What they may not realize is that there are in a Catch-22 situation of their own making. The timing of Anita Hill’s accusations made the public suspicious from the start and aware that she was being brought forward because liberals could not win in the marketplace of ideas. The same reaction may be happening now, since all of these women were brought forward when Cain rose in the polls.

So far polls show that the public doesn’t buy into the accusations, but consider if they do.

The polls may still remain the same, courtesy of one Bill Clinton. During the Lewinsky scandal, Clinton’s poll numbers remained the same because the economy was then booming. Herman Cain is judged as having the best prescription for turning the economy around—hence polls may again stay the same. Clinton’s peccadillos may even have gotten the public used to philandering politicians.

A sad day for liberals—hoisted on their petard.

ABC NEWS and Stephanopoulos are not immune from partisan propaganda campaigns to ignore points of view that run counter to their already center-left mainstream media line. In fact, Stephanopoulos himself was the person who delayed the mainstream media’s report on the Clinton/Lewinsky story by stopping Bill Kristol in his tracks on ABC News’ This Week in January, 1998. He was also the political operative who internally attacked ABC News brass for booking former White House FBI agent and New York Times bestseller, Gary Aldrich. Twice Stephanopoulos tried to use his political skills to kill a story.

Today was different.

With foreknowledge of the Stephanopoulos’s treachery against his political ilk, Media Matters issued the following warning hours before our 7:30am appearance on Tuesday: “Memo to media: Do not trust Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe.” Because, by having us on, Stephanopoulos was defying his former key ally and Media Matters founder John Podesta’s wishes. Certainly, Stephanopoulos took the tack of the good partisan during the interview. But he allowed O’Keefe and me to refute his partisan talking points.

What conservatives want is a chance to tell their stories, not to ensure that those stories are always presented without criticism or skepticism. And by playing the skeptic and the critic, Stephanopoulos was allowed to do what he couldn’t do when he ran interference for his former boss, Bill Clinton: He launched the Census story.

When Stephanopoulos gives O’Keefe credit for the success of the ACORN undercover stings, he is referring to a story that ABC News and the rest of the network news divisions worked hard to ignore, all whom refused to invite O’Keefe and Hannah Giles on the air to tell their side.

While Twitter is abuzz that ABC News slammed O’Keefe and stepped on the best revelations of the Census tapes which appear at Big Government, the bigger picture seems to be lost. George Stephanopoulos is granted redemption today for his past sins against good journalism. And he got to maintain his liberal street cred at the same time.

The beauty of Stephanopoulos’s launching the Census story is that it now gives James O’Keefe a higher media profile. It will be harder and harder for his partisan peers to ignore him with subsequent videos — all which show rampant corruption in the government. And the Census videos, while damning and illumnating, represent only the beginning of the Big Government census investigation, not the end.

My only real criticism is that his false, defamatory and debunked “racism” line of inquiry would have looked absurd if James O’Keefe’s colleague on the Census project, Shaughn Adeleye, had been sitting next to him instead of me. We offered to have him on over me. But ABC felt I was a better fit. I wonder why. Here’s a photo of Shaughn. I’ll let you decide:

After the Good Morning America segment aired we received dozens of tips of similar and even more far-reaching fraud at the Census. Those tips would not have been generated but for George Stephanopoulos.

As Big Government reported here, the Clintonistas have reunited to take down the tea party movement. The same tactics they used in the 1990’s to keep the Clintons in power are now being used to keep the Democrats in power. It was only a matter of time when President Bill Clinton would fire a round to vilify the tea party movement. That time has come.

It happened last week when the former President used the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, where 168 men, women and children were killed, to smear the tea party participants. In a New York Times op-ed President Clinton wrote:

“… we should never forget what drove the bombers, and how they justified their actions to themselves. They took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them…. Civic virtue can include harsh criticism, protest, even civil disobedience. But not violence or its advocacy. …. the line was crossed in Oklahoma City. In the current climate, with so many threats against the president, members of Congress and other public servants, we owe it to the victims of Oklahoma City, and those who survived and responded so bravely, not to cross it again.”

For months tea party participants have gathered at peaceful rallies across the county but in President Clinton’s narrative these gatherings are reminiscent to Timothy McVeigh, the terrorist, who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah building.

His smear reminded me of a prophetic warning that Linda Tripp of Lewinsky-Clinton fame told me years ago: “If you believe nothing else, believe this. If the Clintons can do it to me, they can do it to you.”

