Young, well-funded conservative activists hard at work, pretending they are decent people:
Young, bearded, a bit scruffy, a young man walked into a community organizing office in East Harlem, lugging a heavy bag. A little nervous, he said that his name was Melvin Howting, and that he worked for an environmental company in New Jersey and had a few questions about how to organize a union.
He wanted to know how to get higher wages. And, oh yes, he had another question: If he formed a union, could his fellow workers join with the employer to shake down politicians for more money?
At this point, Rhea Byer-Ettinger, an organizer for Manhattan Together, felt her internal baloney detector go on red alert. “Beep, beep, beep,” she said. “I said to him: ‘Well, that’s not how we work. Tell me, why are you asking me about that?’ ”
For several years, young conservatives have made a cottage industry of going undercover and trying to goad people working at perceived liberal institutions — like Acorn, NPR and Planned Parenthood — into saying something stupid. Trained by well-financed foundations, these dirty tricksters pose as pimps, sex traffickers and Muslim activists and record conversations surreptitiously. Then they release videos that have often been heavily edited. Of late, conservatives have set their sights on the Industrial Areas Foundation, a national organizing group founded by a hard-bitten, inventive organizer named Saul Alinsky. He campaigned to clean up the slums around the Chicago meatpacking district and fought segregation and abuses by banks. He has been dead and buried for 40 years, but mention of his name — Alinsky! Alinsky! Alinsky! — sets conservative Republican activists and presidential candidates to twitching.
So. That’s what conservative activists are up to. Bothering liberal organizers who are actually working. Following the organizers around, lying incessantly and transparently, making nuisances of themselves.
On that note, I thought I’d bring you up to speed on voter protection efforts in Ohio. I got the first voter protection organizer contact of the 2012 election today, recruiting volunteer “election protection” lawyers for 2012.
I’m pleased the people who are doing all the work coordinating this are on it so early because I have the feeling 2012 is going to be a very difficult year for democracy enthusiasts in Ohio. I suppose they could be following conservative activists around, surreptitiously recording them and then editing the tape and feeding that deliberately misleading and edited tape to child-like, credulous national media outlets rather than working, but they’re not.
I actually sat down and read Saul Alinsky this past year, because noted conservative intellectual Professor Newt Gingrich recommended I do so (or that’s what I thought he said: it was hard to hear what with all the screaming at those debates) and I really enjoyed Alinsky’s book. I still have no earthly idea why young conservatives are so terrified of community organizers. They’re just not a scary group of people, in my experience.
jl
‘Melvin Howting’
A name clearly inspired by Monty Python skits.
I think Byer-Ettinger’s GOPdar started scanning for threats subconsciously when the loser gave that sad excuse for a real name.
They need to work on their fake spy names, first off.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
It’s half funny, half scary, that someone old enough to grow a beard, and probably people old enough to have children old enough to grow a beard, actually think this is how ‘liberals’ talk to each other when no one else is around. The Simpsons parody of left-wingers in the Left Below movie just proves you can’t really parody the right anymore
Zifnab
The Republicans had a pretty firm lock on power from ’94 to ’06, and now they’re all looking around trying to figure out who yanked it away from them.
Since all evil inevitably finds its roots in the 60s, it’s perfectly natural to look at the political organizations and organizers of that hayday and blame them.
PeakVT
I still have no earthly idea why young conservatives are so terrified of community organizers.
They might help the poor. Or minorities. Or – gasp! – poor minorities. That would lower the chances of young conservatives ending up on top.
beltane
It’s become like 365 days of Halloween trick-or-treating with these people. I blame poor parenting.
Bulworth
Apparently all this chicanery, lying and sabateuring are necessary to return us to a land of perfect freedom where respect for human dignity reigns, or something.
g
oh yes, he had another question: If he formed a union, could his fellow workers join with the employer to shake down politicians for more money?
