It remains the top Google search for “ACORN video“: FOX News’ credulous “reporting” of the two kids who posed as a pimp and prostitute and entered various ACORN headquarters to ferret out the wrongdoers among them. The scandal as FOX continues to see it – despite overwhelming law enforcement evidence to the contrary – is that an ACORN volunteer is seen on the video confessing to the murder of her ex-husband. But is that where the story actually is? Or is there some other illumination to be gleaned from this whole affair? We’ve seen lots of video taken from the front of the camera, but let’s take a moment to look at who was behind the camera, posing as a “pimp.”
Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, purveyors of thespian sexual favours.
Meet Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe, the two activists who journeyed into the Heart of Darkness, also known as “The Ghetto.” One can hardly imagine a more appropriate pair to pose as two drug-addicted, hard-bitten inner city thugs with a taste for the sex trade. The video they produced shows the realistic method acting and authentic attire they employed in their subterfuge. Who among the volunteers at ACORN, many of whom have spent their lives in the streets where prostitutes ply their wares, could help but fall for their crafty ways?
After all, nothing say’s “hooker” like blond hair, healthy skin, expensive slut-gear and a full set of teeth. I can see this bad, bad, pimpin’ man screaming now, “Bitch betta have my latte!!”
Only FOX News could be so eager to grind their axes as to fall for this ridiculous scam. The only way anyone would go to these two dolts for sexual favours is if they were looking for a sexual act known as “The Full Milk Toast.” When I first heard about some of the video they captured, I was a little worried. But then I saw the third video – the one with the supposed murderer – and then I saw the kids who tried to pull this off and the whole thing just collapsed under its own farcical weight.
It reveals something far more compelling about FOX News viewers and their concept of what “The Ghetto” is that they would be equally willing to fall for this nonsense. You really do have to be from somewhere at least as snow-white as Utah to believe that:
- These two idiots could pass for a “hooker” and a “pimp.”
- That dressing for a Cozumel night club and dressing for a night of heavy prostitute work are the same thing: a slut’s a slut.
- That anything so exact as a “hooker” and a “pimp” really exists in the world: these are not professions for which you get a certification.
- That “hookers” and “pimps” regularly announce themselves as such.
- That “hookers” and “pimps” import their prostitutes from El Salvador; that “hookers” and “pimps” have enough money to fly someone in from El Salvador – coach, one would presume, but even so… – but can’t think of anything better to do with their money than visit ACORN offices in search of cheap rental property.
- That the idle question, “how much do you charge,” is answerable with a set list of charges and services, like your local chimney sweep.
- That people who commit murder routinely share this information with strangers whom they meet for the first time; that murder in “The Ghetto” is a thing for which such a cavalier attitude is commonplace.
But facts don’t seem to matter much to the executives at FOX News, who continue to allow their “journalists” to spew hate about an organization upon whose head not a single conviction has fallen so far. Neither it seems do facts matter to their audience, for whom FOX News serves as a means to reinforce their beliefs at the expense of reality. At issue is the shared socio-political axe FOX and it’s audience have to grind; not facts or even half-assed observation, either of which would have forbade them to cover this “story.”
What is worse is the lemming-like behavior of the Mainstream Media and Democratic politicians, both of whom are being led by the nose for fear of looking weak on voter fraud. Since when as FOX News ever proven itself to be worth of such unqualified and unexamined sourcing? What major news has the FOX News network ever broken that turned out to be legitimate in any way, apart from being handed interviews and White House leaks by a Bush White House that was friendly to it’s cause?
And all of this built on the “work” of a minister’s daughter and an MBA.
A bus in Rochester is never a silent thing; more than just the engines roar as those big, blue boxes make their way from point to point across Monroe County. It is not exactly a roadhouse on wheels, but its full of gossiping women, chatting men and bus regulars bellowing orders to the rookie bus driver. There are also those who, like myself, prefer to blend into their respective seats, absorbing themselves in their books or thoughts until they can make their way off the bus. We silent few always seem to be in the minority, or perhaps that is just my impression.
But not on this day. On this particular day, I was entirely sure that I was on some different kind of bus filled with some different kind of folk than those with whom I’d grown somewhat resentfully familiar in my travels around Rochester. On this day, walking up the stairs of the bus felt like walking down the stairs of a pool: into rising pressure and a remarkable lack of sound beyond the rushing of blood in my ears.
As the bus rolled along, the somehow-muted roar of the engine; the moment’s gear-shifting hesitation; the elephant sigh of air breaks seemed to intensify, not diminish, the silence. Everything moved in a kind of syrupy slow motion and where people normally leaned in and out to speak to one another, they now moved only when a bump in the road forced them to, rocking back and forth briefly like so many potted trees bound for some unnamed office hallway. The thickness of the air felt like a collective concentration – even meditation – on some focal point to which I was not attuned; each person stared out the window motionless, not at the fleeting landscape, but at some distant and singularly personal object which never seemed to leave their view.
It might have made sense to ask someone what was going on. But at the time, it seemed better to let what was surely just an odd moment pass.
My unemployment insurance appointment for that morning had been at 9am. Bus schedules being what they are, that meant I’d been out since about 7am. I’d not seen a single television set all morning. By the time I would arrive home about 10:30 to realize what had happened, it would all be over. I would be standing in front of my little 13″ television set with my mouth agape, trying to process it without success.
