Pimpin’ ain’t easy part 2: ACORN snagged in NYC blogger sting
The right-wing bloggers who snared ACORN in their pimp and ho undercover sting are at it again, this time hitting up ACORN offices in grittier areas of the Bronx and Brooklyn, enticing employees to dole out information in attempt to help the ostensibly law-breaking duo.
James O’Keefe, 25, and Hannah Giles, 20, claim they fund the investigations themselves. O’Keefe has pulled similar stunts before, such as the one last year when he engaged Planned Parenthood employees to earmark donated funds to abort black babies. O’Keefe’s technique is to expose the “absurdities of the enemy by employing their own rules and language.”
As I said the last time we posted about O’Keefe’s ACORN stunts, while I understand the drive to expose hypocrisy, it burns me that he only seems to target organizations that help the struggling masses. You’d find just as much, perhaps moreso, hypocrisy in groups that work on behalf of folk wealthier than those who patronize Planned Parenthood and ACORN, but two kids in their twenties wearing Party City pimp and ho costumes aren’t going to be able to blag their way in there. And as Chris Rock once famously said in his “Bigger and Blacker” show, “if it’s all white, it’s all right. Right, righties?
O’Keefe is able to keep “exposing” these organizations because they’re vulnerable. They’re locally run by people who have been and possibly continue to be poor or connected to at-risk communities. They’re not staffed by savvy legal types, and not utilized by people who have trust funds or interest-bearing accounts or access to top-tier investment advice. So what have they done? Blocked a few college students access to low-cost birth control and gynecological visits? Heartwarming. Made it so the 99% of genuine, in need people who really do require free or low-cost tax advice won’t be able to get it as easily, if at all? Pardon me if I don’t think this “journalism” achieves any noble ends.
And “funded themselves” my jiggly white posterior. This is about as “guerilla” as Pizza Hut’s Jim Breuer out-takes.
