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Fired ACORN Worker Wins $100,000 Settlement From Republican Con-Artist James O’Keefe
Former San Diego ACORN worker, Juan Carlos Vera will receive $100,000 in a settlement from federal criminal and professional liar James O’Keefe, after being secretly video-taped in violation of California law by the Rightwing propagandist. The tape was just one in a series of similar videos, all deceptively edited as part of his 2009 ACORN “pimp” hoax series.
The story of the settlement was originally broken by Wonkette, which published the 3-page settlement document [PDF], yesterday.
-Brad Friedman, Brad Blog
I was listening to the Emmy award winning comedian David Feldman’s show yesterday talking about the great new film “Janeane From Des Moines” and Feldman kept asking questions about the Presidential candidates that the film maker met and filmed during the Iowa caucus. He wanted to know, “How can they sleep at night?” specifically he wanted to know how they reconcile in their minds their actions and policies they promoted and their proclaimed Christian beliefs. Jane Wilson, the film maker, had a very insightful response.
“People who are quote unquote evil never see themselves as [evil]”
- Jane Edith Wilson, Film Maker Janeane From Des Moines
For years people asked me about right wing radio hosts, ”Do they really believe what they say or is it just an act for the money?” My response is, “Does it matter? I can’t see into their soul, all I know is what they publicly say, and what they do. And what they say is nasty. I will act to lessen their impact, because I think it is the right thing to do.” Then I proceeded to develop a program to separate them from their sponsors and their money. That was my way to go after an institution and individuals that I believe are bad for our democracy and our country.
If you are someone in power, who believes that a left-wing institution, group or person is bad for your goals there are a number of ways you can go about destroying them. If you need to act quickly one shortcut is to manufacture “evidence” of wrong doings at that institution or from that person. This is useful when you can’t find any real wrong doings. For a price someone will do this for you. It’s good to get someone who believes in your same cause, so they can think they are doing good. But if you can’t find that person, get an actor who will pretend they are doing good. Another trick is to play the journalism “free speech” card so that you can get support from people who love journalism and free speech.
Last year I attended what I called “James O’Keefe University” to learn his techniques and methods. He talked about his real desire to be an actor and how his editing of videos was just like the editing of videos TV news shows do all the time. He encouraged people to do what he did. He then showed clips from the Daily Show from before they were revealed to be deceptively EDITED. It was all presented as great fun. Stickin’ it to those hypocritical liberals! I found the entire seminar profoundly depressing for a number of reasons.
First, the people funding O’Keefe, the Koch’s via Americans For Prosperity, understood just how powerful O’Keefe’s deceptive practices were, especially when teamed with the RW media and the more little O’Keefes they can unleash the better.
Second, AFP easily filled rooms with hard core right wingers whose internal beliefs convinced them they were doing heroic work taking down “bad guys” like ACORN. One of their biggest targets? Unions!
Third, and this was the one that hit me the hardest, there was nobody on the left who would fund me to go after Right-Wing institutions like O’Keefe did ACORN, but in an ethically and legal fashion. I have a track record, I have skills, but unlike O’Keefe, I didn’t have a Koch sugar daddy to support me taking on right wing institutions and media.
The AFP seminar a.k.a “O’Keefe University” pushed the idea of “Citizen Journalist” while using the O’Keefe’s deceptively edited videos as a model for winning. And why not? As far as the Kochs and AFP is concerned O’Keefe was wildly successful. As Brad Friedman put it:
Thousands of ACORN workers were left unemployed by the O’Keefe/Giles/Breitbart stunt after the U.S. Congress also fell for it. In 2009, shortly after the deceptively edited tapes were released, they passed legislation, signed by President Obama, that federally defunded the four-decade old community organization which had advocated to end predatory lending practices and helped millions of low- and middle-income Americans obtain housing loans and legally register to vote. The group was forced to shut its doors in the wake of the manufactured scandal.
O’Keefe achieved Koch’s and AFPs goals, and it was cheap. Based on what O’Keefe has said I estimate it cost 70K for the cross country, illegal-taping tour of ACORN offices, 100K for this current settlement and let’s say 130K for those high-priced Republican lawyers. $300,000 to destroy ACORN. What a bargain! Of course hopefully this settlement will lead to more.
If you knew you could take down Fox News or the Heritage Foundation for $300,000 would you? What if you didn’t have to manufacture evidence to do it? Would you do it then?
