In an escalation of the rhetoric over the Shirley Sherrod controversy, former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said on Sunday that Fox News' coverage of the story was "absolutely racist." Dean said that Fox, instead of waiting to see if the edited version of a Sherrod speech available online was fair before running it, jumped the gun in their eagerness to promote "a theme of black racism" to the Republican Party's "racist fringe." "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace countered that the network didn't even air the tape until after the Obama administration had already pushed Sherrod out of her job at the Agriculture Department. Dean doesn't care that his charge is false, says Allahpundit at Hot Air. He just wants to use the controversy to "score a few points on the enemy" before Sherrod disappears from the headlines. No, says Hal Boedeker in the Orlando Sentinel, Fox deserves it. The news channel played the tape relentlessly for days, trashing Sherrod's character every time the clip was aired. Watch Dean's "Fox News Sunday" appearance below:
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