Anti-ACORN blogger reveals real motives: keep black people from voting!

In all the controversy surrounding the undercover pimp and prostitute ACORN videos last week, James O’Keefe disclosed his motives behind making the videos and getting ACORN out of the voter registration business.

Not shockingly, people are kind of okay with it. As I speculated last week, O’Keefe’s chagrin has nothing to do with danger to child prostitutes and improper tax advice. No, no, it’s about people with dark skin- people who traditionally vote against Republicans- are being reached out to in low-income areas. This tyranny will not stand! From the New York Times:

James O’Keefe, one of the two filmmakers, said he went after ACORN because it registers minorities likely to vote against Republicans: ”Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization,” O’Keefe told The Washington Post. ”No one was holding this organization accountable.”

A post over at the Daily Kos pulls together some background on O’Keefe’s investigative work, including allegations of creative editing and more information on the source for funding O’Keefe’s hidden video. There’s also a link to a post at Democratic Underground, about the actual content of the San Diego portion of the sting. The man depicted in the video was fired for his part in the ACORN scandal. But around O’Keefe’s dubbing and narration, it seems as if he’s trying to help the prostitute, played by Hannah Giles, avoid the imaginary children being “bonded” to the pimp. It is also notable that the worker reported the action to the authorities after Giles and O’Keefe left the office.

The saddest part of all this, though, is that O’Keefe was successful. ACORN has been affected in a massive way because of the scandal- not just in the court of public opinion but also in the form of cut funding. And in turn, the organization will less effectively be able to do what they do, registering voters who may not otherwise have the opportunity to register. O’Keefe and his right-wing financiers have achieved their goal of whitewashing the vote, but has any good come of it? I think if anything much was “exposed” by these shenanigans, it was suspicion and mistrust lurking just under the surface- the knee jerk “I knew it!” response revealing the genuine feelings of many people in this country about equality and politics.