ACORN workers caught on tape allegedly advising on prostitution

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/10/acorn.prostitution/index.html

It's wrong that my first reaction to this is perplexed giggling, right? What the hell?

right-wing fixation on acorn is so weird. and loathsome.

"One of the ACORN workers suggests that Giles refer to herself as a "performing artist" on tax forms and declare some of the girls as dependents to receive child tax credits."

Having trouble taking this very seriously.

i read part of the transcript of this yesterday (it was too long to read it all). if you watch the video, it seems even more ridiculous, unbelievable that the workers wouldn't figure it out after a few minutes. they really went out of their way to do something that would not happen irl

Having trouble taking this very seriously.

^^^^^^^^^^ OTM

i don't really understand this

right-wing fixation on acorn is so weird. and loathsome.

― flying squid attack (tipsy mothra), Friday, September 11, 2009 9:41 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^this

Basically, Eliot Spitzer and David Vitter have joined ACORN.

And for what it's worth, ACORN can only afford two whore diamonds because of funding, but according to Malkin, Obama is considering bumping them up to three.

acorn also apparently involved in creating hurricane katrina, or something. i can't actually tell what beck's trying to suggest there. something about acorn, seiu and van jones conspiring to make it look like george bush hated black people.

I saw that acorn thing at the barber shop last night and my main reaction was mostly lol bmore

i guess they tried other offices before bmore but the employees were not dumb enough to fall for it

right-wing fixation on acorn is so weird. and loathsome.

― flying squid attack (tipsy mothra), Friday, September 11, 2009 9:41 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^this

― johnny crunch, Friday, September 11, 2009 7:57 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

^this

The video footage -- which has been edited and goes to black in some areas -- was recorded and posted online Thursday

from the CNN article. i wonder what they edited, exactly.

in general my take on the ACORN stories that rightwing media has been pushing since before the election = poorly-paying, underfunded, disorganized nonprofit that is itself an association of poorly-paying, underfunded, disorganized nonprofits? some stuff might just get screwed up and some people just might look the other way at less-than-competent staff screwing up, sometimes, especially if some of those workers aren't likely to have too many other job opportunities. but certain news organizations would have you believe it's a well-organized conspiracy secretly having a profound impact on the current government. i wonder why.

i'll post this here, too:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090911/ap_on_go_ot/us_census_acorn

WASHINGTON – The Census Bureau on Friday severed its ties with ACORN, a community organization that has been hit with Republican accusations of voter-registration fraud. "We do not come to this decision lightly," Census director Robert Groves wrote in a letter to ACORN, which was obtained by The Associated Press.

In splitting with ACORN, Groves sought to tamp down GOP concerns and negative publicity that the partnership will taint the 2010 head count.

"It is clear that ACORN's affiliation with the 2010 census promotion has caused sufficient concern in the general public, has indeed become a distraction from our mission, and may even become a discouragement to public cooperation, negatively impacting 2010 census efforts," Groves wrote.

we're such pussies.

why haven't they just changed their name by now?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/29/okeefe.cnn.prank/index.html?hpt=T2

this fucking guy

Now, see, why can't Obama arrange to have HIM killed by a drone?

i just -- luring a CNN correspondent onto a boat laden with sexy paraphernalia and secretly taping a background interview is supposed to accomplish what, exactly?

answers on a postcard....

Did I catch that the subtext is that the CNN reporter is...a blonde bobble-head doll (or something?!) who is supposed to "lure" interviewees in with her wiles, so this was going to FLIP THE SCRIPT on her? Or something?

^^ sorry not a postcard

"Instead of giving her a serious interview, I'm going to punk CNN. Abbie has been trying to seduce me to use me, in order to spin a lie about me. So, I'm going to seduce her, on camera, to use her for a video. This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five will get a taste of her own medicine, she'll get seduced on camera and you'll get to see the awkwardness and the aftermath.

this is just the worst premise for a porn

this dude has some issues with women, maybe!

http://i637.photobucket.com/albums/uu92/damien_stone/james_okeefe--300x300.jpg

This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five

Conservative fucktards quoting Don Henley FTW!

i gotta admire the meticulous planning involved, and that they call it a 'Caper' like it's a Scooby Doo episode

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2010/09/specials/cnn.caper/index.html

3. Equipment Needed
a. Video
1. hidden cams on the boat
2. tripod and overt recorder near the bed, an obvious sex tape machine

b. Props
1. condom jar
2. dildos
3. Music
a. Alicia Keys
b. 80s romance songs, things that are typically James
c. avoid Marvin Gaye as too cliche
4. lube
5. ceiling mirror
6. posters and paintings of naked women
7. playboys and pornographic magazines
8. candles
9. Viagra and stamina pills
10. fuzzy handcuffs
11. blindfold

http://www.mediabistro.com/webnewser/files/original/Boudreau_2.13.jpg

that dude was going to try to seduce this investigative journalist

i'd prefer to think that she would have seen through the set-up even without prior warning, i mean come on

no better way to seduce a women than a room full of dildos, Playboys and lube

The videos led to some of the employees being fired and contributed to the disbanding of ACORN, which advocated for low- and middle-income [people] and worked to register voters.