Idiot. I’m at a loss to even understand how he imagines this would work, under labor law and NLRB regs. Perhaps he could have at least wiki’d “union” before trying out his scheme?
kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I loved that, too. I love the tough talk: “shake down”
It’s like the pimp costume, except, subtler :)
David Koch
Saul Alinsky = Jew
You know how Mel Gibson hates the people who killed Jesus and start all the wars.
Bulworth
Because community organizers represent a threat, real or imagined, to the interests of the powerful, that class to which our young conservative ratfuc$ers believe themselves to belong or to which they aspire.
gaz
These people are NOT decent.
I am about to go get fingerprinted and bg checked by DHS just so my wife and I can get custody of a teenager before he’s sent back to a country he doesn’t know.
We also have to bust our ass to get his mom asylum for DV victims (yes, they can get you a “green card” if you got your ass beat by your spouse – who is actually a decent guy now that he’s been off the booze for years)
You know what I could be doing with this time and energy?
Helping the kid with school, and his parents with english, and/or employment.
But I can’t – because these assholes MANUFACTURE problems for anyone with excessive melanin or with teh ladyparts.
So just to beat back the wholly artificial problems, it takes a lot of work, and you never quite get around to helping people with the problems of generational poverty or anything that could possibly IMPROVE their lot in life.
Same goes for black folks and women as it does with mexican nationals, and even mexican-americans.
So tell me how it’s not a moral imperative to imprison, kill, or otherwise destroy these “decent” conservatives. How will NOT doing so make the world a better place?
Fucking hell. I’m pissed right now. sorry.
muddy
There’s no need to be surreptitious, nor yet to edit tape. They bring the crazy regardless. The child-like, credulous national media outlets rather than working, pass it along as if it were serious.
piratedan
ah yes young padawan, enter into our discussions on how we will overthrow our evil capitalist overlords and let me get you a BluRay copy of The Battleship Potemkin.
g
Young, bearded, a bit scruffy, a young man walked into a community organizing office in East Harlem, lugging a heavy bag. A little nervous, he said that his name was Melvin Howting, and that he worked for an environmental company in New Jersey and had a few questions about how to organize a union.
Even more amusing. Guy crosses state lines to talk to a “community organizing office” about something anyone with a brain would be going to his local labor council for?
It’s not just that they’re lying and posing. It’s that they’re so incredibly stupid about it. “Um, well, we don’t do that here. Have you looked in the phone book?”
BGinCHI
You know what’s going to bring conservatives down?
Ignorance and arrogance.
Being an asshole is not a winning lifelong strategy. I bet Karl Rove cries every night after he gets home.
slag
@beltane:
It is sad, isn’t it. To see potentially productive members of society go to waste like that. It’s hard not to shake your head and say, “There, but for the grace of a combination of genetic material and environmental stimuli, go I.”
Scott
I would volunteer to run a surveillance scam on some conservative organization, because I’m a fat white guy with a goatee, so they’d never suspect me. But I really don’t know that I could keep from laughing at them all the time…
slag
@BGinCHI:
I’m sorry–you must be new here.
Quaker in a Basement
Whatta schmoe!
smith
So James Howting is the new James O’Keefe? Except it looks like he is failing miserably at his undercover duties.
Well now I know how douchebags like to spend their free time.
Martin
The roadmap to power is laid clearly before those young conservatives, and community organizers do nothing but disrupt that path. Organizers want a level playing field. Young conservatives want the entitled power that is there for the taking. The prospect that they might have to earn it like the rest of us is pretty damn terrifying. What if they fail? What if they wind up poor? Who will take care of them then?
j
They scream “Alinksy” because it sounds (at the same time) Jewish (for those Jew haters), Russian (for the commie haters) and “socialist”. They know none of their mouth breathers would ever read anything by him.
kay
@Bulworth:
I think it’s sort of great that all the young ‘ins coming up are so decadent and over-paid and over-praised and pampered.
Remember when they used to industriously and earnestly gather voter lists at megachurches, before they were all celebrities?
Waaay back in, oh, 2004.
ruemara
@BGinCHI: He cries into all the money he’s already
earnedstolen. Seriously, being an asshole is what America is all about. Case in point, our government.Villago Delenda Est
@Bulworth:
DING DING DING DING DING!
