THE DAILY BLADE: How ACORN Got Buried By “Squirrelly Right-Wingers”
Writing on the Modern Republic e-zine, Rob Whaley waggishly notes, “Summer started with the strange and curious death of Michael Jackson the King of Pop. It ended with his murder.” His seasonal round-up of events in the news was published before the equally stunning - and swift - reversal of fortune that felled ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). Having received $53 million in federal funding over the last 15 years – with millions in stimulus funds yet to be funneled into its coffers - the group was cut off by Congress, and there are calls for an investigation into how all this money has been spent.
Just three people did what the Repubs could not, and the MSM would not. Here’s how citizen journalists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, along with their media mentor, Andrew Breitbart, conceived and executed the ACORN squash.
“James O'Keefe is the brains behind VeritasVisuals.com, described as a "collection of satirical short films on newsworthy topics," reports The Washington Times. According to The Washington Post, O'Keefe is “a progressive radical, not a conservative [and] said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives that turn out poor African Americans and Latinos against Republicans."
The Stiletto could not find much background information on Hannah Giles, except that she recently completed the Young America's Foundation crash course in journalism, and that her father, Doug, is a pastor and conservative columnist. Her brief bio on the Townhall.com Web site states: “Hannah Giles is a … contributor and aspiring journalist. She is the journalist behind the ACORN prostitution/tax evasion sting. She is the oldest daughter of Townhall.com columnist Doug Giles.”
The Washington Times describes Andrew Breitbart as a “hybrid journalist, content wrangler, glib analyst. … an unabashed political conservative in a Hollywood dominated by liberals." adding, "Breitbart, 40, has an unorthodox journalistic pedigree. He has worked, both as intellectual force and techno-geek, for Matt Drudge and Arianna Huffington.”
“The proposition was outrageous, outlandish, and right up James E. O'Keefe III's alley,” reports The Washington Post:
Hannah Giles was on the phone from the District, and she was asking him to dress like her pimp, walk into the offices of the ACORN community activist group, openly admit to wanting to buy a house to run as a brothel, and see what happened. …
O'Keefe, 25, packed his grandfather's old wide-brimmed derby hat from his swing-dancing days, his grandmother's ratty chinchilla shoulder throw, and a cane he bought at a dollar store, then drove from his parents' home in northern New Jersey to the District to execute the idea with Giles, 20. …
Giles had not personally met O'Keefe when she called him in May, O'Keefe said. She had written about a video O'Keefe had produced that was aimed at Planned Parenthood, he said. They traded e-mails and messages on Facebook before O'Keefe finally drove south to meet her. …
In his role as a pimp, O'Keefe said, he employed the skill of a method actor. "When you're in the moment, you can't afford to get out of character."
“In video after shocking video, Mr. O'Keefe and Miss Giles hopscotched across America, persuading ACORN employees to aid them in their scheme to import underage girls into the country with the intent of turning them into prostitutes and funneling the profits into a political campaign,” reports The Washington Times. “The videos were stunning pieces of citizen journalism: effective, simple and elegant.”
“When O'Keefe had filmed the first two videos - in the District and Baltimore - a friend urged him to share his project with Andrew Breitbart, a conservative Internet entrepreneur who had plans to launch an anti-liberal site called BigGovernment.com, reports The Washington Post:
Breitbart said he was skeptical after a June phone call with O'Keefe about what he had, but when the video was rolling in his basement office in Los Angeles in late July, Breitbart said, he gasped. …
"When I saw these videos, I couldn't help thinking, this is the Abu Ghraib of the Great Society," said Breitbart, who put the videos on BigGovernment.com. "Everybody that is a conservative news junkie thinks that ACORN is the most important institution for us to uncover to the American public."
