Yes, that’s all true.
And…?
Just popping in… why is Moore relevant to the Acorn Pimp story? In fifty words or less, please.
That you intellect is not capable? Do tell… 
I guess you are smart enough to notice that nowhere in any documentary by Moore you would see such an example of mendacity, and that is why you are incapable of consider it a telling difference.
Because Bricker is a lying, piece of shit coward that wants to bog down with unthinking chaff anything that even suggests that his side isn’t correct.
I should mention that Bricker doesn’t want to be right. He wants to throw up useless unrelated shit to *seem *right. Is there a word for that?
Well now that’s not nice. I don’t believe he’s lied.
Me, I always picture some guy in an super-fancy, ultra-modern chair, stroking a cat in his lap with too much white hair and a snotty attitude. Got a live goldfish in his fingers, and the goldfish is screaming "Ohhh, SHIIIIT!".
I find that when a poster resorts to the “You’re too stupid to understand my superior argument” gambit, or the “I was president of my debate club in high school” twist, that means that the discussion has been totally Rand Rovered, and is pretty much over.
And what do you find when someone else, someone arguing your side, actually DOES understand the argument, and responds to it, and I acknowledge that they understood and responded to it?
Your inference here is that “You don’t understand my argument,” is an attempt to defend an argument that doesn’t really exist, that your understanding isn’t at fault.
But when you see someone else make somewhat lengthy post addressing the mysterious, faux argument, in some detail, and I respond to that person and say, “Well, that’s a good point. I am forced to agree,” what do you imagine is going on there?
I imagine you chuckling over how easy it is to divert the thread away from O’Keefe and on to Moore.
I see many others agreeing with me that your “argument” is merely a diversionary tactic. I see you ignoring others that say that it would not matter if Moore was a dishonest hack; the point here is that O’Keefe is a lying, idiotic seeker of personal fame, who dubbed dialog and visual images into a video to emphasize that low-level workers were engaging in poor work practices. He did this in order to destroy an organization that was registering voters who some were afraid would vote for the “wrong” party. He subsequently was caught trying to sneak into a government building under false pretenses, in order to (presumably) dig up some dirt on a politician that was in the “wrong” party.
You have given up trying to defend the subject of the OP, and are trying to make this thread about the defense of someone else.
The last gasp of this attempt is insulting those who don’t go along with your diversion.
Bricker: I think there are some serious flaws in the tack you’ve taken in this thread, which are summed up in my pit thread on the general topic.
But some specific comments about this situation:
(1) You keep going on and on about liberals not criticizing Moore. Whereas, in fact, in the pit thread started precisely to see if liberals would criticize Moore, a preponderance of liberals DID criticize Moore. Now, there were arguments about particular scenes and instances, but that argument wasn’t “Moore is a saint” vs. “Moore is a devil”, it was more along the lines of “That scene was deceptively edited, which I wish Moore wouldn’t do because it weakens his point and is generally poor form, but it’s pretty irrelevant in that case because…” vs. “That scene was deceptively edited, and that is awful and dishonest and Moore is a liar end of story” or something like that. You also seem to have more or less abandoned that thread, and totally failed to acknowledge its existence in this thread.
(2) Your attitude has been extraordinarily condescending… criticizing and then passing judgment on arguments made against you. It’s almost as if you were trying to teach us Socratically. It certainly makes it seem that you don’t actually really support the position you’re nominally taking, but don’t want to abandon it until someone has made an argument you deem capital-W-Worthy.
(3) As others have pointed out, you’ve totally derailed the discussion away from O’Keefe. This is what he did, and why I think it was capital-E-Evil:
(a) First, he decided that ACORN was, as a whole, a Bad Thing, and that the world would be a better place if ACORN were to suffer/get pie in its face. I guess there’s some vague possibility for honest disagreement here, but far and away the most likely way for him to come to this conclusion is to listen with no critical thought to the massive anti-ACORN right wing noise machine, which was probably the only reason he’d heard of it in the first place. Now, the left often says bad things about (not a perfect analogy) the Tea Party. Ergo, I’m not a huge fan of the Tea Party. But I’m sure as hell not going to set out on a personal mission to do it great harm without actually investigating and deciding for myself. I’m rambling here, but my point is that I strongly suspect that his dislike of ACORN came from either misinformation or blind cynical partisanship.
(b) Then he made up a fictitious crime that ACORN was about to commit. As far as we know, he had no evidence that ACORN had ever engaged in the misdeed of overlooking prostitution. This wasn’t a case of some overzealous DA planting drugs on a known drug dealer to get a conviction. He invented this out of whole cloth.
