ACORN pimp videos: the most troubling response from a Yale alum (4 of 5)

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The rudest response to my ACORN post on the Yale listserv didn't bother me as much a private* email from another alum who I'll call "Healthy Discussion." Here's the body of her email in full:

"Your [listserv] email does not provide much room for debate or healthy discussion, and therefore I do not see the merit of your posting on this listserve,
unless your purpose is to offend those who may disagree with you."

The central problem with this email lies in the word "offend." Humor columnist Dave Barry explains what I mean in a video made by the folks at FIRE. He begins (at 1:55) with this observation:

the one place where you'd think free thought and free speech and conflict of ideas would be most encouraged [, the University,] has somehow become the most restricted and constricted and most intellectually constipated area of American life.

Then (at 2:32) he performs a wonderful riff on the O-word:

Any time anyone says that he or she is offended by anything, that's all you have to say--that's the magic word--"I'm offended"--and everybody just backs down and says "Oh my god, we don't want to offend anybody." . . . At some point the right to voice your opinion got trumped, at least in the universities, by the right not to be offended . . . Which makes a complete joke out of the concept of intellectual diversity and intellectual freedom.

Here's the thing about important and difficult topics: you can arrive at a healthy discussion from almost any starting point. But you can't have a healthy discussion if the fear of even mildly offending anyone stifles the discussion before it starts.

TOMORROW: ACORN, Yale and the double standard on free speech


*It was not part of the public listserv conversation.

Debunking ACORN apologists

Listed below are some common defenses of ACORN followed by rebuttals.

Defense #1: Some of the ACORN people were "playing along" with what they thought were pranks.

Rebuttal: Even if this is true, ACORN still looks unethical on many levels. I saw no hints of "playing along" in any of the videos.

Defense #2: ACORN was responding to unethical practices of banks during the housing crisis.

Rebuttal: Two wrongs don't make a right. Moreover, the root causes of the housing crisis probably lie within government, not business. Check out the 1994 hearings on Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac.

Defense #3: James O'Keefe had racist motives for creating the videos.

Rebuttal: The O'Keefe-as-racist meme gained traction through a Washington Post story written by Darryl Fears and Carol D. Leonnig. The Post later made a retraction. Andrew Breitbart spoke to Leonnig before the article came out, and he predicted accurately that she would unfairly inject race into the story. (Go to 1:05 of the video.)

Defense #4: "Hapless" ACORN employees were caught in a politically motivated sting.

Rebuttal: Breitbart dismantles the "hapless" (a.k.a. "dumdum") argument very effectively (go to 2:30 of the video).

Defense #5: ACORN has done good things in the past.

Rebuttal: Even if ACORN has done "amazing" work elsewhere--a contention that I have doubts about--the pimp videos should serve as a wake-up call that triggers skepticism and scrutiny of all ACORN operations, past and present.

All you ever wanted to know about ACORN

The Washington Times has a round-up of ACORN coverage here. It's a long list.

via Instapundit.

"not one ACORN employee seemed to flinch"

Go. Go now. Go to BigGovernment.com and start scrolling.

Especially if you're a Democrat who get's most of his news from the New York Times.

Here's the thing: if Democrats do not rise up quickly to denounce ACORN--and strip away its government funding--it seems to me that President Obama and the whole Democratic party will be in deep, deep trouble. And the tipping point could come very quickly.

Mike Flynn captures the essence of the ACORN scandal with this bit:

not one ACORN employee seemed to even flinch when presented with the ridiculous scenario of a pimp and a prostitute trying to get a mortgage to house a dozen or so underage El Salvadoran child-prostitutes. They just oozed seamlessly into conjecture about whether or not a child prostitute could be considered a “dependent” for tax purposes. What do these employees hear on a daily basis that this scenario was just another problem that needed fixing?

Here are the videos. Watch them all:

#1. ACORN office in Baltimore, MD
#2. ACORN office in Washington, DC

The videos from Baltimore and DC elicited this response from Bertha Lewis, ACORN's Chief Organizer.

This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen.

Her quote is a nice segue to yesterday's release from Mr. O'Keefe and Ms. Giles:

#3. ACORN office in Brooklyn, NY

And for good measure, here's today's release:

#4. ACORN office in San Bernardino, CA

James O'Keefe's intro for this vid included this nice touch, a quote from Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals:

#8: Keep the pressure on. Never let up.

If you ask me, ACORN is history. And if Obama and the Democratic party don't recognize it quickly enough, they will be too.

UPDATE: For background on Andrew Breitbart, founder of BigGovernment.com, go here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds interviews Andrew Breitbart about ACORN

ACORN staff advise pimp & prostitute how to cheat on taxes

The ACORN staffers in Baltimore were unfazed by the pair's plan to conduct child prostitution. From the Washington Post:

BALTIMORE -- The group ACORN has fired two employees who were seen on hidden-camera video giving tax advice to a man posing as a pimp and a woman who pretended to be a prostitute.

. . . On the video, a man and woman visiting ACORN's Baltimore office asked about buying a house and how to account on tax forms for the woman's income. An ACORN employee advised the woman to list her occupation as "performance artist."

The pair also claimed they planned to employ teenage girls from central America as prostitutes, and an ACORN employee suggested that up to three of the girls could be claimed as dependents, according to transcripts of the video posted online by conservative activist James O'Keefe.

O'Keefe [said] that he was shocked by the ACORN employees' helpfulness.