Conservatism is about defending the privileged from the unwashed masses who are suddenly realizing that the world does not need to be the way the privileged says it has to.
pragmatism
every time i see the latest young conservative sting du jour i think the same thing: “THAT was the best they could come up with?”
buckyblue
Just voted in the Republican primary WITHOUT having to show my ID, since it was struck down by a liberal activist commie judge. Voted for the non-Mittster just because I think it would just be a hoot to have Rick debate Obama. I know Mittens will get it, but I think he’ll just get the pitty vote after awhile when he looks just so godawful and pathetic that little old ladies will give him their votes.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@BGinCHI: Au contraire, my friend. Newt Gingrich ain’t broke.
justawriter
I don’t think they are themselves terrified, but their paymasters are afraid if liberals take over taxes will skyrocket by like a full percentage point and instead of making hundreds of millions of dollars they will make hundreds of millions minus one of dollars.
Martin
@BGinCHI:
I disagree.
My wife has a venn diagram I drew up some years ago that has almost never failed her.
Being an asshole hardly ensures success, but I believe it is a necessary component of it – at least in this country. I can think of a few exceptions, but very, very few.
...now I try to be amused
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Since right-wingers project — always — I have to assume they think that way because that’s how “conservatives” talk to each other when no one else is around.
Villago Delenda Est
@David Koch:
It’s interesting, and I’m of course just getting all Godwiny here, but Hitler blamed his invasion of the Soviet Union on the Jews. The Jews somehow forced him to order the entire Wehrmacht across the border and bring war on an unprecedented scale to Eastern Europe.
The Jews also, apparently, manipulated the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor, which in turned caused the US to declare war on Japan, which in turn forced Hitler to declare war on the United States because Germany honors its alliances, as opposed to honoring its non-aggression treaties.
It was always the Jews. Always. Every step of the way.
Donut
I honestly don’t know why we aren’t doing the same things to them.
I am not in a position to do the dirty work of infiltration and information gathering, but I’m certainly in a position to kick in some money to see it get done. I think we would get a lot more mileage in exposing their crazies than they have ever gotten out of trying to smear our side.
Liberals are not immune to some kooky ideas, I’ll grant, but I’d say just as a baseline, 95% of the really truly crazy shit going on in American politics right now is happening on the right.
The thing is, we wouldn’t have to edit video or audio to make them sound nuts. I think you’d have to do very little in the way of shaping. Thanks to some work relationships that I simply cannot avoid, I’ve been subjected to some of the shit these people say when they think only “one of them” is looking. You capture some of that kind of stuff on video, coming from the right sources, you make a media event of it…I’m just sayin’.
Martin
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, in his defense, can you think of any global problem that Japanese Jews weren’t absolved of responsibility for?
jibeaux
Ah, sort of like graduate school for assholes.
Martin
@Donut:
What’s to expose? They volunteer to expose their craziness every Sunday morning on the teevees.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
is it wrong that part of me wants to go infiltrate conservative community organizations?
there has to be a way to show these youngcons the great egress of liberalism, to borrow a gag from pt barnum
slag
@Martin: No way! I created that same Venn Diagram in my mind and have been relying on it ever since. I like how your little “Successful People” circle ever-so-slightly breaches the Asshole circumference. Mine too. Though, in my diagram, I’ve labeled that circle “Economically Successful People” in an uncharacteristic fit of idealism.
pragmatism
@Martin: exactly. there is no market for pointing out the crazies on the right. there is a gigantic market for BOTH SIDES DO IT and IOKIYAR.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
because our current President was one. And they hate anything he is for. As for Alinsky, Hillary Clinton is a big reason the right uses his name in vain. She wrote a thesis about him, and Clinton derangement syndrome pushed him into bogeyman territory because of the association. That and, as others have noted, the name sounds communist and jewish.