(c) Then he posed as a pimp (not wearing a pimp suit), and went around to ACORN office after ACORN office. We don’t know exactly what he said. We do know (I guess?) that many ACORN offices threw him out on the street, and at least one apparently tried to offer support to the “prostitute”. He eventually found at least one office where that did not happen, but we have never seen what actually happened. It’s possible that the employees there in fact acted wrongly and criminally. It’s also possible that they were humoring an obvious insane person, or joking, or goodness knows what.
(d) He then deceptively edited, possibly with redubbing of dialog, the one maybe-bad-apple incident, obviously made no mention at all of the many places where this did NOT happen, and released it to massive fanfare, which pretty much destroyed ACORN.
Every single step of that way is cynical, dishonest, and manipulative; and in sum I do not hesitate to call his actions evil. You’ve picked one small bit of that (deceptive editing) devoid of the surrounding context, motives, results, etc., made an analogy to Michael Moore, and then totally derailed the thread, even though it’s not at all clear what point you were trying to make. And then when people get upset at you for doing so, you’ve gotten all huffy and refused to respond to anyone who did not lay out their points in an emotionless and legalistic fashion, but it was YOU who should have had the burden of proof in the first place that your bizarre hijack was in any way appropriate.
You have acted and argued poorly in this thread.
Some questions I hope you will answer:
(1) Do you believe that O’Keefe’s actions in the ACORN situation and Michael Moore’s arguably deceptive editing of a scene where he gets a gun at a bank (as that’s the one being most discussed in the other thread) are, overall, comparable?
(2) Do you believe that liberals all like and support Michael Moore?
(3) Do you think that O’Keefe’s actions have been laudable?
(4) Do you think O’Keefe’s motives were laudable?
(5) Do you think that America is a better country with ACORN reduced to its component parts? And if so, is that simply because you now believe the Republican agenda (which you presumably support, as is your right) will be more likely to be successful?
(6) Are you proud of the way you’ve argued and the positions you’ve taken in this thread?
OK, great.
Then I guess I’ll just say, “Ha! Ha!” ACORN? Dead. NRA? Doing great!
O’Keefe did his job and crushed ACORN. And all you whiny liberals can do is whine about how eeeeevillll O’Keefe is.
That is not remotely my sentiment, mind you, but it seems to fit nicely into your narrative, and you’ve made it clear that your narrative about my argument is of far more interest to you than my actual argument.
So … happy to help. ACORN crushed like a bug. Victory for me and my lily-white companions as we sweep aside the brown people. Nothing for you to do but whine and moan. And possibly have a half-caf latte at your local coffee shop while reading Mother Jones.
ETA: this post was written before MaxtheVool’s and is not intended to respond to it at all.
Now, here is the end stage. The martyr:
“OK, fine then, I’m just a poopyhead, and I’m totally wrong, and everybody hates me. Are you happy now?”
I guess it’s better than the alternative ending we’ve all seen from others: The “I"m too busy to post, now, so I’m leaving to enjoy my fabulous life that the rest of you can only envy” gambit, followed by the “I totally owned your asses” posted in a subsequent thread.
But is it dispositive?
I know that liberals do not act monolitically. But notice your characterization: “a preponderance of liberals” did criticize him.Yes, with varying degrees of vigor. And many defend him. Because the bottom line is that it’s not the actions, it’s the results that are driving the anger. But the criticism doesn’t focus primarily on the results, but on the actions.
In other words, the vast majority of criticism against O’Keefe in this thread focuses on his deceptive tactics. But that’s not the reason for the ire. The reason for the ire is that ACORN was the target, and it got stomped as a result.
I have been nothing but respect (in the Pit, even) to those people who have responded to what I post. For drooling idiots that can only shriek, “Tu quoque,” yes, I have been condescending and arrogant.
But you’re wrong about one thing: I absolutely support the position I take, unless someone makes a valid argument against it and I have no rebuttal.
Isn’t that what EVERYONE here is supposed to be doing?
And don’t you find it unusual that I’m one of a very few actually doing it?
You have no reason to assume he didn’t look into this himself. In fact, it’s unlikely he didn’t do at least some investigation before waltzing in with a cover story that caused several ACORN office employees to respond in what ACORN itself acknowledges was an unprofessional and inappropriate manner.
And he simply got really lucky?
No, I disagree with this vision that he made it up. I think he knew, all too well, that ACORN waslikely going to be staffed with a “Help the underdog, regardless of the law” mentality. Now, you may – and probably do – believe that such an attitude is valuable, on balance. But that KIND of attitude surrounds many of the complaints about ACORN as well. “Better to submit a few questionable registrations, as long as we get people registered!” I agree that one can make a good argument that this is, on balance, the way to go… but my point in this illustration is to show that this kind of sting was not likely simply invented out of whole cloth.
It’s true that he probably didn’t have examples of mortgage and tax assistance being given to prostitution fronts. But he had plenty of generic examples of “The help to the underdog is the first priority; the compliance with the law is secondary,” type thinking.