Many of you might remember the Book Salon that I hosted with Martin Hickman who wrote the book, “Dial M for Murdoch” In the book he described how a small team consisting mostly of a politician, some journalists and a lawyer exposed the phone hacking scandal at News of the World which led to it being shut down. They did the work legally using real journalism, the legal system and political pressure on a merger deal. I’m pretty confident that something similar could be used on New Corps properties here in the US. But will anyone? Since Obama won the election does that mean that we stop focusing on right wing media institutions and get back to helping people? It would be nice, and that is the attitude of a number of funders, they really don’t want to fight the right. I think that’s a mistake, because the RW media and institutions are more vulnerable now than they have been in awhile. Shall we let them regroup? Did they back off attacking us when they had the White House and the senate?
The right has to fund liars and deceivers like O’Keefe because they know they need to cheat to win. We don’t have to, but we do need the will to fight. One thing that I’ve learned over the years is that the mainsteam media will not go after the right wing media. They hate to cover them, they would rather ignore them. As Cenk Uygur said on The Young Turks the other day, one reason nobody on cable goes after Fox is because they either have friends who work there or they expect to work there some day.
Here’s the deal, the ideas and attitudes of the right wing media and their belief tanks are killing our country. They are the ones who push the failed austerity ideas. They push cuts to earned benefits as a “shared sacrifice” instead of demanding raising revenue. They push ideas that the economy is a deity who must be sated with the lives of your friends and neighbors to support the profits of the one percent. They attack our values and ideals. They support the destruction of our democratic institutions. And some of them get rich doing it. It doesn’t have to be that way.
I don’t want O’Keefe’s fine to scare off people who want to do real journalism and activism against corrupt institutions and people. If we have the goods we don’t have to deceptively edit. We also have to be smart about the law. I would hate for someone to have good video that could not be used because they didn’t know the law. Here is a link to “Can We Tape?” put out by Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
My friend, Angelo Carusone, at Media Matters wrote an article about the impact of the campaign to separate advertiser’s money from Rush Limbaugh one year after his attack on Sandra Fluke. Nobody is going to jail for alerting advertisers about the vile things Limbaugh has said and continues to say. Dial Global, a radio syndication company, reported roughly $100 million in losses for 2012 and publicly cited Limbaugh as a significant contributing factor. I celebrate this success. It was done legally and ethically. Let’s keep pushing our success and learn from their success and failures. The country is counting on us.
Creative Commons Attribution image by DonkeyHotey
40 Comments
I have a lot of friends who worked for ACORN and they have gone on to do some amazing things, but most don’t have the resources to go after O’Keefe legally. Hopefully this case will make it easier for others to follow suit.
While this kind of behavior is to be expected from the Right it was the Dems who voted overwhelmingly to illegally defund ACORN and then Obama signed the bill.
One thing you can say for the Repugs is that they don’t throw their supporters under the bus as easily as the feckless Dems do.
Thank you! Well $300k is CHUMP CHANGE for parasites like the Kochs, via whatever hat-trick con-group they funnel their money through.
When I read that Vera “won” $100large, I was like: whoop-de-do. It’s not even a light tap on the wrist for the Kochs, who undoubtedly paid the bill. I’m sure that O’Keefe didn’t pay it.
I’m glad Vera got something, but seriously? Vera was undermined by bald-faced lies and dirty tricks. Vera lost his job and livelihood via scumbags blatantly making up stuff, and now Vera gets a crummy $100k.
What does O’Keefe get? More money more money more money more money more money… I have no doubt that SugarDaddy Koch’ll take care of their fair haired boy who’s willing to roll in the muck to take down those that they just happen not to like.
PTOUI!
IMO, Congress is just as complicit. I refuse to believe that Congress was hoodwinked into believing the frickin’ lie manufactured by O’Keefe. Enough in Congress were simply bought off to do what it took to drive ACORN out of business bc that’s what the 1% want. The end.
Similarly Obama hesitated not one instant to fire Shirley Sherrod’s butt in a similarly manufactured incident also cooked up Brietbart & Co. Obama wasn’t “fooled.” He did was he was paid to do. And where’s Sherrod now?? I know she’s sued, too, and she’ll probably get some kind of money settlement, too. Well good, but again: big deal.
These scum will stop at nothing, and imo they know exactly what they’re doing and revel in it.
Thanks for the update, though. Good info to get out there. Recommended.
