Howard Dean hit the nail on the head on "Fox News Sunday," when the former Governor of Vermont and Democratic National Committee Chairman, said that Fox's disgraceful conduct during the Shirley Sherrod matter last week was "absolutely racist," by helping the Republican Party appeal to its "racist fringe."

Of course the Sunday show Host Chris Wallace tried to defend his employer, who pays him millions of dollars a year, partly because of his name. He is the son of the long time CBS journalist, Mike Wallace.

From the transcript: "Let's just be blunt about this.... Fox News did something that was absolutely racist. They took a -- they had an obligation to find out what was really in the clip. They had -- they had been pushing a theme of black racism with this phony Black Panther crap and this business and (Supreme Court Justice) Sotomayor and all this other stuff. You -- I think you've got to be very -- I think the -- look the Tea Party called out their racist fringe, and I think the Republican Party's got to stop appealing to its racist fringe. And Fox News is what did that."

Update: Howard Dean in his column in today's Huffington Post wrote: "And by now we all know how the Sherrod story went down. Despite his claims to the contrary on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace didn't have his facts quite right. As a media matters study showed, Fox News did in fact spend a lot of air-time on July 19th and 20th cranking up the false story. Not to mention that foxnews.com bragged that shortly after they posted a "report" about the video Mrs. Sherrod resigned."

Video from Sunday, July 25th, "Fox News Sunday," Howard Dean and Newt Gingrich talk race, economy and elections.