Yes. And while all of that is possible, if we’re being honest here, what do you think probably happened? Because I think that in several offices - not all, but several – the ACORN folsk saw an underdog, and wanted to help.
Yes, true. And ACORN didn’t deserve to be destroyed.
I have laid out my point clearly, and I’ll try again. And – what’s this about “an emotionless and legalistic fashion” as a negative? The debate is IMPROVED by injecting emotion-laden histrionics into it?
The point I’m making is:
[ul]
[li]Most people here are complaining about O’Keefe’s tactics. [/li][li]Most people here don’t actually mind O’Keefe’s tactics, if they are used against a target they approve of.[/li][li]The actual complaint against O’Keefe is not his tactics, but his use of such tactics against a target they support.[/li][/ul]
How can I support this argument?
Well, one obvious way would be to find someone who uses similar tactics, but against targets that are NOT beloved by most posters here, and see if the level of criticism and vitriol leveled against that other person matches that directed against O’Keefe.
Can you think of another way to support that claim?
Kind of an unfair question. You ask me to compare one scene in a Moore movie to the entire O’Keefe production.
But I will answer. The actions themselves are comparable, but O’Keefe’s are much worse.
Now ask me about the comparison between Moore’s splicing up Charlton Heston’s speech and O’Keefe’s actions. THEY are very much the same.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Yes.
Now do me the courtesy of a few answers:
(1) Do you believe Moore’s actions in splicing up Heston’s NRA speech to completely change the meaning and context of it happened? In other words, is that a fair statement of what Moore did?
(2) If it is, can you honestly say you’d have been as angry at Moore if he managed to seriously hurt the NRA? In other words, let’s imagine that Moore was more believed, more convincing, and the release of “Bowling for Columbine” could be traced to droves of NRA members quitting. Would you be anywhere near as angry with Moore as you are now with O’keefe?
(2)(a) And again, honestly, even if you would be, do you imagine the general reaction on the left would have been anger with Moore?
I’d never even heard of ACORN before this scandal, and I’m still not entirely clear on what they do (or did), but even early on I figured O’Keefe was a jerk when unedited tapes weren’t forthcoming.
Moore is, too, but that’s an independent matter.
I assume for that to be true, his material would have had to stand up to close inspection and found to be wholly without deception or misdirection, i.e. he would have had to be telling verifiable truths about the NRA in a manner that withstood challenge and these truths (assuming such truths exist) would be damaging in the eyes of someone who was not already inclined to dislike the NRA.
So no, your “superior” intellect is not capable…
The tape from California demonstrated that O’Keefe got lucky in another state.
As an afterthought:
I vaguely recall something about ACORN not being free to pick and choose which registrations to pass along, but no matter. If this is going to be used against ACORN, then I guess it’s worth asking what is worse:
-Passing on a fake registration with a cartoony name, or
-Blocking the registration of a real person who just happens to have a cartoony name.
“Simpson” is a pretty common surname in the U.S. as I understand it. There must be a few thousand people with the given names “Abraham/Abe”, “Homer”, “Bart”, “Marge”, “Lisa”, and “Maggie” (I’d guess “Lisa” is probably the most common of these). How outraged should someone be that a tax-paying law-abiding citizen named Lisa Simpson is disenfranchised because some bureaucrat thought the name was fake (while another bureaucrat who is unfamiliar with The Simpsons would pass the name without a second thought)?
What is the cost to society of a fake registration getting through and what is the cost to an individual of being prevented from voting? Is the former significant enough to override the latter?
If I all I have done is shriek “Tu quoque” in this thread, I’ll eat my hat sir. I gave you that point of correct definition several pages ago. Yet you have been condescending and arrogant to me.
Your hysterical insistence on the accuracy of a Latin phrase aside, the point is that you have been engaging in a poor debate tactic. Finding an example of someone who makes films that attack the other “side” and trying to focus the debate on the hypocrisy of those who would attack one and not the other is disingenuous . Particularly when it has been repeatedly pointed out to you just HOW the two people are not equivalent. MOORE AND O’KEEFE ARE NOT EQUIVALENT.
Point 2 and 3 are where you fail. Nobody here approves of dubbing words into a video after the fact in a documentary (which is what O’Keefe did, and Moore does not), and as an added bonus, they do not approve of many of the tactics that Moore uses in his films. This has been pointed out by countless posters, both here and in the Michael Moore is a dishonest hack thread. Repeatedly. Disproving your points above.
As for you question about Moore. Post them in the Michael Moore is a dishonest hack thread, which was created SPECIFICALLY so that you would stop hijacking this one with your “liberals are all hypocrites” schtick.
[/QUOTE]
No.
Even when Moore is condemned, the condemnation is often tepid, and doesn’t contain nearly the vitriol that was leveled at O’Keefe. And many of the posts in that thread DEFEND Moore instead of excoriating him.