AA+ Bonds
IAF are very smart people if hopelessly liberal so this should be pretty LOL
AA+ Bonds
the reason this keeps happening is because liberals are terrified to try to understand conservatives which is how you get this Salon story today that is like WHA HAPPEN?? over House/Wilson
it’s very simple: the right rightly sees public administration as a conspiracy to deprive them of their power to oppress
into this they lump non-profits and community groups that can’t afford shit because those groups get blacks, Hispanics, etc. working for their own interests
the Right in America are Nazis, conservatism is dead, and it’s time to start learning to think like a Nazi if you want to push back at all effectively
The Tragically Flip
The projection is the key here. They assume Acorn exists to rig elections, unions exist to shake the government for money and Planned Parenthood is trying to profit from abortions because that’s how comparable right wing organziations actually function.
It reminds me how they assume Soros funds everything on the left, because if a shadowy political billionaire isn’t funding it, right wingers just don’t know how an organization could exist. None of theirs would.
The Other Chuck
@Marcellus Shale, Public Dick:
Poe’s Law. You can’t possibly make them look more ridiculous than they are already.
The Other Chuck
@BGinCHI:
That requires humanity. Assumes facts not in evidence.
AA+ Bonds
yes LOL those clowns on the right what a bunch of clowns quit clownin around! ~places hands on back of head and marches into camp behind other liberals~
AA+ Bonds
What these videos are, are often-successful attempts to threaten the livelihood of anyone who stops the Nazification of America
The people behind them may be mercenary narcissists but they are deadly goddamned serious results
...now I try to be amused
If these young right-wingers were really terrified of community organizers, they wouldn’t be going undercover trying to punk them. They know community organizers won’t beat the shit out of them if they’re caught.
Part of the problem is that right-wingers do not fear enough.
Martin
@slag: No, it applies to a lot of other groups as well – politicians, athletes, etc.
AA+ Bonds
Next up: liberals wring their hands and boo hoo hoo when it comes out that Trayvon Martin did the right thing, namely, drawing some fucking blood when a brownshirt rolled up on him
AA+ Bonds
@…now I try to be amused:
100% correct a mundo
Y’all still have a chance to catch the right while they’re fat and weak, so I suggest you take it, and your first step is buying a firearm
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Donut: I have been screaming myself blue about this for a decade. Still no one listens. Dems really need to wake up and smell the coffee on this. I am not hopeful.
@Marcellus Shale, Public Dick: The only conservative community organizations are your local school board and the HOA of the nearest gated community. Otherwise, these are people whose first and foremost commandment in life is “fuck the community, I got mine.”
Ergo, no “conservative community organizations” to infiltrate.
AA+ Bonds
@efgoldman:
Yeah, that totally worked on Hitler
AA+ Bonds
Certainly we should turn around and do the same shit to them but we should add a greater implied threat of physical force
pragmatism
OT but always projecting: I present Donald Trump
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/219759-trump-obama-will-start-war-with-iran-for-political-boost
slag
@Martin: Yeah. But there’s got to be room for the definition of “successful” to include a significant humanitarian component…a space for people of good will to stop adopting the prototypical definition of “success” and consider themselves to be successes as human beings. In which case, a more inclusive (or exclusive, depending on your perspective) Successful People circle would be in a position to compete with the Asshole circle and exist wholly without it.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
i was thinking something with a very upscale buffet table.
Chris
The correct answer to:
is: “Oh. No, sorry. To shake down politicians for more money, you have to go join the Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce.”
Forum Transmitted Disease
@AA+ Bonds: Got that right.
Not gonna let some fat self-appointed brownshirt shoot me for wearing the wrong color jacket. He wants a piece, he’s gonna have to pay for it.
Martin
@slag:
I’m using the conventional American definition of success – possessing power. That’s either rich, famous, or at least installed in a position of power.
I’m all in favor of redefining success, but there’s not many folks with me, even on the left.
