ACORN story grows in status

San Antonio - The Express-News is now fully immersed in the ACORN story, or at least the pimp and prostitute part of it. The story went from a national brief on Sept. 11 to Page 14A last Tuesday, to 7A on Wednesday to 2A Thursday — and would have been on Page 1 had local TV icon Chris Marrou not picked the day before to announce his retirement from KENS-TV.

The question is, does it deserve Page 1 status, as scores of you — many proudly identifying yourselves as members of the anti-big government San Antonio Tea Party — have said? I remain skeptical, but pat yourselves on the back, tea-sippers, you got our attention.

I was glad to see that our man in Washington, Gary Martin, did the 2A story. His comprehensive piece educated readers who didn't know what Fox News and Rush Limbaugh had been reporting for some time. His update reported local Republican Congressman Lamar Smith wants the FBI to investigate ACORN and Martin explained the anti-poverty group's activities in Texas. Essentially, it shed light on a story that already had lots of heat.

There are really two main allegations against ACORN: 1. Voter-registration fraud by its workers in three states and; 2. The ludicrous case of workers in several East Coast offices counseling a couple, posing as a prostitute and her pimp, on how to set up a whorehouse, bring in underage girls from El Salvador to work it and avoid paying taxes on the enterprise.

It was the latter, not the former, news that moved the ACORN story from brief to near Front Page — that and the prodding by local readers.

On that topic, some of you have called me “ignorant,” lazy, a lousy newsman, a “smiling jackal” and an anus (that isn't the exact noun). You could be right on all counts, but I don't believe the voter registration story is major news here. If the alleged fraud happened in South Texas, yes, but the indictments of ACORN workers in Ohio, Colorado and Pennsylvania aren't of high dudgeon, I think, in South Texas.

There's another side to this commotion. Limbaugh has been telling listeners on the hundreds of U.S. radio stations that carry his show for months that ACORN helped Barack Obama steal the 2008 election and the relationship, once fully exposed, will bring down the presidency.

To Limbaugh's credit, he put a focus on ACORN, moving: 1. The Census Bureau to announce it won't use ACORN workers in the 2010 census and; 2. Congress to cut the flow of federal dollars to the nonprofit.

In chiding the Express-News for not fully embracing this story, many of you have made it clear that ACORN is rotten to the core, yet the evidence to date indicates only that there are some bad apples.

One gentleman claimed our reticence in tackling ACORN somehow violated our First Amendment rights. Well, that's notexactly what the First Amendment says, but while we're talking about the Constitution, the Sixth Amendment is pretty clear about ensuring a person's right to a fair trial.

I think — and this is clearly my opinion, not that of the Express-News or any of its editors — that one reason this story stayed on the back burner till now is that Limbaugh has been so partisan and biased in presenting it. If he's right, and his dream of bringing down Obama comes true, I'll eat crow.

Remember, Watergate began as a short burglary story that few cared about until Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein got their arms around it. This isn't Watergate, at least not yet.

Here was my e-mail to Mr. Richter:

Mr. Richter,

There are several issues I must raise, if not for your edification, then at least for my conscience.

First, the ACORN story concerning voter fraud is a major news story. A federally funded (at least in part) community organization that has been accused by whistleblowers in participating in falsifying voter information and in facilitating false votes in a federal election. Since the people of San Antonio are indeed affected by a federal election, this directly affects them.

Second, the “ludicrous” story of the pimp and prostitute is not just contained to “several East Coast offices”. As of date there are tapes out of Brooklyn, the District of Columbia, and Baltimore, true. But last week there were also tapes out of San Fransisco and San Diego. So I guess we can say “several East Coast and West Coast offices”. There have been promises of more videos to come. At what point does this move from a minor, growing story about localized judgements in error and become a major news story?

Could it be when ACORN has it’s federal funding cut off? Could it be when ACORN is removed from work with the U.S. Census Bureau? Could it be when ACORN is removed from work with the IRS? Could it be when ACORN shutters all of it’s loan assistant offices and starts retraining it’s people?

Funny that such a careful newsman such as yourself has completely missed all of that news. Or is there another explanation?

Third, you claim that Rush Limbaugh is the reason for your reticence to move forward on this story, but again a careful newsman such as yourself must surely know that Andrew Breitbart is the source for these new stories (i.e. the pimp and prostitute videos). Surely you would know who Breitbart is, wouldn’t you?

