This ACORN shit.

I am not a cheerleader for ACORN, nor am I affiliated with them in any way, but I’m sick of seeing misinformation and bullshit about them.

The first thing I read about it was when ACORN employees hired to register new voters were defrauding ACORN by filling out fake voter registration forms for “people” like mickey mouse, ie skipping out on their job.  This was presented as “voter registration fraud” during the campaign to try to suggest that obama, who used to work with ACORN was trying to fake votes, when there wasn’t even the allegation that mickey mouse was ever intended to show up at the polls.  In fact it’s the reverse, the voting officials knew they were fake and/or duplicates because most of them were flagged as being likely fraudulent by ACORN before submitting them, which they have to do by law (submit them that is) since it’s illegal to collect voter registration information without turning it into the voting authorities, as that itself would be voter registration fraud.

So yeah, this no more sticks to the people at the top of ACORN than a postal carrier chucking the mail in the garbage and taking a nap sticks to the postmaster general.

But it was spun that way.

And the Glenn Becks of the world ran with it, and a few short months later ACORN is, according to tea party enthusiasts, obama’s private army that will destroy your vote and take over the country, if they’re not too busy trafficking 13 year old prostitutes from Al Salvador. 

I’m not kidding, people are claiming that people from ACORN who sit in an office in poor neighborhoods and answer tax questions are trafficking underaged prostitutes.

Why?

Because some assholes with hidden cameras went into acorn offices across the country pretending to be different kinds of criminals like corrupt politicians and prostitutes, asked a bunch of tax questions including questions about how to declare children on your taxes, and then heavily edited the interviews to make it look like they were helping them to start a child prostitution ring, when nowhere in any of the videos did they ever once say a damn thing about child prostitution.  And it’s very clear from the video footage that the people they’re talking to aren’t talking about helping them farm out children for prostitution because they’re doing things like warning them that it’s illegal to have anyone under 16 work for them.

It’s true that both people they interviewed pretending to be a prostitute told them they couldn’t declare “hooker” on their taxes.  I could have told them that.  And I would have too, since regular grown-up prostitution, while not a wonderful career choice in my opinion, is a victimless crime that most people don’t see as any of their business.  So they went into the only two ACORN offices where people didn’t judge them for their lie, and repayed their kindness by smearing them as supporting child prostitution.

What disgusting filth.

And to any anti-acorn birther tea party people who reply to this, I would be leading the charge against these people if I thought for one minute the video wasn’t deceptively edited and reinvented into something awful.  But it’s very obvious that it was.

It is one thing to uncover crime.  It is another thing altogether to fabricate it where none exists for self-promotion.

And they did promote themselves.  They were welcomed glenn beck guests…