Looks like she was right.

Welcome tea party participants to the politics of personal destruction; where no American is immune from being targeted, smeared or demonized.

It was the last year of the Clinton Administration when I met extensively with Tripp. The former civil servant had served in the White House for President Bill Clinton, and in First Lady Hillary Clinton’s Counsel’s office. She secretly taped her phone calls with President Clinton’s paramour, Monica Lewinsky, to avoid a potential perjury trap. In January 1998, when the scandal broke, and threatened the Clintons political future, the Clinton White House wrote the narrative they needed the public to believe. Tripp was an evil, bitter, jealous woman who betrayed an innocent friend (Monica Lewinsky), and conspired with Hillary’s concoction, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, to bring the Clintons down so she could write a book.

Anyone involved was obsessed with Bill Clinton’s sex life, especially the special prosecutor, Judge Kenneth Starr, who was actually doing his job, but was scripted in the Clinton narrative, as the sex-crazed out-of-control prosecutor. It was all about sex – that was the script the Clintons needed the public to believe because if the serious charges of witness tampering, suborning perjury, and obstruction of justice took hold and were pursued, or worse, the public finally realized that the dirty tricks they witnessed, and the lies they heard, during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal had also occurred during other less tantalizing Clinton investigations, their political future quite possibly would have ended in the 1990’s. There are reasons why witnesses fled the country or pled the fifth during the Clinton scandal ridden era. There are reasons why evidence was withheld, and witnesses suffered from amnesia, and the reasons do not involve Bill Clinton’s oral sex adventures in the Oval Office. Yes, as I discovered the hard way, Tripp, along with other Americans, had to be destroyed to keep them in power.

Now history is repeating itself. It is the tea party’s turn. The narrative? The tea party movement is a dangerous, angry group of racists and anti-government hoodlums.

The next page in the Clinton script will be that the tea party must become toxic, like Tripp and other “political enemies” became toxic in the 1990’s. The goal is a guilt- by-association-backlash so that no one dares to support or speak up for them.

Except there might be a problem. This time, America is waking up.

For the most part, the tea party participants worry for America’s future; soaring deficits, and higher taxes. They are dissatisfied with recent government take-overs of the auto industry to banks. They are upset that Obamacare was rammed into law. These concerns hardly constitute an advocacy of violence, as President Clinton suggested in his smear last week. Scores of people aren’t necessary buying the Clinton’s latest narrative.

Moreover, as polls show, Tea Party participants aren’t rabid Republicans. They are independents as well as Democrats. Many are frustrated by politicians on both sides of the aisle which is not a threat of violence but a threat to the incumbent lawmakers’ political future.

In the 1990’s, political persuasion didn’t matter either. Being smeared and demonized by the Clintonistas wasn’t exclusive to those on the right. Ask Kathleen Willey, for example.

Beware. I hope I am wrong but using the 1990’s Clinton Redux as a barometer, after the smears and demonization, arrests and indictments are next. In the case of Billy Dale of Travelgate, for instance, he was ultimately acquitted. As for Tripp, her criminal charges were eventually dropped. These indictments, however, served a chilling and intimidating purpose. Guess whose political careers benefited from them.

Cross-posted at marinkapeschmann.com.

The bracelet is kind of a signal to tell Stern that the administration has it under control and ObamaCare will be delivered.  Just a few more Democrats need to be shown the Chicago way.

Am I making too much out of nothing?  Maybe.  Who knows.

I do know the presidential administration Gibbs serves is doing whatever it can to deliver health care reform to Andy Stern and SEIU.

After all, that’s pretty much the only lot that wants it at this point.  Even members of the president’s own party don’t want it, which is requiring them to twist arms in a way that would make Stern proud.

And this reminded me of another time a signal was being sent by the White House some time back.

During his grand jury testimony Monday prosecutors questioned President Bill Clinton about the necktie he wore on the day Monica Lewinsky testified before the federal grand jury.

Lewinsky claims she gave the president the tie he wore Aug. 6, the day she appeared, fully immunized, before Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s grand jury.

Prosecutors asked Clinton Monday if he was trying to send a signal to the former White House intern by wearing the gold necktie at a Rose Garden event on handgun control.

During the questioning prosecutors reached into a pouch and pulled out a photograph of the tie the president was wearing the morning of Lewinsky’s testimony.