The biggest reason I write today is to allow you to reflect on what you, your newspaper, and the mainstream media as a whole view as their roles today. There is a phrase called “the fourth estate” that is used as a term for the media. In case you never learned the source of this nickname, let me educate you.

In the medieval period there arose a classification of society in terms of “estate”, or a belonging to a purpose. The first estate was the Church, whose purpose was to protect the souls of the culture. The second estate was the Nobility, whose purpose was to protect the physical bodies of the culture, the third estate was the Peasant, whose purpose was to provide all material needs of the culture.

The media became known as “the fourth estate” in the early 19th century. It was determined that a free and open press would provide society with a check against the power of the first and second estates. As the first estate grew increasingly weak in terms of power, the press had a growing responsibility to keep a balance against the growing power of the second estate.

The period of American yellow journalism in the latter half of the 19th century created a dual system of journalism, with each side doing it’s job to keep the opposing political party in check. Each major town had a Democrat and Republican paper.

But yellow journalism was decried as mean spirited, slanted and corrupt. The fourth estate needed cleaning up. Objectivity became the new keyword. And soon, competing papers started becoming mirror images of each others. Sure, there are still a few major cities with several newspapers, but most cities (and almost all towns) are down to one major newspaper.

The responsibility of that single major newspaper is to carry the entire burden of the fourth estate.

ACORN recieves millions in federal funding. ACORN is under investigation for federal vote fraud. ACORN has been stung by real journalists (like those pamphlateers who risked their lives printing pro-liberty materials in the 1770’s) showing that they will go out of their way to provide financial assistance for those wanting to establish a slave trade using underage girls. And yet ACORN has been ignored by the mainstream press.

When will the mainstream press take up the mantle of the fourth estate and start keeping the second estate in check, regardless of which party is in power? Will it start with you Mr. Richter?

If not, then if President Obama is brought down by ACORN and their scandels, I would hope you would do more than eat crow. If you turned your eyes away from a story this big, and you refused to do your duty as a member of the fourth estate, then I hope you would have the shame to resign.

ASBoethius

According to a Dec. 25 report in the Boston Globe, the Democratic Party is joining forces with the activist group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to place initiatives on state ballots this fall to raise the minimum wage. The idea is to energize the poor to vote for Democratic candidates as well as the initiative.
ACORN's involvement in this campaign is amusing because a few years ago the group sued the state of California in order to be exempted from its minimum wage requirement, which was higher than the federal government's. In its appellate brief, ACORN acknowledged that the more it had to pay each worker, the fewer such workers it would be able to hire. Of course, the same thing is true for businesses as well, something minimum wage advocates refuse to admit.
Furthermore, ACORN argued that paying its workers less than the minimum wage aided its organizing efforts. Said the brief, "A person paid limited sums of money will be in a better position to empathize with and relate to the low and moderate membership and constituency of ACORN." Somehow I doubt that a business catering to those with low incomes would get any sympathy from ACORN if it made the same argument.

Indeed, ACORN has a history of denying its workers rights that it demands from corporations. For example, its "People's Platform" says that all workers have the right to organize. Yet, when its own workers have tried to do so, ACORN strenuously fought them.....read more....

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/jan/03/20060103-093213-4084r/

Re: ...would have been on Page 1 had local TV icon Chris Marrou not picked the day before to announce his retirement from KENS-TV

Gadzooks! I feel like Scrooge with one of his ghost from days past saying "Hi!"

Honey over gravel voiced Chris Marrou and I go back a ways. Back to the early 1970s and Peggy Taylor Talent in Dallas back when it was Big D. Chris and I were starving actors who just knew it was only a matter of time before we would be major movie stars!

I recall the night we went to a local park for some World War Two action photos. I was in the American GI fatigues and Chris was dressed in the Nazi uniform. We were using the strobes to make it look like artillery fire when we heard the put-put of a gas powered golf cart. And up came a guy driving one. He looked at us and them just turned around and left. We gathered up our gear and vamoosed.

Later, we laughed at how he must have thought he'd come up a time warp. If one were to look on my homepage at http://www.freerepublic.com/~bender2/ down near the end would be a photo of me in the Nazi uniform Chris was wearing that night.

It is fun to recall those crazy years back when Chris and I were invincible and just knew we would be the next Steve McQueen or Paul Newman.

Silly of course, but who better to believe in nonsense than those who strive for the stars. Glad to know one of us actaully got into orbit.

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