It was around eleven o’clock this morning that Gretchen ushered three earnest, clean-cut, very well dressed young folks into my office. “Representing the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now,” she informed me, departing my office with a wink and nod: “Cash customers. They don’t wish to leave their names.”
“No problem,” I assured my visitors, “you’re in good company. Many of my clients, from all over the world, prefer to do business with me on a cash basis. Please, make yourselves comfortable. How can I help you this morning?”
“We’re concerned,” the fetching Asian woman cooed as she perched on the far end of the couch next to her oversized tote bag, “about all those lies the conservatives are telling about us.”
“And which conservative lies,” I inquired, “might those be?”
“For starters,” the tall African American member of the trio began, “those allegations of voter fraud.”
“Yeah,” chimed in his handsome Hispanic companion, her eyes blazing with indignation, “and that stuff about us promoting prostitution, too!”
“Understood,” I replied sagely, using my best Inside the Beltway voice. “There was that business in Cleveland, back in 2008, where, it was alleged, ACORN bribed a bum with cigarettes and booze, getting him to register to vote over seventy times.”
“Yeah,” the Asian nodded with enthusiasm, “that kind of stuff.”
“And the time when ACORN registered the entire Dallas Cowboys starting lineup to vote in Texas,” I added. “Not to mention allegations of ACORN registering children in Bridgeport, Connecticut; charges that ACORN hired convicted felons to register voters in Milwaukee; ACORN caught registering thousands of voters with names like ‘Phil McCrackin,’ ‘I.P. Standing,’ ‘Amanda Hugginkiss,’ ‘Windy Kuntz,’ ‘Charles Ulysses Farley,’ ‘Hans Delving’ and ‘Otto Titslinger’ in Indiana…”
“All lies!” my guests interjected, practically in unison.
“You can’t possibly believe stories like that, can you?” the Hispanic woman demanded. “ACORN was founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke, a founding member of the Students for a Democratic Society, and Gary Delgado, who’s the current scholar in residence at the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California at Berkeley.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “that’s true, but it’s not like they personally interview everybody who gets a job with ACORN, is it?”
“No,” the African American conceded, “of course not. They couldn’t possibly vouch for the integrity of everyone who works for their organization. But they set the standards!”
“And I set the thermostat,” I pointed out, “and then somebody else comes along and changes it.”
“So you actually believe that… transparent Nazi propaganda,” the Hispanic implored, “that people like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs spout about ACORN?”
“I believe,” I clarified, “that it’s just as easy for a Democrat to bribe bums with wine, dragoon children, stuff ballot boxes, make up fictional registrants and collect votes off grave stones in the local cemetery as it is for a Republican; and, what’s more, both parties have been doing it way too long. I say, start putting people who break election laws in prison for life without parole! That’ll nail some sense into their granite noggins, if anything will!”
“But Mr. Collins,” the Asian protested, “isn’t it a fact that your World Wide Web Log has an extremely liberal point of view? How could somebody who reviles the George W. Bush administration the way you do think that Democrats can behave just as badly, if not worse, than Republicans do?”
“All you have to do to realize that, young lady,” I advised, “is read the news every day for a couple of decades and think about what it says. Frankly, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out that half of the ACORN voter registration fraud stories are scurrilous Republican lies while the other half are Gospel truth. But on the other side of the coin, look at what the Republicans did during the 2004 presidential election! They mailed bogus absentee ballots to registered Democrats, trying to trick them into thinking they had already voted, when, in fact, the Republican fanatics who did that just burned all of them instead. Then, two days before the election, Republican criminal politics squads sent out forged letters to registered Democrats, telling them that their polling place had changed, that the election would be postponed until the day after the actual date, or both! And on Election Day itself, covert Republican IT operatives broke into Ohio’s electronic voting system and changed the totals from Kerry to Bush, and what’s more, I could go on like that for about fifteen minutes if I thought it would serve any useful purpose, which it wouldn’t, since any fool can see I’ve made my point, which happens to be that there’s more than enough scum bags to go around – on both sides of the Great American Political Divide! And you know what I say about all that? I say anybody who seeks to subvert the process of free and fair elections in the United States of America is as big a threat to our society as any foreign terrorist, and should be dealt with accordingly, no matter what political cause their demented brains convince them they serve!”
“Ah, yeah, well, okay,” the African American relented. “We understand. You figure ACORN isn’t any worse than any other Democratic organization when it comes to voter fraud.”
“I will thank you sir,” I admonished him, “not to put words in my mouth.”
“Oh, no, no,” his Hispanic companion insisted, throwing her companions an anxious look, “that’s not what he meant at all!”
“Darn tootin’,” I insisted. “If I said anything like that, I said ACORN isn’t any worse than any other Republican organization when it comes to voter fraud.”
“Okay,” the Asian offered, “how about we forget the voter registration thing. It’s ancient history anyway, isn’t it?” With that, she shot both of her colleagues her own meaningful look, to which they reacted with solemn nods, followed by imploring stares directed at me.
“She’s right,” the Hispanic lady boldly ventured. “What we really need your advice about is what the public is concerned with at this very moment – the prostitution thing.”
“Well,” I observed, “by now, everybody’s seen the videos…”
“They were edited,” the Asian lady earnestly interjected. “The conservative activists cut the originals so you couldn’t see the other things those ACORN employees said!”
