Child Sex Trafficking Is Not A Partisan Issue

The sexual exploitation of children is intolerable.  This is a moral absolute from which there can be no deviation.  Right, left, and center, we know this to be true.

So when a pair of young muckrakers recorded several employees of the tax-subsidized organization ACORN offering advice to help facilitate child prostitution, it was clearly as newsworthy as it was despicable.  However, most national media outlets ignored this outrage when the story broke on September 10, 2009.

Posing as a pimp and prostitute trying to set up a child sex slavery operation, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles visited five ACORN offices.  During each encounter, they sought guidance on how to obtain financing for a brothel that would house a dozen or so underage girls smuggled in from El Salvador. On at least two or three occasions, Giles mentioned she was in danger from an abusive ex-pimp.

At all five offices, ACORN staff counseled the pair on a combination of tax evasion, money laundering, staying under law enforcement radar, welfare fraud, and human trafficking.  One employee in Baltimore even recommended they claim some of the child sex slaves as dependents.  “Honesty is not going to get you the house,” advised another in Brooklyn.

Yes, this is the story that most mainstream media outlets refused to cover as it unfolded over the past week.

If not for relentless airing on Fox News, promotion on the Drudge Report, and viral duplication on the right side of the blogosphere, the damning videos released by Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government might not have received wider circulation than any fleeting Internet meme. Fortunately politicians took notice and quickly moved to defund ACORN, the recipient of at least $53 million in federal funds since 1994.

The mainstream media was finally forced to acknowledge the story, but initially did so with headlines like “Census Bureau Drops Acorn From 2010 Effort” and my personal favorite from Reuters, “U.S. Senate Denies Funds For Poverty Group.”  To call that burying the lede would be fantastically inadequate.

Then the usual media suspects moved on to playing the blame game. Five days after the release of the first video, the New York Times published Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn, its first original reporting on the scandal.  MSNBC ran a segment called “Nuts vs. ACORN.”

Eventually even network television had to admit there was a story.  Katie Couric led the national evening news anchors with her broadcast on Tuesday, September 15.  NBC’s Meredith Vieira reported the story on Wednesday morning, and after laughing the story off as something better left “to the cables,” ABC World News anchor Charlie Gibson finally aired the story Wednesday evening.  His broadcast followed a denouncement of the ACORN staffers by the White House.

Why the delay?  Simple. Liberal reporters and producers were unable to ferret out an angle that could exonerate ACORN from culpability.  They were stymied.  The established media narrative demands ACORN be portrayed as a group of valiant crusaders against poverty.  They’re to be hailed as noble community organizers under unfair scrutiny by a racist right wing attack machine.

Even the latest video of a San Diego ACORN employee offering assistance with smuggling child prostitutes into the country hasn’t derailed that narrative.  Because the ACORN sting was the brainchild of conservative activists it is considered inherently flawed, unworthy of serious investigation.

BigGovernment.com has released devastating videos of ACORN employees offering to abet child prostitution in five cities – Baltimore, New York, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Washington, D.C. – and more are reportedly on the way.  The indecency in these videos is not a fluke.

ACORN doesn’t have just a few bad apples, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested. Incriminating videos have implicated nine employees. If ACORN Housing employs 250, as ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis attests, then we have at least 3.6 percent of the ACORN Housing workforce willing to help facilitate a child prostitution ring. Even if we include all 750 full- and part-time ACORN staffers, nine rotten apples would be a noteworthy 1.2 percent of the paid ACORN workforce.  And it may well be that we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

It is by the grace of public funding that ACORN’s doors stay open.  An estimated 40 percent of ACORN funding comes from government sources, enough that taxpayers have a right and an obligation to demand transparency, accountability, and rigorous oversight.  Both houses of Congress agree, and voted this week to bar ACORN from access to federal money.  Several states followed suit, withdrawing funds and launching investigations into the group’s practices.

At best, ACORN is an organization with a toxic corporate culture that attracts or fosters morally reprehensible behavior.  At worst, it is as corrupt and contemptible as ongoing allegations of widespread voter registration fraud, tax code violations, and contribution fraud would suggest.