Two sources, loyal to the White House, who were briefed on the president’s testimony said they were told, the president leaned back in his chair and smiled and then expressed bewilderment at the question.

…

Lewinsky told prosecutors she gave the president a half dozen or so ties and sent notes asking him to wear them as a demonstration that he was thinking of her.

Was Gibbs sending a signal to Stern, ala Clinton and Lewinsky?  Doubtful.  But anything is possible in the lead-up to the intra-Democratic Party showdown to deliver health care reform for Andy Stern and SEIU.

Former President Bill Clinton says the right-wing conspiracy that attacked him during his presidency now is after President Obama.

Democrats–no strangers to major scandal–do not hesitate to divert attention away from the corruption and “pay to play” tactics being exposed or simmering just under the surface. Clinton deliberately inserted himself into a critically important national debate and thereby unwisely opened the tomb of similar scandals, potentially more explosive than his unwise dalliances with Monica Lewinsky.

For most of the 1990’s, the White House, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Citizen Action and ACORN’s Project Vote were embroiled in what would become known as “Teamstergate.”

That scandal involved disgraced former union crusader and Teamster national president Ron Carey. According to New York Times Archives:

Three of Mr. Carey’s campaign aides have pleaded guilty to a web of illegal fund-raising schemes, including having the union donate $735,000 to three liberal grass-roots groups for a get-out-the-vote effort during the 1996 Congressional elections. In return, those groups and their supporters were to channel money to Mr. Carey’s re-election campaign…

Insisting that he delegated decisions on political gifts, Mr. Carey repeatedly denied knowing about the large donations to the three liberal groups: Citizen Action, Project Vote and the National Council of Senior Citizens.

The Organizations Involved:

PROJECT VOTE

Project Vote, a supposedly non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization and Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) affiliate that used its highly touted voter registrations efforts for the Teamsters.

According to a Congressional Report

Project Vote is working hard to turn out minority voters in North Carolina, where Harvey Gantt is running close to defeating Sen. Jesse Helms.… All of our North Carolina locals are active in the effort to defeat Helms.… We have been asked to provide $75,000 to Project Vote. I can’t think of a more important goal anywhere in the country than to turn out a huge vote that helps defeat Helms….

The report summarized the exhibit memo this way:

The memorandum clearly demonstrates that the goal of IBT leadership was to help a particular candidate for federal office– Harvey Gantt – and not to support non-partisan GOTV efforts. Whether or not these contributions constitute the type of activity prohibited by FEC regulations, the contributions, at a minimum, violate the law’s apparent intent. What the IBT could not do directly – namely, spend treasury funds to help a particular candidate – it did through an ostensibly non-partisan GOTV organization.

THE TEAMSTERS

Particularly noteworthy is the date the Congressional report specified as the genesis of this cozy relationship:

The Teamsters’ political agenda led to the contribution swap schemes that corrupted the union’s 1996 elections. In 1992, IBT leaders began to develop close ties with the Clinton Administration and the Democratic Party, and, more specifically, with the Democratic-leaning organizations that ended up participating in the swap schemes, including Citizen Action, Project VOTE, and the National Council for Senior Citizens. Without these close relationships, it is doubtful that IBT leaders could have perpetrated the swap schemes that are now the subject of criminal proceedings in New York.

The Teamsters had a strong political hold in Chicago at the time. The report shows that the Teamster seemed to favor Project Vote and Citizen Action, by putting money and political power behind them. The Teamsters:

• donated $20,000 to the Illinois Hispanic Democratic Council for voter registration
• dedicated 100 phones to Project VOTE
• contributed $37,500 to a massive GOTV phone banking operation run by Project VOTE bringing over 600,000 newly registered voters to the polls;
• staffed national GOTV phone bank [run] out of IBT headquarters
• worked with retirees
• handled security for President Clinton and Vice President Gore
• organized bus caravans for the candidates
• established a “War Room” at IBT headquarters

CITIZEN ACTION

About that time a young organizer finished his training at the Midwest Academy under the tutelage of Heather Booth.

In 1991, he took time off from his law firm to run a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an Acorn partner that was soon fully absorbed under the Acorn umbrella. The drive registered 135,000 voters and was considered a major factor in the upset victory of Democrat Carol Moseley Braun over incumbent Democratic Senator Alan Dixon in the 1992 Democratic Senate primary.

