WordPress featured post and sharethis issue

im having some trouble with this featured post function that I made. the issue that im having is that when query('showposts=1'); is set the featured post is not picked up. however when I put query(''); the sharethis plugin doesn't work. can any one please help me on what I might be doing wrong.

<div id="block_feature">
    <div id="featured_post" class="post">
        <div class="post_inner">

            <?php
            $featured = new WP_Query();
            $featured->query('showposts=1');
            while($featured->have_posts()) : $featured->the_post();

            //$wp_query->in_the_loop = true; // This line is added so that the_tags('') will work outside the regular loop.
            $featured_ID = $post->ID; // We'll store this here so that we know to skip this post in the main loop
            ?>

                <?php if(get_post_meta($post -> ID, 'feature', true)) { ?>


                    <?php if (get_post_meta($post->ID, 'large_preview', true)) { ?>开发者_StackOverflow;
                        <div class="post_image">
                        <img src="<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID,'large_preview',true);?>" width=150px; height=150px alt="Featured Post"/>
                        </div>
                    <?php } ?>

                        <div class="excerpt">
                        <h2><a href="<?php the_permalink();?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
                        <small>on <?php the_time('M d'); ?> in <?php the_category(',');?> tagged <?php the_tags(''); ?></small>
                        <?php the_excerpt();?>
                        </div>
                        <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" class="readMore">Read More</a>  


                <?php } ?>
            <?php endwhile; ?> 
        </div>                        
    </div>                   
</div> 

showposts is been deprecated since version 2.1, so it might be better to use posts_per_page instead. Not sure if it will make any difference, but you could also replace the first two lines of PHP with $featured = new WP_Query('showposts=1');

As to what is causing the problem I am not sure, your query looks fine to me and you didn't mention in what way Share This failed. I'm not familiar with the Share This plugin, but most such plugins add its content to the post using a filter function attached to the the_content filter. That said, it might just be that you are using the_excerpt() and not the_content().