But prosecutors in New York and California eventually found no evidence of wrongdoing by the group, and the California probe found the videos had been heavily and selectively edited.

It's crazy that this is true, and that it's just an accepted thing. "Oh yeah, that's what happened." But instead of this guy being behind bars and ACORN being vindicated, ACORN doesn't exist (as a national organization) and this guy continues to make people miserable for fun

what really gets me is that the reason these guys dislike CNN/NBC/anything-that's-not-Fox is that the non-Fox orgs report on things that are unflattering to conservatives. ever, at all. that is what makes them "biased": that they don't go out of their way to frame things favorably for conservatives.

h8 this sociopathic James fucker to pieces

i just -- luring a CNN correspondent onto a boat laden with sexy paraphernalia and secretly taping a background interview is supposed to accomplish what, exactly?

Yeah, this is the dumbest plan ever.

what are the chances he was just scamming his financiers to pay for these 'props'

xp fox news is arguably far more guilty of the "using sexy correspondents to sell news" accusation imo

The plan would have shown how liberal those parties were.

his buddy hannah giles is a real POS too

i just -- luring a CNN correspondent onto a boat laden with sexy paraphernalia and secretly taping a background interview is supposed to accomplish what, exactly?

bonin'

haha as if any sane adult woman wouldn't survey the room, spin on her sensible heel and march right out

c. avoid Marvin Gaye as too cliche

lol

i keep trying to read that CNN article and the writing is so poor that i literally can't follow the action. i.e.

CNN was forwarded an e-mail, sent from O'Keefe's e-mail address, to the executive director of Project Veritas, Izzy Santa; and two conservative activists, Ben Wetmore of New Orleans and Jonathon Burns of St. Louis, Missouri, dated after the call with Boudreau.

?? Two conservative activists were dating each other?

... you are joking right

because if not I just don't even know what to say

the article is terribly written, tbf

OHHH the email was sent after the call. OK

that parses pretty easily for me tbh

CNN was forwarded an e-mail, sent from O'Keefe's e-mail address, to the executive director of Project Veritas, Izzy Santa. Two conservative activists, Ben Wetmore of New Orleans and Jonathon Burns of St. Louis, Missouri, said it was sent after the call with Boudreau.

right?

lmao I didn't notice that marvin gaye thing, it is great

Mad props to Boudreau, most significantly for knowing how to spell her first name the most correct way.

five commas and a semicolon between "email" and "dated" will fuck things up every time.

no -- the original email, sent after the call to boydreau, was also sent to those two other activists. xp

boudreau I mean

Haha jeez. Sorry that is just very very wrong. WTH is the semicolon doing there??

CNN was forwarded an e-mail, sent from O'Keefe's e-mail address, to the executive director of Project Veritas, Izzy Santa, and two conservative activists, Ben Wetmore of New Orleans and Jonathon Burns of St. Louis, Missouri. Its date indicated that it was sent after the call with Boudreau.

Anyway I have been seized with the desire to own a pot-bellied pig named Boudreau

elmo OTM. The semi-colon is there to delineate the members of the list because of all of the descriptives separated by commas.

obviously the "dated after the call to boudreau" clause should have been placed after the word "email" but w/e

(possibly the thing that's confusing is that the semi-colon as delimiter usually happens after a colon)

Somebody needs to prank this prankster. Prank him to death!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCnpZys-qLI

yeah btw this guy is further guilty by using the word "punk" as a verb. implicate ashton kutcher as an accessory.

I would just like to go on record as saying that "Izzy Santa" is a truly awesome name.

has anybody else glommed onto the weird detail that santa was "dirty" and his lip was shaking when he came to cnn lady and admitted all this stuff before she made it out to the boat?

what is that about

yeah I thought that was weird too

I think Izzy Santa is a she?

i guess the smudgy-faced shaky-lip stuff is meant to suggest trauma and nerves either at 'fessing up or at recognising the sheer creepiness of what they had planned to do.

izzy being a female is the thing that confused me most about this caper

"what are you ashamed of?"

always love creepy bully logic when it makes its appearance.

yeah -- my best guess is that izzy (female btw) tried to talk o'keefe out of the stunt and they got into an argument? the dirt detail is odd but she was certainly upset, is the gist i got.

the only positive assessment i can summon from this shit-show is: at least this unstable, pathological dude with an obvious hatred towards women is just a horrible prankster and not an outright serial killer.

the only positive assessment i can summon from this shit-show is: at least this unstable, pathological dude with an obvious hatred towards women is just a horrible prankster and not an outright serial killer.

do we know that for sure? I recommend some hard-hitting investigative pranks to get to the bottom of this!