Well then, what does that tell us all about so-called “Democrats”?????? Why would anyone vote for them??? What more evidence do we need??? John Brennan being sworn in as Chief of the CIA on a Constitution without the Bill of Rights??? oh wait…. too late….
Good for you, Spocko! I’m so proud of you. Also, EXCELLENT illustration.
The biggest thing would be identifying O’Keefe’s sugar daddies. He’s just their tool — they are the true evil ones.
Agreed. They have BILLIONS and they are using it fund assholes like Brietbart and O’Keefe to screw over our institutions (O’Keefe also took on Planned Parenthood and NPR), they aren’t using their money to make the world a better place or to fund trips to Mars. Screw them!
I won’t even mind if they used their money to make solid gold toilets, but do they really need to mess up our institutions and safety net? What’s the gratification? I’m suppose they don’t see themselves as evil, but a lot of us do, and blah blah blah, good men to do nothing blah blah blah, Stop Hitler.
I applaud the work that CMD, Media Matters, Brad Friedman and others are doing but I wish there was a group like the Southern Poverty Laws Center for RW asshole billionaires that figures out how to take the assets of these bad guys. You call us “takers?” you have no idea just how big of a taker we can be.
I certainly wish that there were a dedicated funding group providing resources to expose, discredit and destroy right-wing scum, but…
1) Who would report these stories? Certainly there’s no rabid press out there to push an anti-Corporate Media story the way the Corporate Media (in no way limited to Fox) pushes the “ACORN is EVOL!” RW talking points.
2) Who would follow up on the revelations? Sure, Obama was glad to kill off ACORN, but as shown by the non-prosecutions on every stinking bankster/housing fraud scandal over the last four years, I can’t see Eric “Look Forward, not Back” Holder indicting the Koch Brothers, even if we had video of Charles and David roasting newborn babies over a fire.
Now, if there’s a marijuana clinic or a file-sharing system that’s making people’s lives better, that’s one thing. But expecting action against the rich and powerful? Don’t hold your breath.
Sigh.
Apparently, that’s the MAIN goal. Keeps the serfs in their places, frightened, insecure, hungry, tired, poor, lacking in resources & fearful that what few crumbs we have left will be stolen away from us if we bleat about it.
Now, now, onitgoes…you can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I’d agree with several people up thread. I don’t so much care about people like O’Keefe, people really do know that they are liars. I care about the elected officials who jumped right on that bandwagon and were more then happy to fire a person and to defund ACORN with nothing but obviously false evidence.
Oh those dems, of strong backbone, who threw ACORN under the bus before knowing the evidence against was falsified, and then did the same thing to Shirley Sherrod.
What a bunch of hot house flowers.
I think Obama was glad to dismiss ACORN for being, you know, progressive, which he sure ain’t.
This is a good question. We do know that Pro-publica is doing great work as is Mother Jones. But here is the deal. If you get a story that exposes a company and it is big enough then the corporate media need to cover it so that the corporation can give “their side” of the story. And this is something that journalists don’t often feel comfortable preparing for.
What do I mean by that? Well say that you find some serious dirt about a Koch Company, the media will go to the “experts” who are often RW experts. The person who breaks the story doesn’t often think, “When this story gets covered by the MSM, who are they going to call? What are they going to say? Do we have a answer that can deposition them?”
Then they need to go one step further, line up YOUR experts and make sure the MSM know how to reach them.
Also, if you are not just exposing the company, but making them hurt financially, you push THAT as a story. Now it becomes a financial story not just a story about what you exposed.
This kind of thinking is not necessarily journalism thinking, this is thinking like a prosecutor and an activist.
One of the reasons it is important to point out convicted federal criminal O’Keefe’s techniques is so the MSM doesn’t fall for them again. Brad Friedman spent MONTHS demanding that the New York Times correct and retract some misinformation. That will make them more hesitant to pick up crap in the future.
I have friends who are working with some major left-wing organizations to figure out how to kill these BS stories before they get to the MSM. You can’t stop them from spreading on Fox,… Or can you? You know one of the things that bothers me is that when someone on Fox gets called out by Media Matters or someone else for blatant lies it doesn’t impact their acceptance into the journalism community.
What kind of punishment might be appropriate? What does the right wing do when they see the MSM doing what they consider bias? They write letters, demand “fairness” etc.
