When their ideological allies' misdeeds are exposed, the liberal media rush to their defense. They vilify truth-tellers, investigate 'em, cry racism, and cuss a right-wing conspiracy. It's all soo very predictable. The Fourth Estate is failing us.

Like a tap on the knee with a rubber mallet, news media jerk to deflect blame from the "embattled" ACORN, the leftist activist group. How dare "conservative activists" expose this organization's misdeeds?  How dare they "attack" the unofficial, tax-gobbling arm of the Democrat Party?

Exposing ACORN as a partisan advocacy outfit is unthinkable for the incurious, Left-leaning "press." It is behavior unbecoming of a critical, questioning Fourth Estate. Its actions, or rather inactions, are nothing short of cravenly shameful. They, reporters and editors, ought to be ashamed.

ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform. Nifty acronym, it suggests a mighty nut – er, make that an oak. ACORN is in league with the devil liberal media, most certainly, and that means the Democrat Party — birds of a feather.  No question where the loyalties lie.

That's hardly surprising to any intelligent person paying attention. What is shocking is the vituperative reflexive nature of attacks on those who would expose ACORN's seedier side. Rather than celebrate folks who expose wrongdoing, liberal media puts them down as freakish sideshows, and investigates them. Pox on media!

The inquisitive folks in this case are independent filmmaker James O'Keefe, who calls himself a "progressive radical," and his sidekick, actress Hannah Giles. She plays the role of a prostitute in his candid videotapes of ACORN officials' misdeeds, possibly criminal, certainly detestable. ACORN's lack of squeamishness, or remorse, at the revelations on these tapes, is nothing short of astounding.

Instead of being hailed as heroes, the two whistleblowers become themselves, targets of liberal media abuse. Why? Well, they revealed ACORN's warts. That's something liberal media did not, or would not do, for reasons that might escape most. Investigate an ally?

O'Keefe and Giles did NOT catch ACORN stuffing ballot boxes after dubious voter registrations, rounding up thousands of votes for their preferred candidates, some of that nefarious deed done on your tax dollars. No, the two exposed ACORN officials in several cities aiding and abetting fictional 13-year-old whores from El Salvador and their pimp (O'Keefe) with tax and housing advice. Call this helping out in "bootstrapping."

In an honest media world, one with higher-than-partisan principles, the filmmaker and actress would be feted as heroes. Anointed by a Time cover, maybe even Newsweek's on a good day. Maybe they'd receive a medal from the President. (Oops. Wait. As a youngish Chicago lawyer, he once represented ACORN in the courts. Scratch one medal possibility.)

Instead of showering them with hosannas, media tags the two dismissively, possibly wrongly, as "conservative activists." Who says? Well, it's right there in the Dem's talking points. Lapdog media go on to "suggest" (hint! hint!) the two muckrakers are bankrolled by the Right. Call in the political police. Investigate 'em.   

Paranoia sets in. That old bugaboo, the VRWC, crops up, again, a phantom entity, a blameworthy ghost, a straw man. (It was Hillary's choice, after all, when she attacked culprits for exposing her husband's fooling around and obstruction of justice. Ken Starr is living testimony to that falsehood-laden partisan hammering.)

ACORN fires its errant, caught-on-film employees. Yet it claims the damning videos are "doctored." Which is it?  Did ACORN fire innocent people?

Meanwhile O'Keefe and Giles are portrayed as "bogeymen." That's just the beginning of the name-calling. Later, the race card is invoked. It is always in the wings, stage left, that ugly, demeaning card, ready to make an entry, to smear and slime.  Party first?  

Never mind truth. Facts are immaterial when liberal media go to war against all things remotely "conservative." (Sarah Palin's treatment proves that.) Does political bias run through news media's collective blood stream? Taught in J-schools is it?  At the knees of a leftist professorial class? 'Tis a puzzlement. What is obvious, naturally, is that fairness does not matter. Inbred ideology and prejudices take over, down-the-middle reporting goes to hell.

If these two young people had exposed sins of a conservative group, they'd earn media plaudits. Not so for exposing ACORN. They are met with presumptions, with hostility, even anger, from mainstream media, which should by all that's right, embrace them for doing their (media's) job.

Such are hypocrisy and double standards of a shameless media. This is NOT a sometime thing, folks; it's consistent with the past, transparent to any fair-minded person. It exists as surely as God made little green apples.

* * *

The reliably liberal Minneapolis (MN) Star Tribune headlines its initial story about ACORN's "woes" on its front page, in nearly doomsday type, in these words:

"ACORN's fall latest win for conservative activists"

Get it? It was a "win," and only that. Not for truth, or justice, or for what's right in the nation, but a "win" — and the "latest" one, at that — for darn "conservative activists."  How dare them?  And pre-empt the snoozing media?   

A few days later, "Strib" reporter Mike Kaszuba presumes, echoing a New York Times piece, that ACORN was "targeted by conservatives." Because, well, you have to be a believer, you see, in the Left's pronouncements, dutifully repeat them as "fact." That's expected now of liberal media, a rule of the road.

Kaszuba sings the praises of a local Twin Cities' ACORN chapter, its good deeds, while burying allegations of voter registration fraud, found literally in the last two paragraphs of his story. (How, again, did Al Franken win? Look no further than ACORN?)

Presuming to know what's in hearts and minds of O'Keefe and Giles, and their inner "politics," is how journalists draw on concentric circles of rumor and innuendo, like expanding ripples on a pond, reciting party lines until, at last, their liberal presumptions are regarded as "fact." Thus a new liberal shibboleth is born. It's in the morning paper, silly.

