ACORN
– THOSE UNDERCOVER TAPES WERE DOCTORED
Here,
belatedly, is the story of how ACORN got Swiftboated. One weeps for democracy
reading it.
This
is not to say ACORN is perfect – anymore than, say, the Republican Party
is perfect.
But
it is a measure of the right’s effectiveness that so many people actually
think ACORN stole the last election. Fifty-two percent of Republicans think
this, according to one poll, which is as completely false as the notion that
Iraq attacked us on 9/11. (Seventy percent of Bush re-elect voters
believed that.)
And
it is a measure of the right’s effectiveness that ACORN’s 40 years
of good work on behalf of the least among us could be blown up this way –
just like John Kerry’s courageous military service.
Now comes news
that the last straw in what had been an eight-year campaign against ACORN
– those “pimp/prostitute” sting tapes made by the fellow
later arrested for wiretapping a senator’s office – was not quite
what it appeared:
Brooklyn prosecutors on Monday cleared ACORN of
criminal wrongdoing after a four-month probe that began when undercover
conservative activists filmed workers giving what appeared to be illegal advice
on how to hide money.
While the video by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles
seemed to show three ACORN workers advising a prostitute how to hide ill-gotten
gains, the unedited version was not as clear, according to a law enforcement
source.
"They edited the tape to meet their agenda,"
said the source .
. .
☞ Again, this is not to say that
every ACORN worker does his or her job well. But as Fox News, et al,
relentlessly failed to acknowledge, when it came to cases of bogus voter
registrations, it was ACORN itself that found and reported the lapses
– and in real time, before any damage was done.
If only that were true of over-zealous
Republican operatives, like Allen Raymond, author of How
to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative (2008): “If you could find two of us Republican
operatives who could still tell the difference between politics and crime, you
could probably have rubbed us together for fire as well.”
Or like the estimable David Brock, long-since reformed and
doing terrific work, but who began his Blinded
by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative (2003): “This
is a terrible book. It is about lies told and reputations ruined. It is about
what the conservative movement did, and what I did, as we plotted in the shadows,
disregarded the law, and abused power to win even greater power.”
The difference is that the ACORN employees who may have
given faux prostitutes inappropriate tax advice were at the bottom of the
organizational pyramid, or (in the case of the paid registration gatherers), not even employees; whereas those Republican operatives were
near, or (in the case of Karl Rove) at, the top.
To my mind, it’s an important difference. Please
share it with your friends.
BOYCOTT
VIRGINIA
Last
month, the newly elected Republican governor went out of his way to rescind
Virginia’s nondiscrimination policy against gays and lesbians. Last
week, his newly appointed attorney general asked Virginia
colleges to do likewise. Read it here.
DEPO
OK,
so with the stock closing Friday at $3.16, we have our 27% – well, 33%,
actually. That part was the “chip shot” suggested here. And
earning a low-risk 33% in two weeks is the best this column can do. DEPO now comes off the “chip shot”
list (sorry: I have nothing else on that list) and goes back into the
“speculative basket.” Loving few things more than an attractive
speculation, I’m holding most of mine.
#
PS – For those who thought I took Friday off, it turns
out that Ferris – realizing he was no longer in
high school – posted a column after
all.