Brad Friedman doubles down (by this point, it’s like he octuples down or something) on the notion that James O’Keefe never posed as a pimp at ACORN. And he adds a new bonus lie: Hannah Giles (he claims) admitted that the entire concept of O’Keefe as a pimp was grafted onto the videos after the fact.
Friedman’s view is: repeat a lie often enough and it will become the truth.
Do I just stand by and watch, or do I wearily mobilize to fight for the truth once again?
Well, you know me. (Sigh.) So here we go again.
For the sake of those with short attention spans and/or who have read similar posts before, let me first focus on Friedman’s newest lie before I move to the repetition of the old ones. Remember: Friedman’s thesis is that O’Keefe never even pretended to be a pimp at ACORN. He claims this in his title: “No, NYT, O’Keefe Didn’t ‘Pose as a Pimp’ Either.” Watch agog as he claims that Hannah Giles actually conceded this very point to Dave Weigel:
[I]n mid-February of this year, after we’d called out O’Keefe as a liar for misrepresenting himself, Giles admitted to Washington Independent reporter Dave Weigel that the “pimp” concept was added-on with footage that was shot later and edited in. The “gaudy” costume seen in the videos was meant to convey “the whoring out of the American people,” she told him Weigel [sic].
“We never claimed that he went in with a pimp costume,” Giles admitted, “that was b-roll. It was purely b-roll. He was a pimp, I was a prostitute, and we were walking in front of government buildings to show how the government was whoring out the American people.”
In other words, as Giles admitted, and as O’Keefe’s own unauthenticated text-transcripts show, the entire “pimp” concept was added on as an afterthought, and edited in later.
You follow what he is saying, right? Friedman is telling his gullible readers that O’Keefe never even pretended to be a pimp. He was always nothing but the nice boyfriend trying to save Hannah from the pimp. What’s new today is his claim that the entire concept of O’Keefe even being a pimp at all was made up entirely after the fact — and Giles admitted this to Weigel!!!
Of course, as you have already guessed, Giles said no such thing. Instead, she told Weigel that they never claimed O’Keefe was dressed as a pimp:
I asked Giles about a criticism that’s often been leveled against them — that they hyped up the video by wearing outrageous clothes in promotional materials and the videos’ introductions that they didn’t wear in the actual stings.
“We never claimed that he went in with a pimp costume,” said Giles. “That was b-roll. It was purely b-roll. He was a pimp, I was a prostitute, and we were walking in front of government buildings to show how the government was whoring out the American people.”
I suspect Weigel, who is lefty but pretty honest, would be surprised that he is being cited by Friedman for the concept that Giles admitted the entire pimp concept was created and inserted after the fact. I may write him about this, actually.
Now let’s move from the new lie to the old, familar one: that O’Keefe never posed as a pimp at ACORN.
Our friend daleyrocks put it nicely in comments here, and his articulation of Friedman’s dishonest methodology is worth quoting here:
[Friedman] and [Media Matters writer Eric] Boehlert have concocted an absurd and fabulist rewriting of actual events documented by audio and text records which most people, including the NY Times, do not find credible. It relies on cherry picking portions of transcripts and ignoring other portions, convoluted interpretations of commonly understood words and good old fashioned bald-faced lies.
Yeah, that’s about it. Here is how Friedman articulates this tired lie today:
But the Times correction still made the point to include the false notion that, while O’Keefe didn’t dress as a pimp in ACORN offices, he stilled [sic] “represented himself” as one, by “posing” as a pimp.
Well, no, as we’ve shown time and again, he didn’t do that either. He posed as the law school student (or sometimes a banker or politician) boyfriend to Hannah Giles who was dressed similarly to a prostitute. During the secretly-taped interviews, they both told the low-level ACORN and ACORN Housing workers they were trying to save her from an abusive pimp who had attempted to stalk and kill her.
The italicized words are Friedman’s own — designed to fool you into ignoring the fact that O’Keefe was setting up a house of child prostitution, from which he intended to profit.
As usual, Friedman tells you only half the story, and then confidently assures you that the other half never even happened.
Yes, Brad, O’Keefe posed as Giles’s boyfriend, who was trying to save her from an abusive pimp. That is indeed one part of the story.
But O’Keefe also said he also wanted to set up a house for Giles and underage girls to turn tricks in the house and give the proceeds to O’Keefe for his Congressional campaign.
Let’s go through the transcripts one by one — first quoting Friedman’s half-truth, and then rounding it out with the part he is trying to hide. We’ll go city by city, just as he does.
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