Breitbart took the fledgling journalists under his wing to help ensure that the MSM did not make O'Keefe and Giles the focus of the story instead of ACORN’s “misuse of public funds and systemic manipulation of the tax code in the name of ‘helping the poor’":
I was awed by Mr. O'Keefe's guts and amazed by the footage, but explained that the mainstream media would try to kill this important and illuminating expose about a corrupt and criminal political racket, and that the well-funded political left would go into "war room" mode, with 25-year-old Mr. O'Keefe and 20-year-old cohort Miss Giles in the cross hairs. I felt I had a moral obligation to protect these young muckrakers from the left and from the media, and to devise a strategy that would force the media's hand. …
[W]e needed to offer the full transcripts and audio to the public in the name of transparency, and to offer Fox News the full footage of each video before each was released. We had to devise a plan that would force the media to see the evidence before they had enough time to destroy these two idealistic 20-something truth seekers. Mr. O'Keefe agreed to post the full audio and full transcript of his video experiences at BigGovernment.com. …
Videos of five different ACORN offices in five separate cities would be released on five consecutive weekdays over a full week - Baltimore, Washington, New York, San Bernadino and San Diego. By dripping the videos out, we exposed to anyone paying attention that ACORN was lying through its teeth and that the media would look imbecilic continuing to trot out their hapless spokespeople. …
[T]he media repeated ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis' growing body of lies, never holding her accountable for her shameless hackery. Jonathan Klein, CNN's president, is emerging as symbol of the mainstream media's last depressing days.
No wonder Jon Stewart delivered a stinging and hilarious rebuke of the real newspeople on his "Daily Show" parodies every night: "Where were the real reporters on this story? ... Where the hell were you?"
In the same vein, on New York Times blog “The Opinionator” Tobin Harshaw ponders: “A novice filmmaker embarrassed an influential housing group - did he humiliate the mainstream media as well?” Nah, they do a pretty good job humiliating themselves.
O'Keefe's and Giles’ triumph notwithstanding, “Red Eye” host and BigHollywood.com blogger Greg Gutfeld isn’t holding his breath waiting for Hollywood to lionize these two intrepid kids with a blockbuster feature film:
So when two scrappy DC journalists bring down a President, it’s turned into “All the President’s Men,” winning accolades and Oscars. When an unemployed single mother of three takes the fight to an energy giant, it becomes a blockbuster vehicle for Julia Robert’s cleavage. And when a former Vice President exposes man’s inhumanity toward Mother Earth – “An Inconvenient Truth” crowns him the most majestic whistle blower ever.
But when two amateur journalists (in their early twenties, poorly dressed as sex workers, with under two grand in their budget) casually take down a sleazy behomoth that leeches off American taxpayers, you’d think Hollywood and the media would be all over this. I mean, what Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe did to Acorn – leading to the House approving to cut off all their funding – is the whistle blowing film to end ALL whistle blowing films. These two kids did what Michael Moore could never come close to accomplishing: uncovering lurid incompetence, affecting policy, and saving Americans millions of dollars.
Wanna bet neither O'Keefe nor Giles win any journalism awards – or get any job offers from the MSM?
Editorial Note: In response to charges that they are part of “a vast right-wing conspiracy,” O'Keefe and Giles insist that they spent $1,300 of their own money to finance their undercover operation, and Breitbart has promised to post the derring duo’s receipts online – including those for the Subway and Quiznos sandwiches they ate while driving along I-95 from one ACORN branch office to another.
Update: The Washington Post has retracted a paraphrased quote attributed to James O'Keefe that The Stiletto had included in her round-up of ACORN’s recent woes:
This article about the community organizing group ACORN incorrectly said that a conservative journalist targeted the organization for hidden-camera videos partly because its voter-registration drives bring Latinos and African Americans to the polls. Although ACORN registers people mostly from those groups, the maker of the videos, James E. O'Keefe, did not specifically mention them.
Meanwhile, former ACORN employees plan to file a criminal complaint in Baltimore against O'Keefe, Hannah Giles and Andrew Breitbart alleging that secret recordings of them were obtained illegally, because MD’s “Wiretap Act” prohibits making an audio recording of a person without his or her consent, reports Investigative Voice. It is not known as this juncture whether local prosecutors will press charges as a result. For its part, ACORN may seek an injunction against the two filmmakers to prevent them from distributing the videos.
i agree acorns last days are over .
Reply to this
awsome post its good to see that acorn being exposed for what they are just a bunch of crooks
Reply to this