February 14, 2011 11:53 am ET by Simon Maloy 
 
 First Lady Michelle Obama is in the midst of a nationwide anti-obesity campaign aimed at shrinking America's collectively expanding waistline. The conservative media are striking back against Mrs. Obama's message of fitness and nutrition by decrying what they see as government intrusion into our pantries. 
 
 At least, that's what they're doing when they're not calling Michelle Obama fat. 
 
 Rush Limbaugh's long been laying the groundwork for this sexist attack, using stories about the First Lady's nutrition programs to call the fitness-fanatic Mrs. Obama "Michelle, My Butt." (The jab's lack of sense it exceeded only by its lack of self-awareness.) 
 
 Yesterday, the resident cartoonists at Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com posted this offering: 
 
 If there's a "joke" in there, I'm missing it. Notably, the version of the cartoon online now differs slightly -- but significantly -- from the version that showed up in my RSS reader, in which the First Lady demands: "Shut up and pass the lard!" 
 
 It's been a long time since I've expected anything approaching comity from the conservative media, but this is the sort of stuff most of us left at the grade school playground. ||||| Andrew Breitbart is at CPAC again this year and his big issue is Pigford, a little-known legal settlement between the federal government and black farmers that Breitbart claims is rife with fraud. 
 
 Breitbart describes Pigford as his "obsession." When I caught up with him this morning and asked about Egypt -- specifically the claims by some of Breitbart's writers that the protests there mark the beginning of an Islamic caliphate -- he said he wasn't following the issue because he's been all Pigford, all the time, for months. (Watch my interview below.) 
 
 He's trying his best to force the alleged Pigford fraud into the mainstream media and use it to attack both the Obama administration and Shirley Sherrod, the obscure U.S. Department of Agriculture official who was made famous after she was attacked by Breitbart over the summer. (That "scandal" fell utterly apart in a matter of days, though not before the Obama administration had fired Sherrod.) 
 
 So what is Pigford? 
 
 It was originally a class action lawsuit against the government filed in the mid-1990s by a group of black farmers. The Department of Agriculture had discriminated against black farmers for many years in deciding how loans and grants were distributed. The government settled, and some farmers got a payout. But it subsequently emerged that many eligible black farmers had failed to take advantage of the settlement. So in December 2010, Congress appropriated another $1.25 billion to pay Pigford claims. It passed with bipartisan support, by unanimous consent in the Senate and a large majority in the House. (For a more in-depth history of Pigford, see this TPM piece.) 
 
 But some conservatives, notably Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, have blasted Pigford as "slavery reparations" in disguise. He, like Breitbart, has alleged widespread fraud. They have argued that Pigford is an unwarranted payout to a Democratic constituency. Breitbart held a press conference here at CPAC featuring King, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and Eddie Slaughter, a black farmer who is angry because he did not get a Pigford payout that he believes was due to him. 
 
 How does Sherrod come into the story? She and her husband were the recipients of $13 million from the first Pigford settlement. Breitbart has since implied that Sherrod had some role in the alleged mismanagement of the program at the Department of Agriculture. Critics, like Media Matters, have argued that Breitbart is merely trying to salvage his reputation after the failed attack on Sherrod over the summer. 
 
 I talked to Breitbart, who made a point of having Slaughter, the farmer, present for the interview. Our conversation went considerably more smoothly than Breitbart's angry encounter with Salon at last year's CPAC. I asked him for his take on Pigford and challenged him to answer those who doubt credibility in the wake of the Sherrod fiasco. 
 
 Watch the interview: ||||| An unrepentant Andrew Breitbart told POLITICO on Thursday that the Obama administration and its allies have manufactured a controversy over the video he posted of Shirley Sherrod’s speech to the NAACP as part of an orchestrated effort to take him down. 
 
 “I am public enemy No. 1 or 2 to the Democratic Party, the progressive movement and the Obama administration based upon the successes my journalism has had,” Breitbart said in a telephone interview late Thursday morning as he headed to the airport for what he said was a long-planned, three-day vacation. 
 
 Breitbart asserted that liberal media outlets are shifting the focus to the misleading excerpting in the videos he posted — as well as his erroneous statement about the context of the footage — to divert attention from what he asserts is a double standard on racist behavior exposed by the video, which he released Monday to push back against a recently passed NAACP resolution expressing concern about “racist elements” in the tea party movement. 
 
 “The desire here is to make it about me and not the Democratic establishment and the NAACP vs. the tea party,” Breitbart said, defending the footage he posted as “a self-contained newsworthy video that established the media standard of pointing out that the NAACP countenanced racism in its own award dinner setting. That was the point. That was the point. And the video proves it.” 
 
 He offered no apology to Sherrod but said that she has not been held accountable for the racial overtones of what she said. 
 
 "If anybody reads the sainted, martyred Sherrod’s entire speech, this person has not gotten past black vs. white," he said. 
 
 Asked whether he would have more thoroughly vetted the original video if he had it to do over again, Breitbart wouldn’t say. 
 
 “Let me think about that,” he said. “You’ll have to ask me (later). I am right now about to get out of the car to go to the airport, and I’ll think about this for another time, because I’m being inundated with falsehoods left and right that are making it impossible for me to have a 40,000-feet-above-it-all perspective of what’s going on. All I’m seeing is people right now seeing blood in the water and coming after me. And the amount of half-truths and falsehoods that are out there in the pursuit of taking me down because they perceive that I’m a threat, it’s astounding.” 
 
 He did say “I believe that I’m held to a higher standard. If this video showed a picture of a Caucasian talking in the exact same way but talking about a black person with an audience affirming and clapping that behavior, the reporter would be getting a Pulitzer Prize right now.” 
 
 The video excerpts Breitbart posted Monday on his Big Government website appeared to show Sherrod, until recently an Agriculture Department official, recalling during a March 27 appearance at an NAACP banquet in Georgia her discriminatory attitude against a white farmer, though - contrary to Breitbart's assertions - there is no evidence of the audience applauding her ostensibly discriminatory sentiments. 
 
 The original footage sparked wide condemnation of Sherrod — including from the NAACP — and she was forced to resign from the Agriculture Department.
– Andrew Breitbart, fresh off the news of Shirley Sherrod's lawsuit against him, has gotten himself embroiled in another controversy. His Big Government website lashed out at Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign ... by basically calling her fat. A cartoon strip on the website shows an overweight Obama eating a huge pile of hamburgers while talking to her big-eared husband about the campaign, Salon reports. The punch line—"Shut up and pass the bacon!"—was originally "Shut up and pass the lard!" Media Matters notes. Click to see the cartoon.