Glen Beck's indoctrination fear/ACORN

Re: The September 27th unsigned editorial on the Augusta Chronicle editorial page entitled "Hooray Mr. President, you are No.1"

The crazy conspiracy theory that President Obama is somehow planning on indoctrinating children originates with Glen Beck. Mr. Beck is mean-spirited, foolish, and ignorant. Yet, apparently he is now the source of conservative republican talking points.

Both in Michael Ryan's column and in Michelle Malkin's column, which Mr. Ryan redundantly placed next to his, they plaigiarize Mr. Beck's idea that the Obama administration is bent on indoctrinating children with propaganda. The facts easily dispute these ridiculous allegations.

In Mr. Ryan's column he falsely claims that the National Endowment for the Arts held a conference where the director of communications, Yosi Sergeant, asked artists to consider creating works of art to further President Obama's agenda. Actually, he asked them to work with Michelle Obama to create works that would assist groups sponsoring public service projects--something that obviously has nothing to do with the President's legislative agenda.

Mr. Ryan also repeats some senators' false claim that this might be a violation of the Hatch Act. If Mr. Ryan would have done the slightest bit of research, he would've known the list of government agencies falling under Hatch Act jurisdiction doesn't even include the NEA. (See www.osc.gov for the list of government agencies that do fall under this law's jurisdiction.)

Mr. Ryan also implies that Mr. Sergeant was forced to resign as communications director. This isn't exactly true either, but the controversy, generated by the Glen Beck Show, did lead him to take another position within the NEA.

But perhaps the most ridiculous point of Mr. Ryan's editorial was his claim that a song some students sang in an elementary school in New Jersey was some kind of nefarious indoctrination. The Obama administration had nothing to do with this. I think conservatives are just jealous because democrats have a charismatic leader capable of inspiring spontaneous gestures of support. They know they looked silly when they had a temper tantrum last month about President Obama's address to schoolchildren, and they're just looking for some reason to justify their silly opposition. Jon Stewart puts the whole controversy in context in this clip-- http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200909290003

Note: The clip also shows schoolchildren singing the praises of George W. Bush's handling of Katrina.

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Re: The September 28th unsigned editorial on the Augusta Chronicle Opinion page entitled "ACORN who?"

ACORN is a worthwhile organization that helps poor and working class people find jobs, finance housing, and register to vote. Conservatives hate poor people, and they've been out to get this organization for a long time. The recent dishonest documentary produced by James O'Keefe and funded by business lobbyists does do a great deal of damage to ACORN. The documentary is dishonest because Mr. O'Keefe claims that no ACORN offices turned him down when he was baiting illicit counseling. In fact police records prove that some ACORN employees did reject and report him. It's a shame ACORN, which does so much good, now has an unfairly tarnished reputation.

In his editorial Mr. Ryan quotes a Wall Street Pundit, John Fund, in an attempt to tie President Obama with ACORN, as if that would be a bad thing. Here is the misleading quote:

"He (Obama) became a top trainer for ACORN's Chicago conference. In 1995, he became ACORN's attorney, participating in a landmark case to force the state of Illinois to implement the federal Motor Voter Law. That law's loose voter registration requirements would later be exploited by ACORN employees in an effort to flood voter rolls with fake names."

President Obama was never a paid employee of ACORN, though it is true he worked alongside U.S. Justice Department lawyers on one case--that's not much of a connection. ACORN reported irregularities with voter applications they paid for. Lazy workers defrauded ACORN--that's the truth of this matter. There is no evidence whatsoever that any of these phony names ever made it on to voter rolls or were counted as votes.

Shame on the pathetic cowards in the democratic party, and the crooked pro-business republicans for defunding ACORN, a violation of the constitution's Bill of Attainder provision, as pointed out by Rachel Maddow.

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I predict Mr. Ryan will weigh in on Alan Grayson's comments on the house floor, and he will, as usual, copy conservative talking points. Just wait and see.

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Local radio talk show host, Austin Rhodes, has suggested my blog is slanderous. There's nothing slanderous about it, and I challenge anyone to find slander on any blog I've written.