* * *

New York Times reporter James Steele lashes out in his wired story, full of the usual hubris and liberals' presumptions. His unmistakable bias and, frankly, his "Leftspeak" parading as "news," are captured succinctly in the passage below.  His liberal slants are denoted by my [sics]:

Conservative activists [sic] and broadcasters [sic] were gleeful [sic] about the success of the tactics [sic] in exposing ACORN workers, who appeared [sic] to blithely encourage prostitution and tax evasion. It was, in effect [sic], the latest scalp [sic] claimed [sic] by those on the right [sic] who hope to weaken [sic] the Obama administration by attacking its allies [a-ha!] and appointees they view [sic] as leftist.

Naked bias masquerades as "news." Readers are expected to Believe. Reporter Steele, not really worthy of that label, then audaciously links the breaking ACORN story to "Czar" Van Jones's resignation in the Obama administration. Hold your breath, and note Steele's wobbly segue, setting the table for linking the ACORN "flap" somehow to Jones' resignation because, well, this is how left-wing, conservative-loathing reporters, operate:

The ACORN flap [sic] came a week after [so what?] the resignation of Van Jones, a White House official attacked [sic] by conservatives, led by Glenn Beck of Fox News, for once signing a petition suggesting [sic] the Bush administration officials might have [sic] deliberately permitted the 9/11 attacks.

Nary a word about Van Jones' self-styled communist sympathies, his televised slander of President Bush as a drug-crazed "crack head." Nope. In Steele's skimpy, slanted report, Citizen Jones was only a misunderstood 9/11 blame-thrower.   

Yes, readers, it's a weird, wacky, upside-down politicized world out there, a brave new one, with Winston Smith-type memory holes, and all that image implies for the cognoscenti. Media choose which stories to print, or air, and how to slant them. Presumptions rule the day, and a lie, it is said, travels half-way around the world while truth pulls up its britches. No wonder 60% of the public by a recent Pew survey say they don't trust mainstream news media. Talk about a no-confidence vote!

* * * 

Just as"Joe the Plumber" was whipsawed, then probed by the Left, the two media-described "conservative activists" find themselves not only objects of media scorn, and skepticism for their exposures, but they are also investigated, too. Sort of a punishment meted out by the Left for not toeing their line? 

Washington Post puts its reporters to the task of investigating the inquisitive woman, Ms. Giles, just as they did Gov. Palin, "Plumber Joe," and a host of other right-thinking detractors. (Note: They found no dirt.) It takes straight-talking U.S. News & World Report's Michael Barone to point out what's rotten here in Denmark. He writes:

. . . The Post's story (9/17) helpfully identifies Giles as "the eldest daughter of a conservative Christian minister in Miami." . . . On what basis do you characterize the minister as conservative, and why is that relevant?

. . . The Post's story (9/18) reads as if the reporters were assigned to find out what nefarious right-wing outfit financed their operation and came up empty. They did manage to include two paragraphs on the beliefs on Giles's father, apparently on the theory that it illuminates her motivation . . . I guess the idea is to discredit Giles and by inference, O'Keefe, as religious fanatics whose motivations should lead readers to disregard what's on their videos.

Barone "gets it." Liberal media, clueless again, don't. Simple as that, folks.  Close the book.

Ah, but it gets worse. Spin leader Washington Post implies – without quotation marks – racism attends video exposes by filmmakers O'Keefe and Giles. The Post reports, as if ex cathedra:

Though [sic] O'Keefe described himself as a progressive radical, not a conservative, he said [sic!] he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: Its massive voter registration drives that turn out poor African Americans and Latinos against Republicans.

Scott Johnson of the blog Power Line (www.powerlineblog.com) raises a rational suspicion: "If O'Keefe had said something incendiary about a racial motivation for undertaking his investigation of ACORN, one can be sure Post reporters would have quoted it instead of simply larding the context with an imputation of racism."

In short, it is a quote without the quotation marks. No attribution, just a vacuous "he said." When? In what context? In those very words? Facts, please, let's not have presuppositions parading as facts, or made-up stuff, to slay dragons.

Besides implying racism, the Post claims O'Keefe and Giles are put up to all this expose business by conservative groups:

O'Keefe insists [sic] that he and Giles's work was done independently and rejects [sic] liberal suggestions [emphasis I added] that the videos were bankrolled by conservative organizations. He does, however, acknowledge [sic] receiving help and advice [sic] from a conservative columnist and Web entrepreneur.

That would be influential blogger Andrew Breitbart, who put their eye-popping tapes on his estimable website, www.biggovernment.com. But Brietbart only ran with the videos, nothing more, and (gasp!) publicized their forthcoming airing. Isn't that how publishing non-fiction works? Get the story, spread the word? Or sit on it, as elite media do, until pressed – or mugged, as the late Irving Kristol liked to put it — by realities.

One would think exposing the seedy side of a tax-sucking organizations would be a public service, a duty of responsible journalism. You'd be wrong. You see, friends and allies are involved here.  Still, it's bad news — or, simply "bad publicity" as AP put it – for the Left-leaners to swallow, including their newspaper allies.

MSM clearly swings to Left, no question, caving in to like-thinking ideological allies.  They willingly heap blame on those who expose allies' warts, belittlle them, call them names, play the race card.  If it takes "making up stuff," or advancing presumptions, mainstream media is up to that bloody task, but now at a tremendous cost – to their credibility and now, their circulations.

"Quite a racket," Scott Johnson of Power Line observes about liberal media's not "getting it" in the ACORN case. "Someone should call them on it." Indeed.