In the meanwhile, around 9:30am, just after the second plane crash, I was standing on Waring Rd and waiting for a bus to take me home to another boring day of unemployment. There was supposed to have been a job fair that day at the War Memorial, but that wasn’t supposed to be till 1pm or so. My tie was getting tight around my neck and it was beginning to look like it might be a hot day, standing exposed on the opposite side of the street from the squat little strip mall that the UI office occupied. It had occurred to me neither that the interviewers seemed even less interested than normal in reviewing my job search history, nor that the office was completely empty when they ushered us all out the door.
I didn’t think of any of it until hours later, when I realized that the banal reality I thought I was moving through had changed forever without my knowledge. And in those hours after, between the bouts of panic and astonishment, I felt an oblique Generation X kind of guilt. Guilt that I had seen Video Killed the Radio Star in its MTV debut; guilt that I’d watched O.J. Simpson’s low-speed chase; guilt that I’d watched Van Halen’s pathetic public breakup; guilt that after watching all these useless television moments, believing somehow that I was involved, I’d been absent the one time something really important happened. And that somehow, this time, I wasn’t involved.
When you’re employed as a web designer or tech support person or any other job that requires you to sit in front of a computer all day, you’ve got ample time to read the news. In fact, in intellectually-stressing jobs, escaping for five minutes here or there to stare at the news is not merely a luxury, it’s a job requirement. You have more than enough time to read blogs and you have perhaps just a bit too much time to formulate strong opinions on the issues of the day.
But while you would think that unemployment would offer you that much time and more, my experience so far has been the opposite: whereas I woke up each morning updating my news section of this site, reading news and blogs and beginning to think about articles I might write later in the day, these days I can barely muster the interest to watch morning news. My interests have become hyper-provincial: the economy I care about is my economy; the education I care about is my own education.
Thus I’ve withdrawn from the world of political commentary for the last six months or so. And like stepping suddenly back into winter after months of summer, I’ve found my perspective changed and my impression of where we are has taken a turn for the worse. Or perhaps things really have changed, I don’t know.
But I really don’t remember the animosity and back-biting among Progressives that I see right now. Both on a national level and a local level, there seems to be a shrill insistence that because Barack Obama won the election, nothing less than the most liberal of positions – one the president himself never took – is an acceptable position. All that getting together and working for a better America crap went right out the window the minute people thought themselves entitled. Not getting what you want from your elected representatives is a matter of course for most adults: we accept that we’re not going to get everything, we just want to be sure our rep is at least dealing with us honestly. But for Progressives these days, it’s apparently akin to being abused and slaughtered like… wait for it…. veal.
Now forgive me if I’m sounding a bit shrill, myself. But as a good Leftie, I’m well-aware of what veal cows endure in their short and miserable lives; I really don’t think that missing out on an opportunity to have fully-nationalized health care really stacks up. I don’t think getting yourself rightfully fired for being a careless dipshit, signing your name to anything you please like it won’t come back to bite you in the ass really qualifies. That you were promised something that you (might) not get is in no way related to spending a short lifetime in a box being fed your neighbors. I think making the comparison is really quite offensive.
I was recently lectured in the most patronizing way possible on FaceBook for an article I wrote on Tort Reform…. despite the fact that I never wrote an article on Tort Reform. Worse, this sphincter-winking dickwad didn’t have the class to apologize when it was clear that he had misdirected is ire. Worse still, the article in question was written by Jon Greenbaum, whom this person apparently likes enough not to bother correcting in the same shrill voice. So, it’s not the message, it’s not the meaning, it’s only the messenger that matters. Apparently, this person considers me a dick. He should consider himself lucky not to know how right he is.
All of this would be intolerable if it wasn’t so painfully, nerdfully lame. The guy even kinda looks like The Comic Store Guy.
I didn’t become a Progressive or a blogger because I wanted to have friends. I really don’t give a rat’s ass what Progressives choose to say about each other insofar as it affects them alone. What concerns me is the fact that the acrimony – inter-Progressive and inter-Party – is turning people off of the subject, either of health care reform, or of Barack Obama’s presidency and the promise it still holds. What Progressives seem to forget is that the oldest Conservative trick in the book involves ruining people’s enthusiasm for a subject and depressing support. By going negative in a campaign, a candidate drives down both his and his opponent’s numbers, but Conservative voters will go to the polls when Liberal and Moderate voters will not.
The same holds true for the current health care debate. Are Conservatives ruining their reputation with mainstream voters? You bet. But as the insanity ratchets up, more and more people turn away, which is the point. The question never seems to get asked, but I doubt the slide in Obama’s poll numbers have anything to do with people afraid he’s going to “kill grandma.” The slide is about a lack of confidence and a lack of interest in the ugliness and arguing. “A pox on both their houses,” as they say. I know I’ve all but lost interest, myself.
It’s a big gamble by Republicans and the health care industry that’s depending on them that they can defeat this bill; if not, Republican numbers slide even farther into the toilet in all but their bulwark districts. But Progressives are helping the Republicans out by matching hyperbole with more hyperbole. And this to respond to a Republican Party which is in the minority and shacking up with Orly Taitz? Republicans who can’t stop legislation demand an end to the Public Option and that sparks an internecine bitch-fest among Progressives?
But, what the hell. Far be it from me to tell anyone else what to do with their Internet time….
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As Inspiration: Jethro Tull – Thick As A Brick
via FoxyTunes