Lashing out at everyone from the filmmakers to George Bush, Karl Rove, and the right in general will not make this scandal disappear.  And neither will shameful incidents of media malpractice, feminist silence, and false equivalencies from the liberal blogosphere.  Any degree of support for child sex slavery is indefensible. Period.

Perhaps I should have titled this piece, “Child Sex Trafficking Shouldn’t Be A Partisan Issue.”  It shouldn’t be, and yet, for some, it’s acceptable to look the other way when it threatens to undermine a liberal organization.

Published by Jenn Q. Public on September 18, 2009 at 6:05 am

Filed Under Corruption, Liberal Absurdity, Media Bias

Comments

5 Responses to “Child Sex Trafficking Is Not A Partisan Issue”

  1. Janis on September 18th, 2009 7:30 pm

    You’d think a “black” president would leap to make a teachable moment out of the tacit enabling of SLAVERY.

    I guess it’s not SLAVERY if it’s just girls, though.

  2. PatrickKelley on September 19th, 2009 12:27 am

    “Why the delay? Simple. Liberal reporters and producers were unable to ferret out an angle that could exonerate ACORN from culpability. They were stymied. The established media narrative demands ACORN be portrayed as a group of valiant crusaders against poverty. They’re to be hailed as noble community organizers under unfair scrutiny by a racist right wing attack machine.”

    I think another likely explanation was they wanted to give the White House time to come up with a plausible response which of course exonerated Obama from any complicity, and also to give him time to come up with an appropriate reaction and rebuke, one which would serve to satisfy the right while not alienating his liberal base.

    The idea that he might have worried about offending the Left, if that turns out to be the case, tells you all you need to know about the Left, and about Obama.

  3. Eclectic Radical on September 19th, 2009 4:29 am

    ‘I think another likely explanation was they wanted to give the White House time to come up with a plausible response which of course exonerated Obama from any complicity…’

    This is a pretty inane statement. Even if you accept highly edited video from a sting carried about by political activists with partisan motives as entirely valid, the notion of the White House being ‘complicit’ with the activities of a single immigration lawyer in San Diego is pretty silly. Almost as silly as proposing that the media would hold a story because they wanted to give a president time to come up with a response. The American news media? That’s a pretty wide reach.

    Responsible journalism (something we see very little of from any segment of the mainstream media these days) requires time to examine material and verify sources and authenticity before running a story based on said material. While I doubt our media today is very concerned with responsible journalism, third party material is still generally examined very closely and the third party submitting it researched a bit before the material is run.

    On the merits of the material itself, the video uses the documentary style of Bill Maher and Ben Stein. It’s not serious investigative journalism and has obviously been highly edited, with the narration of the ‘journalists’ filling in the blanks the editing doesn’t show us. This kind of clear manipulation of the material, combined with the partisan agenda of the ‘journalists’ in question, creates a lot of reason for legitimate questions about its validity. It’s not about whether or not they are conservative, the agenda matters less than the fact that there IS an agenda.

    A good parallel is Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko.’ Moore’s agenda clearly colors the work and his presentation of facts is selective, designed to support his argument. Regardless of one’s position on health care reform, or one’s agreement with Moore’s positions, one cal tell the material is not genuine documentary but propaganda to sell Moore’s argument simply by watching.

    This ‘sting’ is much like that, only of much lower standard. Which is why I mention Maher and Stein. It’s very easy to stage an ambush interview and make someone look stupid, criminal, or anything else you want with careful editing.

  4. In defense of the indefensible « The Truth in Black and Right on September 29th, 2009 6:36 pm

    […] ACORN’s enablement of child trafficking, this is NOT a partisan issue ACORN is an organization with a toxic corporate culture that attracts or fosters morally […]

  5. Jon Stewart Beats Up Elite Media for Lack of Acorn Coverage. - The NeoSexist on October 15th, 2009 12:05 pm

    […] Jon Stewart Beats Up Elite Media for Lack of Acorn Coverage. Sep.16, 2009 in media Notice how the audience doesn’t really no how to react with out the usual Pavlovian cues designed to make conservatives look stupid. Of course, even John Stewart understands that Child Sex Trafficking Is Not A Partisan Issue. […]

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