Get Your Weight Up. Not Your Hate Up.

In one of the recent open threads, someone was noting  the difficulty of getting good help for community activism, in defense of ACORN. I think if we can't request that our allies not employ people who would aid and abet a prostitution scheme, if that's too onerous, than we are in trouble. I think it's very hard to defend, not simply the criminality of the ACORN workers in Baltimore (le sigh) and Washington, but their rank stupidity.

Conservative activists have been after ACORN for over a year now. Bertha Lewis notes that activists tried the same stunt several times before they got a bite. In some people's eyes this is exonerating. In my eyes it's more damning. Lewis admits ACORN was aware of the setup, and yet her people still got caught. Twice.

I am willing to be wrong on this one, but it's very hard to see how that sort of sloppiness aids poor people or progressives. It's equally hard for me to be mad at James O'Keefe. Dude is doing his job. We must do ours. Pointing out the dastardly tactics employed by our adversaries doesn't alter that reality.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2009/09/get-your-weight-up-not-your-hate-up/26647/