Glenn Beck vs. Acorn

I will post the video here once I sober up and can find the embed codes. For now, check out C&L's coverage at:

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/why-would-anyone-want-submit-themsel

Few things here. Firstly, Glenn Beck actually did a fairly impressive job of bullying the ACORN guy in the interview. For the first three minutes or so, I actually was thinking he made some sense. Then I just beer-bonged a fifth of vodka and by the time I was done puking Beck was securely back in Crazytown. Whew. I may get flamed for this, but I don't think Levinson came off very well.

I get his point; individual Acorn employees committed registration fraud, and that when you look at the percentage of them across the national spread, the incidence rate isn't very high. That should have been the first thing out of his mouth. I don't know if the information about specific charges and cases and their resolutions regarding ACORN is widely available, but if ACORN hasn't made a compiled, complete, easy to understand collection of said data and made it publicly available, they sure as fuck should have.

And he should have had some notes regarding each and every case so that he could have responded to Beck point for point instantly, and not needed to seem to spin so much. How could he not have essentially known what the entire interview was going to be like heading in? This was poor debate prep, pure and simple on his part.

And now for something completely different, that will probably horribly disgust you. I shot some fine Hefeweisse out of my nose and a good 8 feet across the room when I heard him bring up the false parallel of that BK employee who was taking baths in the sink.

Beck says 'If there were these numbers of people doing this at Burger King, no one would ever eat there!'. Sorry to break it to Glenn, and to everyone who has never worked in food service, but there probably ARE those numbers of people doing things far more disgusting all over the place. And not just in food service. Think about that Lowe's truck driver bangin' him some hookers on your fine new appliances that he's on his way to deliver to your home. Any of the movies over the years about teenagers and restaurants, and all the nasty shit that goes on. You know what? Those stories are funny and cliche, BECAUSE THEY ARE REAL.

People just need to accept that all kinds of gross shit is all around 'em. In some cases, ignorance truly is bliss. Thankfully, while most of it is really, really gross, not much of it is probably really harmful. So what, you ate a booger in your burger. It's all protein in the end, no?

P.S. - As I have the morals of a Drunken Liberal (i.e. none), in the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that I've had sex in one of the giant popcorn popping bins at a theatre I worked at as a teenager. Several times. Gives a whole new meaning to asking if you would like butter 'flavored' topping on your corn eh? Ah, sweet youth.