At the same time Booth “directed the Field Operation for Illinois Democrat Carol Moseley Braun’s successful run for the U.S. Senate.” More on Booth shortly. That organizer was now President Obama and his association with Project Vote/ACORN could not have come at a better time. While Obama was busy registering voters, Project Vote had the backing of a powerful labor union, the Democrat party and even the Clinton White House:

During early 1995, the Teamsters, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Service Employees International Union, Citizen Action, and the National Council of Senior Citizens created ‘The ’95 Project’ (also known as ‘Project ’95′),  ’to develop a local progressive coalition…

Project ’95 may have had close ties to the White House. Individuals affiliated with Project ’95 briefed senior White House officials about the plan, including the fact that the goal behind the project was ‘to take back the Congress.’

The Subcommittee notes that White House communications with Project VOTE began at least a year earlier, and that Mr. Carey has stated that the IBT ‘worked in coordination with’ Project VOTE, Citizen Action and other advocacy groups on ‘many… different campaigns.’”

Citizen Action, co- founded by Heather Booth, whose appearance at ACORN 39^th Anniversary Celebration was spotlighted by Glenn Beck.

Booth trained activists like the young Obama in Chicago, maintained extensive ties with ACORN and played a major role in the moving parts of Teamstergate according to the Congressional report:

Six months before the formation of ‘Project ‘95,’ just shortly after the Republicans captured control of Congress, Citizen Action drafted a plan entitled ‘Campaign ‘96 to Reclaim the House of Representatives.’  The plan instructed participants to: ‘Build coalitions… of our traditional allies; agree on a target list of vulnerable House Republicans; and pool our resources to be as effective as possible in each district.’

THE DNC

The Congressional report delved deeper into the plan and found that through her connections with the DNC and the Unions, Booth was rewarded with training activists like Obama across the country. Karen Innman of the ACORN 8 attended such a program in Chicago in 2001.

Congressional report:

Just days after that plan was written, Heather Booth – a founder, co-director and president of Citizen Action – drafted a memorandum to three Democratic National Committee staff members that discussed field mobilization during the 1995 and 1996 elections. The memo lists seven organizations, including two unions and Citizen Action, that ‘will commit substantial resources for some version of a targeted Congressional District mobilization. Each of these groups will want to make their own presentation to the White House with their own plan….

The DNC had close links to Citizen Action throughout the 1996 campaign. For example, Heather Booth served as DNC training director. In that position, she coordinated DNC-operated training centers for party activists at various sites around the country.“

If at First You Don’t Succeed:

2004-2008

For those who have been paying attention, there is an eerie sense of deja vu as  one compares efforts in the 2008 presidential campaign to the DNC’s efforts in the 90’s.

Luckily for Clinton, the media focused on unpopular HillaryCare, Monica’s dress and Whitewater and he extricated himself from these problems, winning re-election and avoiding removal from office as Hillary stood by her man and blasted the right and the Clinton machine vilified his critics..

The Congressional report offers a stunning but familiar assessment of its findings:

In the end, of course, their plan was an astonishing success: the Democratic Party raised three times as much money for the 1996 election as it had for the 1992 contest, and President Clinton was re-elected. The President’s success, however, came at a steep price. In the frenzied drive to raise such large amounts of campaign money, the Democratic Party dismantled its own internal vetting procedures, no longer caring, in effect, where its money came from and who was supplying it. Worse, their campaign eviscerated federal fundraising laws and reduced the White House, key Administration offices, and the Presidency itself, to fundraising tools

This increasingly mercenary approach also led the Democratic Party to view America’s ethnic communities as exploitable ‘renewable resources’ for political fundraising.

Sound familiar? See BigGovernment.com. Using the lesson learned in the 1990’s, ACORN/Project Vote and Citizen Action re-branded and started over. Project Vote remained relatively unscathed while the media and investigators failed to mention ACORN’s ties to Project Vote.

THE SHADOW PARTY

Taking the lesson and indictment to heart, some Democrats became more organized in their quest to pull America to the far left. New organizations were created with what seemed to be the express purpose of providing the appearance of legality to their endeavors. The same operations remained in place behind the scenes with new front groups. Discover the Networks has the scoop:

The so-called ‘Shadow Democratic Party’ or ‘Shadow Party‘ is a nationwide network of non-profit activist groups, whose agendas are ideologically to the left, which are engaged in campaigning for the Democrats. Its activities include fundraising, get-out-the-vote drives, political advertising and covert operations (including opposition research, media manipulation and ‘dirty tricks’).