“That they were quoted out of context is a common cry among people caught saying embarrassing things on video,” I dryly pointed out. “I’ve carefully watched the unedited videos, and it’s pretty obvious that your colleagues are either remarkably gullible, remarkably stupid, or both. In the Nevin Street, Brooklyn, New York tape, the conservative activist allegedly posing as an aspiring politician tells Volda Albert, the ACORN Housing Coordinator, ‘Eden is in a unique line of work.’ Then the conservative activist allegedly posing as a prostitute says ‘It’s a sensitive client base – male clients.’ And what does Ms. Albert do? Jump to conclusions, that’s what. Does she say ‘Oh, I see, you’re a massage therapist or a personal trainer who specializes in men, or perhaps a dominatrix,’ or something like that? No, she leaps right in like a complete moron, doesn’t she? She says ‘Okay, day one, you earn X amount of dollars; find another name.’ And of course, when the guy pretending to be a politician prompts her with ‘Find another name for…’ what does Ms. Albert say? She says ‘… and don’t say that you’re a prostituting or whatever.’ To which the guy replies ‘Well, what do you recommend we say? That’s what we’ve been struggling with – don’t say we’re a prostitute, what are we going to call it? I… I don’t know what to call it… she walks into an office like this and as you can see, it’s not very classy; it’s not a good thing to be around.’ And what does Ms. Albert say? She says ‘Good, well, when she comes back the next time, she can wear a skirt.’ And then, she starts talking about prostitution with them like it’s urban organic farming or something. It’s absurd, really. Where does it say in the ACORN charter that your organization exists to give people advice on euphemisms for illegal activities?”
“Why nowhere,” the African American gentleman shot back, just shy of a shout.
“That was,” I slowly explained, “what is known as a ‘rhetorical question.’”
“Oh,” he muttered sheepishly, “does that mean it’s not like a regular question?”
“Yes,” I affirmed, “it does. So then, Ms. Albert goes on, and on, and on, and you can see, watching that video, that she honestly and sincerely wants to provide these people she thinks are going to open a house of prostitution featuring underage illegal immigrant El Salvadoran girls with some innovative housing and small business solutions. I mean really, she totally gets into it, to the point where she says ‘She can transfer it,’ by which she means the money earned from child prostitution, ‘to somebody else… who is not in that business, and then they can transfer it to you, or transfer it to your Mom.’ Here’s an ACORN employee advising people on how to set up a money laundering conspiracy in order to establish a continuing criminal enterprise as defined in the federal RICO statutes! Sure, the other videos, the ones that have obviously been edited for the Internet or TV, of course you could claim that about them, but that Brooklyn video, in its raw, uncut version, is just about all that’s required to shut down your organization. The fact that even one of your employees could behave like that…”
“But we came to you for help,” the Asian lady wailed disconsolately, “and all you’ve done so far is tell us ACORN is finished!”
“Not necessarily finished,” I cautioned. “Not by a long shot, actually. There are plenty of things ACORN can do to redeem itself as an organization.”
“Right,” the African American gentleman agreed, “and that’s exactly why we’re here, paying your outrageous hourly consultation rates, isn’t it, to hear what the smartest person inside the Beltway has in the way of just such plans, solutions, paradigm shifts and recommendations?”
“Sure, but don’t forget,” I noted, “that being the smartest person inside the Beltway is a lot like being the tallest building in Baltimore.”
A truly pregnant pause ensued as my three visitors attempted to parse that remark. Now, there are pregnant pauses – and there are pregnant pauses. There is the pregnancy of the hazel dormouse and there is the pregnancy of the elephant. This pause was definitely worthy of parturition upon the plains of the Serengeti, where, last time I checked no hazel dormouse lives. It was a pause, as a matter of fact, sufficiently long and silent as to lend a great deal of undeserved drama and grandeur to the arrival of my sub-contracted private detective agency’s ever-so-discreet minions.
Because Gretchen had responded immediately to the Instant Message I had typed on my desktop computer keyboard while pretending to take notes on my visitors’ comments some ten minutes before, and summoned them promptly, Ralph Lauren suits, Kenneth Cole sunglasses, Burberry trench coats, Sig Sauer nine-millimeters and all.
Because this sure as hell ain’t the ACORN offices, and not only is my workplace space completely shut down to EM intrusion by a very sophisticated, not to mention expensive Faraday cage, inside, it’s chock-a-block with state-of-the-art gadget detectors. And Jesus, Mary and Joseph were these kids packing.
The Asian lady not only had a digital video camera in her tote bag, she had a Blackberry in her suit jacket with sound recording running. The Hispanic woman had a pinhole camera mounted in her hat, which, by the way, didn’t match her dress – a dead giveaway that something was rotten in Denmark, or, at least downtown DC; plus she had a microphone hidden in her brooch, a cloisonné monarch butterfly. But what took the cake, no doubt about it, was the African American gentleman, who, in addition to no less than three concealed microphones, not only had a pinhole video camera in his horn-rim glasses – he had one in his bow tie. Imagine that – a bow tie! And I wasn’t supposed to suspect a thing, no sir! Now tell me, how dumb can conservatives get?
Sure, they argued with the detectives, but they didn’t go anywhere – private security guards (which is, technically what my private detective squad was, not that I’d ever call them that) have the legal right to hold criminals caught in the act (which is exactly what these punk conservative fools were) until the real police arrive.
Because, you see, it’s illegal to make video recordings of someone in the District of Columbia without their permission. Yeah, they shook in their boots for a while, until I offered them a deal – let my private detectives strip search them and keep whatever they find, and they can put their clothes back on and hit the bricks. I would keep their money, of course.
What could they say? After all, I had them by the short hairs. Yeah, on the whole, it was a pretty damn good day.