Hey Fox News! ACORN Has Been Exonerated Again!

Greetings from the West Coast! Since moving out of Cincinnati to Los Angeles a few months ago, the whirlwind of activity has led to a great lull of posting activity on my part. I have no immediate timetable for a more regular posting schedule, but I did want to pass along this item that has been overlooked by the rest of the corporate media.

I'm sure many of you vividly remember when Fox News and other media outlets began running this video through much of their 24-hour news cycle. It is a video of Conservative activists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles going into ACORN offices and supposedly getting all sorts of free advice on how to legally get away with prostitution:



The news media, especially Fox, acted as judge, jury and executioner treating O'Keefe as a celebrity (until he was arrested for breaking into a Congressmember's office) and creating such a stir that Congress pulled all Federal funding for the organization.

Despite the actions of Congress being struck downin court, ACORN suffered enough damage to fold and close operations.

Interesting considering this news from a Government Accountability Office report that was released on Monday:

...a preliminary probe by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)of ACORN has found no evidence the association or related organizations mishandled the $40 million in federal money they received in recent years.

So this is yet ANOTHER instance of ACORN being exonerated of any wrong doing.

I am sure glad that Fox News has issued corrections and given these findings the coverage that they gave to the pimp and prostitute videos.

Wait...they HAVEN'T given this any coverage? Oh well, at least an organization devoted to helping the poor didn't have to fully shut down operations or anything.


This is cross posted here.

Maddow: "Let Them Eat Fake"

Rachel Maddow does another bang-up job last week in discussing fake Republican outrage over issues that are not exactly rooted in fact.

From the so-called ACORN pimp scandel, to President Obama's recess appointments, to civilian trials for terrorism suspects, Rachel breaks down why all this supposed outrage is nothing more than an effort to win political points:



This is the exact point that so many were making during the health care debate. We can have an honest debate over what is the best way to reform our health care system, it is just hard when you have tea party members running around claiming that "Grandma is going to die" if reform passes.

When you set up a debate where your "facts" are rooted in everything but facts, it is really going to be hard to have a legitimate discussion on how best to move the country forward. When you have a whole news network that is helping to promote these "facts", it is going to be an even bigger struggle to push back against the misinformation with the truth. After all, it is much more interesting to discuss how a guy walked into an ACORN office while dressed as a pimp rather than how this same individual manipulated video in order to destroy a community organizing organization.

Nothing to see here...move along!

Upon Further Review...

In case you missed it, last week the District Attorney in Brooklyn, NY cleared the local ACORN office of wrong-doing in the incident where Conservative activists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles posed as a pimp and prostitute to solicit advice from ACORN employees.

What is more is that a law enforcement source brought to light what many have been suspicious of the entire time. From the New York Daily News:

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.

O'Keefe and Giles - who visited ACORN offices in several cities, including its Brooklyn headquarters - stirred controversy when they posted the videos on their Web site.

They were hailed as heroes by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and their footage led several government agencies to temporarily cut funding for ACORN as the prosecutors opened an investigation.

"On Sept. 15, 2009, my office began an investigation into possible criminality on the part of three ACORN employees," Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said in a one-paragraph statement issued Monday afternoon.

"That investigation is now concluded and no criminality has been found."

So not only was the Brooklyn ACORN office cleared of wrong-doing, but it has become clear that O'Keefe edited his videos in a misleading way.

It is also important to remember that O'Keefe's fellow Conservative activist Hannah Giles, (who played the role of the prostitute in these videos), confirmed that O'Keefe did NOT wear the outlandish pimp outfit when he went into the ACORN offices as many had thought. From BradBlog:

I asked Giles about a criticism that’s often been leveled against them — that they hyped up the video by wearing outrageous clothes in promotional materials and the videos’ introductions that they didn’t wear in the actual stings.

“We never claimed that he went in with a pimp costume,” said Giles. “That was b-roll. It was purely b-roll. He was a pimp, I was a prostitute, and we were walking in front of government buildings to show how the government was whoring out the American people.”

But it's not like O'Keefe contributed to this "confusion" by letting everyone think that he wore that outfit during the "stings" right? Oh wait...



Apparently he was only dressed in khaki's and a white shirt and posed as the concerned boyfriend of Hannah Giles who wanted to protect her from an abusive pimp. Quite different than what Fox News and the likes of Andrew Breitbart led the public to believe.

O'Keefe is currently still under investigation for reportedly trying to conduct some type of "sting" in the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) back in January. Despite all of this, both O'Keefe and Giles spoke this weekend at the 2010 California Republican Assembly conference in an apparent show of support from some on the political Right.