Jeffrey Lord Criticized for Attacking Sherrod
Jeffrey Lord has written a highly controversial piece in the American Spectator which attacks Shirley Sherrod speech at the NAACP. Other writers at the Spectator have pointed out that Lord's comments don't speak for them:
Philip Klein:
A regular part of writing for a political magazine or website is that you sometimes disagree with what is written, or even with decisions to publish certain articles. Such is my sentiment today with Jeff Lord's piece on Shirley Sherrod. I am rendered speechless by a 4,000-word article that is based around the suggestion that somebody is a liar for saying that a black man was lynched, when he was merely beaten to death by a white sheriff who evidence suggests had previously threatened to "get him."
Radley Balko has a more detailed critique of the article here, though I'd take slight issue with the headline, if only because it gives the impression that we're making this argument as an institution, even though there are those of us at the Spectator who strongly disagree with Lord's piece.
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John Tabin:
What on Earth is Jeffrey Lord talking about on the mainpage? He says that the sentence "Claude Screws lynched a black man" is untrue. Lynching is defined as an extrajudicial killing by a mob (which can be as few as two people). The fatal beating of Bobby Hall most certainly qualifies. Radley Balko expounds on the specifics, but honestly, even if you mistakenly believe that only hanging qualifies as lynching (which, again, is simply not true), zeroing in on this particular hair as one worth splitting strikes me as utterly bizarre.
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