ACORN Spokesman Offers Proof ACORN is Run by Idiots.
Many of you have seen ACORN in the news recently for allegedly offering incentives to employees to sign up voters, resulting in voter registration fraud by over-zealous community organizers. (not to mention the 19,000 fake registrations, according to this Gateway Pundit article) In this great clip, Glenn Beck takes on a forgettable ACORN spokesman, who was reminding me a little bit of Nick Naylor in “Thank You for Smoking” as the chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies - They are both employed to defend the indefensible, they both really try to do their jobs properly, but they both are fighting a losing battle. In this case, the official ACORN spokesman (from here on referred to as “ACORN”) seemingly concedes that Beck’s 20+ documented cases of fraud are accurate and was actually trying to defend the organization: he was specifically referencing multiple instances in multiple states of “rogue” employees committing voter registration fraud, saying that ACORN had no knowledge of the illegal acts.
In the hilarious exchange, Beck actually comes up with a fantastic analogy that isn’t too over the top (starts at 5:20). Does anyone remember the kid who bathed in the Burger King sink on camera? What about the more recent Domino’s employees who used the pizza kitchen to add disgusting ingredients to some food? Glenn’s analogy was this: what if there had been 20 or so cases of this behavior across BKs or Dominos worldwide? Surely we wouldn’t think that the problem is the kids. It would be the management. The company. Duh. Well not so fast…
ACORN starts tap dancing and at first complains about the parallel. Then he moves on to this real gem of a defense:
“this is the analogy? … you named 20 workers out of 13 thousand… so what is the percentage?” - ACORN Spokesman
Is this guy a complete idiot? Is he saying that the management is not to blame because of the low percentage of “rogue” / “illegal” / “cheating” employees? Is this even a valid argument for a responsible company? Does this make ANY sense? Less than you might realize…
Lets do the math.
ACORN: 13,000 workers
ACORN’s “rogue” employee percentage: .15%.
Sure, that DOES seem pretty small… but is it? Lets look at these two examples:
Burger King: 41,000 workers
Dominos: 145,000 workers
How would that percentage stack up to BK and Dominos? I guess if ACORN was running a pizza joint and they had a whopping 217 employees across the company (over a period of say, 1 or 2 years) all get caught sneaking “nose berries” into customer’s food, this is what their spokesperson would say:
“Folks, yes, we have had a small percentage of rogue employees, but they are in no way reflective of our wonderful management team. The good news is that just .15% of our workers soiled your food in the last two years, which means the problem is only a few hundred rogue employees out of thousands. Rest assured that it will not happen again. We are on it. This time for reals….”
Guess what, No one would eat at Domino’s until every single corporate officer, board member, and VP was fired. Absolutely no one would think that Domino’s high school workers were solely to blame! Shareholders would laugh in the spokesman’s face as they kicked management to the curb. That’s because of a little thing called corporate responsibility. It is the reason companies and large organizations continue to work well (staying efficient, profitable, ethical, etc) even as they grow very large in size. It says one of two things about ACORN: the organization is guilty of knowingly turning a blind eye to fraud and should be shut down, or they have the worst corporate management team ever (as demonstrated by allowing illegal activities to continually happen) and they should be shut down.
How many people think that Burger King would be in business today if 67 people had been caught bathing in their sinks over the last two years? How many people think that if BK didn’t go out of business from lack of customers the FDA would have shut them down in less than 9 months, after the first 20 infractions? Of course the government would not let a company operate with such poor leadership, especially if the “rogue employees” were doing something illegal. Now, I’m not saying ACORN members or community organizers are evil (the title picture is just a joke), but there is no doubt that there are some people running ACORN with an agenda, and they let their desire to achieve that agenda compromise their ethical responsibility by offering incentives that could potentially encourage employee impropriety (which it did). All the fuzzy math and tap dancing in the world will not be able to hide that fact from the public eye.
Get real ACORN, and stop making stupid excuses.
Ok, so I know that request is unrealistic… But if you must make stupid excuses, at least back them up with semi-plausible arguments.
Unfortunately, after putting the spokesman up against the ropes, Beck completely misses the knockout punch, and simply moves on to some equally silly attack based on how many republican politicians ACORN has backed throughout history. How many democratic candidates has, oh say… James Dobson of Focus on the Family backed? Of course the answer is none, because his organization’s political ideology is closely aligned with the conservative right. Same thing goes for ACORN (with the left). I don’t care if they campaign and promote their ideas, just follow the law or suffer the consequences.
Glenn made a great point overall, but finishes it off with more arguments that just don’t make sense. (come to think of it, how many Democrats have you supported Mr. Beck?)
Good idea, but next time stick to your big guns. Common Sense is always available and free of charge, you just have to use it.
For more details on ACORN’s shady inner workings, how they are even able to endorse political candidates as a non-profit entity, and how they are structured to avoid public scrutiny please see this excellent article.
UPDATE: In a new fishy twist, Michelle Malkin is reporting that Dem John Conyers is now backing down on his pledge to investigate ACORN… something stinks!
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Related Post: Week-end Wrap-up, What you might have missed last week..
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I thought Beck handled this just fine. In fact, for Beck, this was actually a home run! He made his point.
I agree! (I just wish he would have called him out for the faulty reasoning)
Actually, I think the “how many Republicans” question had some merit. First, I have heard Dobson say nice things about Dems (though few, and any concrete example is escaping me), but he also doesn’t get billions from the government. ACORN is an organization that is supposed to be working for community good and getting paid to do it. I would view their lack of support for “common” good as a severe slap in my own taxpaying face.
Your percentage analogies were spot on. I’ll remember to use those.
One of the most interesting things I discovered in researching this article is that Focus on the Family is actually NOT allowed to endorse any candidates whatsoever as a 501(c)3 not for profit organization. All of Dobson’s endorsements have been on his own.
That made me wonder… isnt ACORN a 501(c) non profit? A quick google search for “ACORN political endorsements” shows they have endorsed a number of politicians, so how is that possible???
The last link in my post is an article that explains how ACORN gets around the 501(c) non profit laws regarding partisanship… essentially enabling them to receive government funding and tax breaks as a charity, but STILL ENDORSE political candidates!
Focus has a PAC they’ve set up… Focus on the Family Action. They can endorse through that. But yes, you’ll notice that Focus stays only on personal recommendations.
Even Action pretty much only focuses on issues. I’d have to check, but I don’t think they endorsed a lot of candidates last cycle.
I feel like I should have known that! (I was raised on Adventures in Odyssey - and have always had a lot of respect for the work Focus is doing)
Hah! Irony of ironies. Fun to read the old lies and see the mindless drones eagerly nodding as they are spoon fed what to think. ACORN has been cleared and Beck was wrong. Icing is that the O’Keefe is in the slammer right now.