerre in my opinion, essentially legitimate for his larger goal.

As for the audience’s role, Brietbart’s honesty seems more disturbingly questionable. Significantly, the media has chosen to completely ignore this aspect as far as I can tell. I find the response of the audience hard to interpret; it seems possible or even likely that some in the audience are reacting playfully as they see the story’s conclusion ahead. Some people claim that is the case, and there is no racist overtone.

Whatever the truth on that point, the trap was set. The outcome was a vindication of Brietbart’s tactical brilliance. It apparently exceeded his expectations, and it caused any guile on his part to at least be blindingly eclipsed by the hypocrisy of others.

Brietbart always said his target was the NAACP as represented in the audience that day, not Sherrod (I think this is credible). But the day after his post, Sherrod became the target when Benjamin Todd Jealous, CEO of NAACP, released a statement calling her comments “shameful”.

Shirley Sherrod defended herself. A day later Jealous retracted his condemnation; the NAACP posted the entire video, and worked to restore her reputation. Unfortunately, by that time Sherrod had been prerempterily fired by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who stated, “There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person. We have been working hard through the past 18 months to reverse the checkered civil rights history at the department and take the issue of fairness and equality very seriously.”

The firing was fairly obviously prompted by the White House, though this has been denied. Like Vilsack, the White House reversed their public opinion of the day before and abjectly apologized to Sherrod. For her part, aside from a few vicious and false slanders against Brietbart, Sherrod continued to conduct herself with forthright dignity. (Sherrod was pressing a lawsuit against Brietbart at the time of his death; her gracious reply to this week’s news received acclaim.)

The attack on my wife has opened up an avalanche of discussion on a tabooed subject -– RACE. It is a blessing to be an instrument of God’s grace.
– Shirley Sherrod’s husband Charles, in an email on August 1, 2010

The Democrat administration suffered, but the NAACP was wounded worse, if less visibly. Sherrod said the NAACP reacted without contacting her, and claimed their venomous campaign against the tea party movement was the root cause of the debacle. More subtly, their readiness to take Brietbart’s bait raises the nasty implication that NAACP leaders are not surprised to learn about “shameful” remarks in their meetings.

With Brietbart on the prowl, the mainstream media outlets became less inflammatory and more cautious in their promotion of liberal causes. His death brings delight to many foes, but I think not so much relief; because of the effectiveness of his model, they won’t forget that hard-learned wariness. Andrew Brietbart always maintained he was merely dishing out the kind of mistreatment that had already been perfected in our time by the militant left and a complicit media.

He moved to the right in college, at Tulane University in New Orleans, and crossed over completely with the Clarence Thomas hearings, which fueled his rage against the Left for their hypocritical treatment of American blacks. I can personally attest that no cause fired his righteous indignation more than the Left’s plantation attitude toward African-Americans. — Michael Walsh, this week

Most mornings I drive my son to school. Leaving the school, I come to an intersection where buses are also heading elsewhere. Often one or two big yellow buses are waiting at the stop sign. I can drive past them; instead I usually stop my car, blocking my line of traffic, and wave at them to pull out.

1. School bus drivers have a hard job. I’d like to do a favor by shortening their work day.
2. A bus is using fuel at a faster rate than me and the car behind me. I’m saving the environment.
3. The way traffic flows at that intersection, it’s possible a bus could be stranded 3-4 minutes.
4. A late school bus can have lots of cascading effects that hinder many people.
5. The way traffic flows at the next red light, me and the car behind me will almost certainly have to stop again. My choice now won’t affect us later.
6. Sometimes the driver behind me gesticulates in frustration. I have satisfaction knowing it may still emotionally affect him during the next red light.