The props would make for an excellent snuff film. It would be great to have his pals find him floating in the water with a blind fold and handcuffs on and one of the dildos shoved up his ass. It could be called 'Typically James'.

lol

santa was "dirty"

I keep imagining santa getting slapped in the face with a gardening glove.

wonder if this will hurt or help donations to numbnutz' Project Veritas

http://www.theprojectveritas.org/

hey, it's tax-deductible!

dude has pulled 1 successful 'prank' out of 3 attempts (tho i don't consider the acorn thing a prank as much as outright sabotage & misinformation)

if this guy continues to be funded it will be to my eternal amazement

if this guy continues to be funded ever gets laid it will be to my eternal amazement

fixed

dude has pulled 1 successful 'prank'

Still required a staggeringly un-self-aware amount of intellectual dishonesty to pull off, though.

i bet he's preparing for his martyr interview on Fox right now

idk this prank is prob too salacious for fox to risk defending -- i'm sure they endorse his goals of "undercover journalism" and "muckraking" on premise but i'm guessing elaborate practical sex jokes are a bridge too far.

wd love love love to see the emails/txts/whatev between o'keefe and izzy

the "caper" document is amazing. who is he writing it TO?

the imagined dialogue on page 4, hooolyy

"James should have a more sleazy persona than normal."

implied that he's a pretty big creep to begin with

this whole scheme is just... breathtakingly dumb

and the idea that this stunt was supposed to expose CNN's "internal racism against whites" AND "potential internal racism against minorities" -- really? you want to videotape a lady for a sexy boat & dildo joke to prove that her employer is racist against... everybody?

are these people insane? am *i* insane for trying to understand this thing? wtf

they live in a universe that is moored on "facts" that aren't

i mean, that's what i get from the near-ritual mentions of jayson blair and stephen glass, the john lewis racist threat evidence controversy, and the "crimes" of cnn -- it's like they're telling each other a story, all the time, except they're living in it too

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." Aldous Huxley

again this is one of those things where i can't distinguish between conservatism and just basic sociopathy. if you think you're going to blow the lid off ted turner's propaganda machine with one killer prank, well ok... but do you really think the seduction of a cnn anchor is going to work? the whole plan hinges on it! it's like a player's manual written by a 12 year old.

totally loving how convinced the kid is that boudreau was trying to seduce HIM.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/29/okeefe.cnn.prank/index.html

The document discusses the potential fallout from the operation.

"If they pursue this as you are a creep, you should play it up with them initially only to reveal that the tape was made beforehand confirming this was a gag," the document states. "If they [CNN] admit it was a gag, you should release the footage and focus on the fact they got punked, and make sure to emphasize Abbie's name and overall status to help burden her career with this video, incident and her bad judgment in pursuing you so aggressively."

Finally, "if they go on the attack, you should point out the hypocrisy in CNN using the inherent sexuality of these women to sell viewers and for ratings, passing up more esteemed and respectable journalists who aren't bubble-headed bleach blondes and keep the focus on CNN."

here's where i post a hundred thousand megyyyn kelly jpgs

the jon lewis / audio spoofing thing in that document is just weird

and there is something horrible and unsettling about this guy wanting to portray hypersexual "characters" (lol pimp) despite being totally & painfully clueless about sex

we're totally gonna GET this FUCKING BITCH it's gonna be AWESOME

here's where i post a hundred thousand megyyyn kelly jpgs

Is this the Fox lady graduate of Stanford who Jon Stewart Lampooned for playing dumb?

yup!

... followed by another hundred thousand of gretchen carlson

gretchen carlson is the stanford grad who stewart lampooned for playing dumb

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/okeefe02.jpg

apparently CNN has withheld portions of that document that were more explicit -- really curious as to what's in there, tho i understand holding back on them in the interest of not exploiting their own reporter here -- tho i just want these clowns to be outed & shamed as the twisted misogynist bullies they truly are. sexual harassment as journalistic activism, what a world.

Supreme Court won’t hear appeal from ACORN

The Supreme Court isn’t going to listen to ACORN argue that they really should be eligible for federal funding.
The high court announced Monday that it will not take up an appeal from the liberal activist organization, mired in scandal, after being banned by Congress last year from receiving federal dollars, the Associated Press reported.
ACORN — or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — lost federal funding after allegations of fraud and partisan activity. Conservative provocateur James O’Keefe helped bring down the organization with a series of sting videos.

This unprofessional twerp is at it again.

James O'Keefe's latest target medicaid.

His partner is a "pro-life activist". Good luck in your quest for objectivity, mister.

This guy and Breitbart should be fed to starving dogs.

If you want to be taken seriously get a decent suit and a haircut. I mean, clean yourself up. You have every right to your politics, it's just the way people accept any manner of "journalism" just because it is supporting their "team".

These people make Ronald Reagan look good, they are so sloppy.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2012/02/james-okeefe-sues-keith-olbermann-and-pals/49318/