Donut
@Martin:
Disagree. None of the shit these asshole capture about the left is exactly shocking, either – but they get shitloads of media mileage and attention out of it. It’s not necessarily to just expose, but also to market your own god damn side as a better alternative. Do you really pay attention to what comes out of groups like Breitbart’s or O’Keefe’s? These are marketing campaigns to promote a product. We should be doing some of the same, is all I’m saying You could capture a lot that would shock and disgust people. Sorry, let’s remember that not everyone is a political junkie. Not everyone really understands how racist and misogynistic and homophobic the right truly is, and not everyone really understands the money behind the madness.
It is not obvious to a hell of a lot of people. You and me? Yeah. Lots of other people? No.
I’m just saying certain things framed the right way, and truthfully, could go a long way towards promoting the alternative.
Canadian Shield
@The Tragically Flip: Bravo! Seconded!
Gex
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That tells you something though. Specifically, it tells you they talk very differently when we aren’t around.
And given that they are downright eliminationist when speaking to a general audience, I don’t want to know what that is like.
arguingwithsignposts
OT, but apparently Obama’s speech today has left a mark. NPR was using the term “campaign salvo” this afternoon in their coverage of the speech.
BGinCHI
My fellow
AmericansB-Jers: let me be clear.I didn’t mean assholes had trouble succeeding, or making money, or ruling the world. I’m talking about actual humanity: love, happiness, enjoying the little things, and so on.
You cynical fucks.
/last point made affectionately
David Koch
@pragmatism:
Yeah, leading in the polls by double digits vs etch-a-sketch isn’t enough of a boost. So says a man who needs to be boosted by hair transplants and fake tan spray.
Tommy T
Well, well, well.
He’s a staffer for Rep. Thad McCotter.
John M. Howting
Staffer
Rep. Thad McCotter (-MI) (Oct. 2011-), Scheduler
http://www.legistorm.com/person/bio/181925/John_M_Howting.html
Tommy
Martin
@BGinCHI:
Heh. You’re at the wrong place to expect otherwise. :P
arguingwithsignposts
@Martin: Where is your spirit of Broderian bi-partisanship?
slag
@Martin:
Possibly. Maybe even probably. But should other people’s poverty of ambition undermine good Venn Diagram design? I think not!
That said, you’re right about how my diagram is incomplete as well. Is there a better word that conveys the gist? I’m not willing to give up “successful” to the nihilists. I want to usurp it like we usurped God Save the Queen.
BGinCHI
@Martin: I know. A rare moment of optimism on my part. Won’t happen again.
MikeJ
@Tommy T: Someone with that name is. Notice that rep is from Michigan and this took place in NY. I wouldn’t jump to conclusions, but it is worth checking out.
slag
@BGinCHI: That’s the idea! See…at least one person who defines success correctly–if not clearly.
Ben Cisco
@smith:
It’s like a clone of a clone of a clone – you know, degradation…
Tommy T
@MikeJ:
The Rep’s website bears this piece:
Rep. McCotter Mourns the Loss of Andrew Breitbart
I think it’s a pretty safe bet.
Tommy
gelfling545
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Well, no he isn’t broke but he has to live every day being Newt Gingrich.
gogol's wife
@jl:
Should have used “Mr. Hilter.”
Gex
Heather Childers is curious if the Obama campaign threatened Chelsea’s life to keep her parents silent. Via Twitter.
gaz
I tried theoretically applying the trolley problem to conservatives.
The results are not pretty.
Satanicpanic
I think they also like playing dress up. They graduated from Cowboys + Indians to Community Organizers + Republicans
arguingwithsignposts
@Gex: the fuck?
Ben Cisco
@Gex: Who is she and what has she been snorting?
David Koch
Bad news from PPP: hippies and blacks pissed at http://tinyurl.com/7je7bgw
Ruckus
Afraid of anyone telling the truth. Because then they lose for sure.
Gex
@arguingwithsignposts: I saw Frank Coniff tweet something about it, so I went and checked. It was still on her twitter page, but I grabbed a screenshot for the inevitable removal of said tweet.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Didn’t Thaddeus McCotter spend an hour and a half running for President in this cycle?
Maus
“I still have no earthly idea why young conservatives are so terrified of community organizers.”
