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Good morning, and welcome to the New York Times. The Grey Old Hag finally got one of its own reporters on the week-old week-long ACORN pimp/prostitute stories that's exposed the radicals using their own rules, but not surprisingly the Times has their unique way of doing things. The spin? The well-worn "conservatives get a scalp" approach, almost as tired as the weekly Sunday talk show "he said, she said" stories. In other words, it was about the political baseball game rather than the scummy behavior. This is how reporter Scott Shane saw it:

Conservative advocates and broadcasters were gleeful about the success of the tactics in exposing Acorn workers, who appeared to blithely encourage prostitution and tax evasion. It was, in effect, the latest scalp claimed by those on the right who have made no secret of their hope to weaken the Obama administration by attacking allies and appointees they view as leftist.

The Acorn controversy came a week after the resignation of Van Jones, a White House environmental official attacked by conservatives, led by Glenn Beck of Fox News Channel, for once signing a petition suggesting that Bush administration officials might have deliberately permitted the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Even before Mr. Jones stepped down, Mr. Beck had sent a message to supporters on Twitter urging them to “find everything you can” on three other Obama appointees.

Appointees "they view" as leftist? Only a leftist himself would phrase it that way, because the effort is to expose actual leftists. The leftists are blind to who they actually are, believing instead that they are mainstream. And as for Beck's appeal for help, the Olde Media is still playing catch-up on the new way of doing things: We Twitter, we Facebook, we communicate because we already know the hearts and minds of those three appointees (Cass Sunstein, Mark Lloyd, and Carol Browner).

More from Shane:

In a statement over the weekend, Bertha Lewis, the chief organizer for Acorn, said the bogus prostitute and pimp had spent months visiting numerous Acorn offices, including those in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia, before getting the responses they were looking for.

Nice of Shane to cover Bertha's butt by leaving one city out of her original statement (which appears to have been removed from ACORN's Web site) from the weekend:

This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen.

Videographers James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles (the "pimp" and the "prostitute") unveiled on Monday the helpful ACORN employees in Brooklyn, belying Lewis's claim that their efforts failed there. Just a coincidence that ACORN took down her statement at the same time the Times scrubbed its hometown's name from her remarks?

Repeat after me, Scott Shane: "I am Van Jones, I am Van Jones, I am Van Jones..."

topics:
New York Times, ACORN