John Wellington Ennis: The Lynching of ACORN

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-wellington-ennis/the-lynching-of-acorn_b_303668.html

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The census worker lynching in Kentucky indicates that this violent fervor is still alive and well, and being fed some of the purest baloney that the right wing fear machine can mass-produce in their all-out efforts at relevance. The only danger presented by both census-taking and ACORN's voter registration is the counting and empowerment of Brown people. As the population includes more minorities--on their way to becoming the majority--plenty of bigoted white people feel their sense of prestige endangered. Census data goes into districting, and thus proportional representation in government. More Brown people voting further threatens the status quo.

By the standard of a high-tech lynching, ACORN's travails are commensurate. The attacks on ACORN have been ongoing, involving the Justice Department, the White House, and the Republican National Committee, well before a couple of privileged white kids in costumes wandered into poor communities across the country hoping to make social workers look stupid and lose their jobs. This is a mob Karl Rove started years ago.

James O'Keefe III is serving Karl Rove, knowingly or unknowingly. His very identification of ACORN as what had to be taken down a notch -- not Goldman Sachs, not the Treasury, not U.S. companies with off-shore accounts -- why would O'Keefe even know what ACORN is?

This extensive report on the Media's failure to objectively cover ACORN, just released by the Occidental College Urban & Environmental Policy Institute shows the rampant inequity of media coverage and lack of accuracy in reporting on ACORN for the past year. If someone were to see solely this much negative press, they would probably hold an unfavorable view of ACORN as well, as some 67% people do, according to a recent poll Karl Rove Tweeted.

Enter James O'Keefe III to take that ball of misinformation and run with it. On FOX & Friends, James O'Keefe III is introduced at the beginning of the interview, wearing a fur coat over his preppy blazer, as he waves a cane. The host is quick to excuse his appearance: "You're not a pimp, you're just playing one on our show."

O'Keefe replies: "I'm one of the whitest guys ever, I just wear ridiculous stuff and put people in ridiculous situations." That is how he assures us he is not a pimp--he is one of the Whitest Guys Ever, therefore on the opposite end of the spectrum from the Blackest Guys Ever, who normally tend to this kind of thing.

Implicit is this: 'I am so white, I had to dress up like a pimp caricature to look black, and it actually worked. That they acknowledged me despite my outlandish attire shows that they are so gullible and base, I was mistaken for a real pimp, which they all must know, being minorities. Once disguised in this clownish attire, they spoke to me as one of their own, so therefore this is how they all behave throughout their organization. Had I not been dressed as Huggy Bear from Starsky & Hutch, the ACORN employees would have known that I was white, and therefore been on their best behavior, as we can expect them to be to us white people when we come around to check on them.'

Just by walking in the door dressed like this, O'Keefe is casting aspersions that people like this would go there (not just sex workers--clueless sex workers). O'Keefe even pleaded with one alarmed ACORN worker to not call the cops for assistance, so that later O'Keefe can fault him for not calling the cops. As O'Keefe says in the above clip coldly, "That's who these people are."

O'Keefe is quick to generalize an entire national organization based on a singular intrusive experience, despite other ACORN offices not taking his bait, after admitting he went in there to prove they were thugs. If that's who these people really are, why not release the videotapes in their entirety to show that, including those tapes shot in cities that did not humor O'Keefe, like Los Angeles or Philadelphia, where the ACORN office filed a police report about the pimp and ho spectacle?

As O'Keefe insists in the clip above, ACORN's allegation that the tapes appear doctored is "a lie," so he shouldn't have a problem proving it by releasing the full unedited tapes, which would likely be part of ACORN's lawsuit against him. Refuting the "moral equivalence," O'Keefe decries that doctoring tapes does not even compare with child prostitution -- suggesting that to O'Keefe, the ends justify the means. Was this about the truth, or making ACORN look bad?


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