The Shadow Party was conceived and organized principally by George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Harold McEwan Ickes – all identified with the Democratic Party left.

In its mix of more than five-dozen unions, activist groups and think tanks, the Shadow Party has built a mighty coalition, marrying the youthful energy of the MTV generation with the ideological fervor of New Left activists who cut their political teeth in the battles of the 1960s with the ruthless tactics and financial power of New Labor, whose flagship unions – the SEIU and the AFSCME – have managed to thrive while other unions shrink, through the ingenious expedient of organizing workers in the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. economy: the government workforce. Many of the political strategists and operatives spearheading this government union movement are veterans of the New Left themselves.

Notable affiliate organizations of the Shadow party include John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, ACORN, Media Matters and MoveOn.org.

History Repeating itself?

2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

 During the 2007-2008 election cycle, ACORN and Project Vote launched an extensive voter registration program in battleground states. However, behind the scenes extensive coordination seemed to be occurring between the Obama Campaign, Citizens Services Inc. (an affiliate of ACORN) and Project Vote. Obama and his campaign have denied the ties, but payments made to CSI have been called into question:

…But the Obama campaign didn’t appear eager to discuss the candidate’s ties to Acorn. Its press operation vividly denied Mr. Obama had been an Acorn trainer until the New York Times uncovered records demonstrating that he had been. The Obama campaign also gave Citizens Consulting, Inc., an Acorn subsidiary, $832,000 for get-out-the-vote activities in key primary states. In filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Obama campaign listed the payments as ’staging, sound, lighting,’ only correcting the filings after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review revealed their true nature.

In addition to this coordination, ACORN and Project Vote have a laundry list of activities that parallel Teamstergate:

1. Project Vote has violated its 501(c)(3) status by using government and private grants that ultimately go directly or indirectly to ACORN.

2. ACORN, Project Vote and Citizens Services Inc. (CSI) are essentially the same organization with different tax designations that are used to facilitate the transfer of money between the affiliate organizations.

3. ACORN has promoted a culture of dishonesty motivated by reaching target Voter Registration goals and senior staff have portrayed an attitude that allows for some ‘bad’ cards in order to reach these goal.

4. Karyn Gillette, Project Vote Development Director, Jeff Robinson, senior Project Vote ‘money man’ and Mr. Henderson-James was “Research Director for Project Vote while simultaneously serving as part of ACORN political operations.” It appears that they are all employed or in some way paid by CSI and may have worked directly with anyone seeking the services of CSI; and money paid to CSI would have obvious ACORN ties.

5. Zach Polett, former Executive Director of Project Vote and former director of ACORN Political Operations mentioned that Obama had worked for ACORN and that he even supervised him during a ACORN Political staff retreat in November 2007.

In late 2007, Project Vote received a call from the Obama campaign asking if this was the same Project Vote that Obama worked for in the 90’s. Zach Polett, Karyn Gillette, Nathan Henderson James, and Kevin Whelan were notified by email that the campaign wanted someone to call them back regarding some media questions that were being asked at the time. Karyn Gillette would later produce a donor list and infer that she direct contact with the Obama campaign and had obtained their donor lists. This meeting took place sometime in November of 2007 and may have even been a conference call between the campaign and Project Vote. The purpose of the Obama donor list was for the cultivation of maxed out donors who could give to the voter registration drive that was being run by ACORN.

Media Bias

No Democrat scandal is complete without the media acting as accomplices. As the current push for health care by the mainstream media indicates, newspapers are a loyal bunch. When disgraced Teamster Ron Carey died in 2008, the New York Times and Washington Post downplayed his fall as a mere ‘campaign finance’ problem. The papers took great pains to highlight his works as a crusader and reformer.

New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom had to be informed of Teamstergate by yours truly in 2008, although The Times had done a number of stories on Ron Carey. If New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt had checked The Times’ own archives, he would been able to find a pattern of behavior by Project Vote that clearly mirrored the evidence provided to Strom before she was told to “stand down” by her editors.

The media has played a key role in covering up the connections between the key people associated with Teamstergate, ACORN and Obama.

To summarize: ACORN/Project Vote, the Unions (SEIU made its grand political debut in this report), Citizen Action, the DNC and Obama. All the makings of a tremendous political scandal. Part two of this article will highlight the political players from the Teamstergate/Clinton era who have found their way into the Obama fold while still maintaining close ACORN ties and cover provided for them by the media.

