They Still Ain't Gettin' It

In an article at the New York Daily News website, Errol Louis makes a feeble attempt at defending the actions of a few ACORN employees. Once again, I'll break it down.

"The videos shot and distributed by a pair of right-wing pranksters to discredit ACORN had all the elements of a good political hit job: sleaze, sensationalism, sleight-of-hand."

Pranksters? Ah, no, Mr. Louis. These two young Americans did something that 60 Minutes, 20/20 and other fringe news outlets, like MSNBC, CNN, et al refuse to do. By bringing to light the inner workings of taxpayer funded organizations, like ACORN, we see that our money is suborning tax fraud and child prostitution and in one video what appears to be slave trade.

James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles went from one ACORN community office to another posing as a pimp and his whore, pretending to seek help securing low-income housing and/or tax help to set up a brothel using underage illegal immigrants.

Not one ACORN outlet actually completed or filed illegal paperwork, but the video stunt worked like a charm anyway.

This one is too easy. Whether or not they actually filed the paperwork is irrelevant. What is of relevance is that ACORN employees showed a willingness to commit tax fraud and child prostitution. Nuff said.

Mr. Louis goes on:

Biased and/or naive news producers and editors rushed one-minute excerpts of O'Keefe and Giles' heavily edited videos onto national television without a thought, even when the pair refused to release the full tapes or answer questions on the air about how they were created.

In at least one case, O'Keefe simply lied about his stunt, claiming on Fox News Channel that every ACORN office he visited played along with his purported illegal schemes.

Not so. ACORN's Philadelphia office filed a police report about the bizarre questions posed by O'Keefe and Giles (a copy of the complaint is online).

In another instance, a California ACORN worker named Tresa Kaelke filled O'Keefe's hidden camera with a wild, dramatic tale about killing her husband and getting away with it, which O'Keefe and Giles claimed as yet another example of ACORN perfidy.

In reality, Kaelke invented the story because the fake hooker and her pal "were clearly playing with me." San Bernardino police investigated the claim and concluded that Ms. Kaelke's "known former husbands" appear to be "alive and well," although perhaps unamused.

These facts, and other holes in O'Keefe's selective storytelling, will become relevant when the national witch hunt subsides. A trip to court, in fact, may put the whole matter in a different light: in at least one state, O'Keefe's surreptitious taping may have violated privacy laws.

Biased and naive news producers rushed to get it? You mean bias news outlets like MSNBC? The bias news producers he is referring to is FoxNews and none of us would have known anything about it if it wasn't for FoxNews breaking the story that these "pranksters" exposed.

I certainly hope that ACORN does try to sue James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles and FoxNews for their "lying". ACORN's problem with this approach would give Fox News a way to force ACORN to open all of their books. In other words, dirty laundry has a tendency to get aired out in court.

Let me explain, point by point, what the crux of the matter really is, Mr. Louis:

• ACORN has received $56 million in taxpayer money.

• Bertha Lewis was put in place to "clean up" ACORN.

• They are currently under investigation in many states for voter registration fraud.

• They are slated to receive $8.5 billion in additional taxpayer money.

• Then there are the videos showing ACORN employees suborning tax fraud and child prostitution, as well as what appears to be slavery in one video.

ACORN has a history of ethics issues and campaigns for the left. I am of the opinion that ACORN and other like organizations exploits minorities, just look a the content of the videos! Black and Brown people, as Bertha Lewis puts it, assisting a white "pimp" and a white "prostitute" on how to defraud the government!

And you say it's a witch hunt?