Glenn Beck
They say you know you’re over the target when you’re drawing flak.
Last week, the George Soros-funded, self-styled media watchdog group Media Matters for America sent out an urgent fund raising email, which read in part:
The conservative media has a hit list, and, as you know, ACORN is its most recent target. Right-wing talkers like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity aren't going to give up on their own. That's why we have to fight them at every turn, exposing the profound hypocrisy and total lack of journalistic standards that define their so-called reporting.
We need your support to keep up the fight (...) In a new study released yesterday, Media Matters for America methodically exposes how both Beck and Hannity have spent years obsessively attacking ACORN under the guise of exposing corruption at an organization that receives government funding.
The email contrasts the amount of coverage Hannity and Beck have devoted to ACORN maleficience to the number of reports they've done about favored leftwing whipping boys Blackwater, Halliburton, and Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR).
Media Matters calls this imbalance of coverage "hypocrisy" (the only "sin" many leftists acknowledge) three times in this message, before asking for donations to fight it:
Please consider making a donation to our efforts today, and we will put every cent of your contribution toward fighting the rampant conservative misinformation in the media. We cannot let these extreme conservative media figures get away with this kind of hypocrisy. Please help us continue to fight back against agenda-driven "journalism" bent on propagating misinformation from the conservative echo chamber to the mainstream media.
What stands out most in the Media Matters fundraising email is its tone of flop-sweat desperation. Code Pink and the leftist blogs spent years trying to get ordinary citizens to care about those supposedly sinister boogeymen Halliburton and Blackwater, without success.
Then along comes Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, not to mention a pair of intrepid guerrila filmmakers, and within a few weeks, the whole country's talking about ACORN. (When the name of a once-obscure "social justice" coalition becomes a Jay Leno punchline, you know the issue has filtered down to the masses.)
But speaking of "hypocrisy," isn't it telling that Media Matters insists again and again that ACORN is a benevolent organization that should be immune from scrutiny? Apparently, the "feminists" at Media Matters missed the parts in the undercover video where ACORN employees matter of factly approved of, and offered to subsidize, the child sex-trade. Are female employees at Media Matters (assuming they have any) merely, well, hypocrites? Or are they (to use another beloved leftist smear) "sell outs"? I guess if you agree with those videotaped ACORN employees that there's nothing wrong with prostitution... aw, skip it.
What has Media Matters worried isn't that a dearth of tedious stories about Halliburton has somehow damaged the body politic. We all know what's really got them worried: the tangled ACORN web is being publicly unraveled, exposing to derision (and possible legal action) the entire leftist coalition of guilty white millionaires, radical "social activists" and other busybodies, and most of all, the unions.
One union in particular: When they aren't beating up black men at townhalls, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) staffers are busily filtering your tax dollars, through ACORN, to various political causes.
As Kathleen Parker explains in the Washington Post:
You also don't talk about either organization without mention of Wade Rathke, co-founder of ACORN and founder of SEIU Local 100 in New Orleans. Rathke, who resigned from ACORN last year as "chief organizer" after it became known that his brother embezzled almost $1 million from the association, continues to run Local 100, as well as ACORN International, recently renamed Community Organizations International. (...)
ACORN under Rathke created SEIU Local 100 (Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas) and SEIU Local 880 (Illinois, Indiana and Kansas). In turn, the SEIU wrote checks to ACORN for political activities and union organizing, according to ACORN whistle-blower affidavits. In 2008, the SEIU and Change to Win, a coalition of labor unions, gave ACORN $1,729,462, according to union financial reports filed with the Labor Department.
Maybe the next begging letter will compare the amount of mainstream media coverage that that union-thug beating of Kenneth Gladney received with that devoted to, say, the notorious murder of another African-American man, James Byrd. Just a thought.
Comments
Kathy,
It always amazes me that the left has no shame and so little insight into what makes for a great organization. It's laughable that they are calling conservatives hypocrites, given their long track record of hypocrisy.
President Obama is a prime example: "no negotiations with drug companies" - BROKEN; "Minimum of 5 days to read the bills before passing" - BROKEN; "stop reckless spending and balance the budget" - BROKEN and the biggest hypocrisy of all, that they are the party of CHOICE! They even shut down private charter schools that work!
I worked as a courier in DC for 2 years back in the mid-80's and I was always appalled at the contrast between delivering to a real business and delivering to government offices. That government employees are lazy and non-productive would be an understatement. Now Obama & his socialist CZARS are stealing the wealth of future generations to produce more fat, lazy, non-productive government employees.. and that really galls me!
Eventually you'll have to find something else to get your knickers in a wad, you know, but for the moment ACORN does just nicely.
Of course, mix it up with the "...self-styled media watchdog group Media Matters for America..." and it's a winning formula. Except you have yet to tell us who styled you.
Once again, true to form, you don't provide your gentle readers with access to the source document that's got you so upset, no surprise there. I would be surprised, if I had a copy, to learn that Media Matters insists that "...ACORN is a benevolent organization that should be immune from scrutiny..." Quite surprised, indeed.
With respect to Blackwater, Halliburton, and Kellogg, Brown, and Root, I suppose you've missed Rachel Maddow's reportage on the real issue: Congress' attempts to defund ACORN specifically. Since she's a self-styled lesbian, I assume you won't watch her because you're afraid of getting the gay.
Kathy, why is it that guys like Beck and Hannity are often attacked but never debated point by point? I always see them attacked with hate speech, called names, etc. but never do I see a real discussion of their ideas and opinions. Are they SO CORRECT that all the left can muster is school yard insults? Calling them names doesn't tend sway my opinions, it only reinforces my opinion of their detractors.
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