ACORN’s many problems have been well known for quite a while, at least to anyone venturing beyond network newscasts and liberal blogs. As an organization, ACORN doesn’t just limit itself to churning out forged voter registrations. It’s a full-blown racketeering enterprise worthy of The Sopranos, and it finances its operations with the help of taxpayer money.

So how could the major media fail to hold ACORN to account all these years?

I have my pet theory.

Political correctness has been slowly rotting the establishment media to its core, to the point where few professional journalists would dare launch a serious investigation into the exalted Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now. Why? Simple: according to the tenets of political correctness, the racial makeup of the communities being “organized” automatically confers the presumption of moral superiority upon ACORN. So all those nasty rumors about ACORN must be no more than lies spread by racist propagandists.

To understand the mindset of the politically correct, there are a few rules of racial relations that you need to know. These rules establish the Hierarchy of Multiculturalism:

1. If a person is a member of a group guilty of past racial oppression, that person has no moral standing in relation to anyone in any group that’s ever been a victim of that oppression.
2. A member of an oppressor group is always assumed to be guilty in relation to a member of a victim group.
3. An oppressor can only avoid presumed guilt by making a display of his or her sympathy for the oppressed.
4. Members of victim groups can lose their moral standing by expressing a preference for individual rights as opposed to group rights.
5. Advocating on behalf of a victim makes one almost as unassailable as being that victim.
6. Coming to the defense of an oppressor is even more repugnant than being that oppressor.

This thinking is so common these days that many prominent liberals–from New York Times columnists to former presidents–believe that criticism of President Obama can only be motivated by racial bigotry.

That’s because people at a lower rung of the Multicultural Hierarchy are never allowed to challenge those above them. The purpose of this is to quell criticism and enforce thought conformity. Why break the rules and risk being thought of as a bigot?

Media coverage of Kanye West’s latest outburst at the MTV Video Music Awards illustrates this. Imagine the racial roles reversed:

It’s the Country Music Awards. A black female performer is accepting her first-ever award. She’s happy and a bit surprised; her style of music doesn’t usually win Country Music Awards. Halfway through her emotional acceptance speech, a white male country music singer runs up on stage, grabs the microphone from her, and announces that another woman should have won, a white woman–a “real” country singer–instead of the underdog black woman.

I’d bet my life savings that the reporting would be quite different than what happened in Kanye’s case. Sure, he was roundly criticized in the media, but we’re in an age when hidden motivations are attributed to every interracial interaction, so it’s interesting that few dared to discuss a racial angle to the Kanye West/Taylor Swift confrontation.

There’s a simple explanation. By the rules of the Hierarchy of Multiculturalism, when a member of a victim group is the actual victim in a real-world encounter, it’s an example of oppression. But when an oppressor becomes a victim in real life, that’s just karma, man. Any possible racial angle becomes irrelevant.

So forgive me if I don’t believe that the abundantly Caucasian and overwhelmingly liberal journalist class is capable of taking on a target like ACORN, no matter how apparent the criminality might be.

In the end, though, it doesn’t matter. The work of Giles and O’Keefe highlights the diminishing relevance of the establishment media. Despite the story getting no coverage on broadcast TV or in any major newspaper, it propagated online, then to talk radio and Fox News. And before any “mainstream” media outlet covered it, the political pressure grew to the point that the Census Bureau cut all ties to ACORN, and U.S. Senate voted by the overwhelming margin of 83-7 to cut off the group’s federal funding.

Even after these events, a vast majority of the media ignored the story. And yet the public kept getting the truth, which only made the media appear to be in the business of hiding news rather than reporting it. Realizing that this is not a winning business model for an ailing industry, a few of the more independent-minded reporters started covering the story, and now the White House Press Secretary is busy deflecting questions about the president’s former colleagues and fellow community organizers at ACORN. Despite the media’s best efforts.

James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles represent another massive power-shift in the age of Internet media. The first occurred when the Drudge Report broke Monica Lewinsky’s affair with President Clinton, a story that Newsweek got first but declined to run. The second was when CBS News got hoodwinked by documents that purported to impugn President Bush. After bloggers exposed them as forgeries, the documents ended up tarnishing CBS News instead. Long-time anchor Dan Rather was forced to retire in disgrace.

This is another huge embarrassment for Big Media–not so much because they look foolish, but because they’re beginning to look irrelevant.