Because they bootstraps without being born into privilege.
Linda Featheringill
You know, it might be a good thing for all progressive org offices to have a security camera in the main reception area. They they could have a battle of the tapes, I guess.
Cost? I have no idea.
TenguPhule
Republican Congressmen and whores beg to disagree.
TenguPhule
Bullets and Stand your Ground are cheaper.
Tommy T
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Dunno – but I think someone should call the Representative’s office first thing in the morning and ask him if he has a comment.
Tommy
kay
@Linda Featheringill:
I agree. I felt bad for the lady they lied to in Ohio, the job and family services person.
She was just doing her job, answering their idiotic, sneering questions.
I was really furious reading it.
These folks were a little less helpful and a lot more suspicious, which may not be a bad approach, going forward.
john f
One of the oldest, and still one of the best, retorts against supporters of the welfare state and centralism has been that private institutions and local communities are often better suited to the work that the central government takes over from them, and they help ensure that power is not concentrated in distant and unaccountable bureaucracies… Another reason why so many conservatives seem to react to the phrase “community organizer” with such bafflement and amusement is that so many of the people engaged in the work of conservation, historic preservation and local community life are not self-styled, much less movement-oriented, conservatives…”
As I read it, the community organizers actually do the things that conservatives claim to be all about. Secondly conservatives are mainly about rooting for the team. It’s all about the sports bar.
PeakVT
@Linda Featheringill: About $500 for a 4-channel recording system at Costco, w/o installation. Not a tremendous amount, but its money that most organizations would rather spend on client services or staff salaries.
PurpleGirl
John Howting is a staffer for Rep. Thad McCotter (R-MI).
(via First Draft)
debbie
An article on community organizing you might find interesting:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/magazine/25GROUNDWAR.html?scp=5&sq=2004%20election%20ohio%20joann%20davidson&st=cse
(It’s okay when they do it.)
Silver
@PurpleGirl:
From his wikipedia page:
McCotter is also a regular guest on Dennis Miller’s radio show, where the comedian-host refers to him as “young Thad” and “T-Mac” and frequently comments that he “likes the cut of [his] jib.”
Now google the guy so you get a picture. So much fucking fail.
Sophia
I’m sorry to be grumpy and cynical, but the Obama campaign is more likely to target those voter protection volunteers for donations over the next six months than for legal services combating voter suppression. We’ve had a pretty strong organic operation running in MO since at least 2000, which was naturally co-opted by Obama in 08. The midterm effort in 10 was fairly transparently thrown together at the relative last minute with not much effort to make sure that volunteers were up to date on current voting law.
I’m not interested in trashing the Obama campaign on this point, I’m just saying… don’t wait for them to show up. Local organizing and initiative is what’s going to get these things done because it’s almost an afterthought to the national campaign.
Kay
@Sophia:
I probably disagree. I’ve been doing voter protection in this county since 2006, and it’s gotten better every year. I think how good it is has a lot to do with the quality of the coordinating volunteers out of the legal community. I’m not one of them, I work in-county on election day. We have a detail-obsessed litigator who runs a several-county effort, and he’s the perfect person for that job. He’s back this year.
I’ve had the Ohio Democratic Party help, the Sherrod Brown campaign help (06) and the Obama campaign help, and I didn’t have any problem with any of them.
I’ve never really figured out “co opting”, or why I would be concerned about it. I think our volunteers do this because they want to protect voting rights, and they don’t much care which name is in front of the managing org, or out in front.
I generally just take help where I can get it, whether it’s local or state or national and fold it in to whatever we’re doing. Presumably if our volunteers don’t want to donate to a campaign they won’t, I think they’re pretty savvy political actors, so I don’t worry about “co opting” in general. They’re all free agents. I’m not sure it’s possible to co opt them. It’s certainly difficult for the lead lawyers to manage them. Us :)
I’ll take help where I can get it, and what I can’t use, I won’t use. I think the various campaigns and party orgs start with that same understanding, so we’re all on the same page and no one is under any illusions.