Matthew Vadum of the American Spectator calls me a "useful idiot" for not believing that ACORN caused the mortgage crisis, radicalized the president of the United States, and conspired to steal the election from John McCain and Sarah Palin. These were the "allegations" I was referring to when I wrote this piece last fall, in which I had the gall to speak to both the people filing charges against ACORN and the folks who work inside the organization. As I noted quite clearly at the time, "ACORN is in many ways a troubled organization," going on to list their various problems--but conservative bloggers like Vadum aren't content to confine their criticisms to ACORN's actual issues with taxes, embezzlement, and voter registration fraud. These problems aren't as sexy or sensational as a secret plot to subvert American democracy. So folks like Vadum simply make things up in order to prove ACORN is part of some vast conspiracy to do evil--Vadum himself previously mused on one occasion whether ACORN should be labeled a "terrorist" organization.
At any rate, Vadum argues that ACORN's "allies" such as myself are "scheming to distract from corruption allegations." That hardly seems accurate, given the reporting and blogging I've done on allegations against ACORN. It's true that unlike Vadum, I've actually made efforts to determine whether certain allegations against ACORN were based in fact, such as when the entire right wing blogosphere decided that ACORN was "infiltrating" tea party protests based on a post in a web forum from a bot selling pepper spray (the post has since been removed). The problem may be that Vadum can't tell the difference between an allegation and conviction, much the same way that he can't tell the difference between voter fraud and registration fraud. Not having concluded that ACORN is guilty of the charges filed simply because charges have been filed makes me an "ally."
That post may explain Vadum's hostility toward me personally. Following the nomination of David Hamilton to the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Vadum described ACORN in part as a "radical direct-action group" that "resurrects the dead and gets them to the polls every election." At the time, I challenged Vadum to name a single instance of ACORN having registered someone through a dead person's name who then successfully cast a ballot. At the time, he kept quiet, because he didn't have any evidence whatsoever to support his assertion. That may have been a wise decision.
-- A. Serwer
