Of ACORNs and bad apples

Recent information about the organization named ACORN is disturbing, discrediting and cause for action.
In case you haven’t heard, undercover video by conservative activists caught ACORN employees at different organization locations offering advice to a fake pimp and prostitute on how to more effectively commit crimes.
This combined with the previous allegations of voter fraud in connection with the organization provide more than enough reasonable doubt about ACORN. The federal government has ties with the group, as does President Barack Obama.
The documentation has both vindicated the activist critics of Mr. Obama and given fresh fuel for their ire.
Many deeply conservative critics had long railed against Mr. Obama’s association with ACORN and, later, his administration’s link to the organization as a group able to help the poor and disenfranchised. However, critics’ earliest outcries failed to convince and, in fact, proved counterproductive.
They complained that Mr. Obama had brushed elbows with once-dangerous radicals from the ’60s who were affiliated with the group and was tainted by that, a tenuous connection at best.
The Obama campaign could not fairly be denounced for every radical leftist that joined the cause any more than George Bush’s campaign could fairly be faulted for every radical rightist who backed the GOP. Critics’ heated denunciations at that stage appeared overreactive and nonobjective.
Unfortunately for them, that created a “cry wolf” effect. Because their earliest claims of wrongdoing were overblown, the world at large now tended to assume that subsequent criticisms were not credible.
This, of course, infuriated the activists, who felt unjustly ignored and who saw dire motives in America’s unwillingness to listen to them.
So they went undercover to prove that ACORN was just as unsavory as they had always claimed.
They have done America a service.
Washington is taking steps to detach ACORN from federal affiliation. Any member of government would do well to have nothing to do with this organization.
ACORN, too, is taking steps to examine itself. But any explanations that this is just the case of a few “bad apples” should not be met with acceptance. One incident would be a bad apple. More than one is a pattern.
The behavior exhibited in some of these videos would not be tolerated — or, for that matter, encountered — at most reputable organizations.
The fact that this behavior was demonstrated by ACORN employees, more than once, is enough to dissociate ACORN from the word “reputable” for the foreseeable future.
We hope the higher-ups at the organization get to the bottom of what has happened. We hope they are able to tighten up standards and transform ACORN into a truly professional organization.
Until then, all should treat the organization as they would a skunk: Keep your distance or you will get its stink on you.

The Daily Progress and the Woodbridge/Manassas News & Messenger