You know we could do that too. Sure it might seem a futile gesture, but believe it or not, some of those people working their are human. They actually have very thin skins on this stuff because they KNOW when they are wrong but they don’t want to admit it so they either double down on the crazy (which is always fun to read) or they begrudgingly make some corrections.
2) Good question, who would follow up on these stories. One of the problems in our system is that after a journalist exposes something there is this idea that magically, “someone will do something!” but again, our system is broken so we need to ask the various “someones” “So, what are you going to do about this?” And when they say, “we aren’t,” then that is a story to. That is the kind of story that the MSM then has to pick up so that the “someones” can explain why they aren’t doing their job.
One of the lines I see all the time is, “If I didn’t do my job I would be fired!” or “If I did that I would be fired.”
Well we often put protections on employees for a reason, and elected officials or judicial have some protections, but we can use the story of them not doing their job to hurt their reputations.
It flummoxes me to no end why liberals and progressives won’t fund and support their own media infrastructure. Although I won’t pretend I give a lot, I do make regular contributions to FDL, Truthout/Buzzflash, Consortium News and KPFK. Superior post, Spocko.
By the way, wasn’t the bill Congress passed defunding ACORN a bill of attainder and thus flagrantly un-Constitutional?
You are correct. They couldn’t be focused just on ACORN so them made it broader. Now being the progressive activist that I am, I often think, “How can we use this bill to get at some right wing organizations that are getting funding from the government?”
I think that it would be appropriate justice to find some RW group lose their government funding if they were caught actually doing something illegal. Because you just KNOW that there are some RW organizations that are breaking the law for real.
Great idea. The fly in the ointment, I imagine, is that Congress is less likely to mess with right-wing groups, the Republicans because they’re corrupt ideological soulmates and the Democrats because their spines are like overcooked linguini. Still, I’d love to see a test case of your idea.
Oh I hear you, if fact, Brad Friedman and I discussed this about his work. He’s has done amazing stuff and is struggling.
One of the things that I didn’t include in this article was a long rant where I suggest that we don’t just “expose” the right wing media’s and belief tanks wrong doings and the wrong doings of their funders, but we actually set out to take their money.
I’ve talked about qui tam laws before and a friend of my wrote the ones that apply in California, but here is a way that the liberal media could fund itself. Find cases of companies like Halliburton, or Koch industries that are ripping off the government. Bring that to the DOJ, if they can make a case you join them in the case and get 15 percent of the money recovered. This would have the benefit of not only hitting the funders of this RW propaganda, but using that money to sustain other actions.
“Evil people never see themselves as evil” is a bit of wisdom that actors (who often have to play evil characters) have shared among themselves for years. It is easy enough to understand. The evildoers feel justified in doing what they are doing by their motivations and experiences. So how to tell if you are doing the right thing?
If you have to resort to lies to make your point, then your point itself is a lie. If you have to resort to unethical means to achieve your goals, then your goals are unethical and, therefore, evil.
It’s because that is the role each must play. It’s a good cop/bad cop routine, but they are working for the same people (other than themselves). In order to create the illusion of choice and to prevent revolution, the two parties have to differ in their rhetoric and their positions on a few emotionally charge cultural issues (abortion and gay rights being the two biggest of the moment). So the Republicans get to be more honest about working for very greedy, dishonest people. Further, their useful idiots (the religious right) are more likely to boycott elections if they aren’t thrown a bone every now and then. Why do they worry about elections if they are working for the same people? Because the winning team gets more perks.
P.S. To my post #22: By “working for the same people,” I don’t mean the American people. I mean the plutocrats that fund their campaigns, give plum jobs to their family members and hire them as board members and well-paid lobbyists when they go through the revolving door.
Remember the golden rule: He with the gold rules.
Go, Spocko, go!
Did you read about the recent Payola story about foreign governments funding RW “Journalists?” I’m betting that are other cases of this, I always like to use their own traps against them because so often they are projecting when they create these things.
They assume that ACORN did bad stuff because THEY do bad stuff.
One of the other ways to hit the RW organizations is to dig into their OWN rules and regulations. It’s one thing if an employee violates government law, but if they thumb their noses at the company’s rules? That’s another story. Sometimes the crazy rightwinger are tolerated because they “stick it to the man” (aka Big Government) but what happens when a Big Government contract is jeopardize because of crazy RW attack comments?
I’ve used that strategy on one of the right wing radio show hosts who was attacking Iraqi’s. The Iraqi ambassador was in SF looking to see where to put an embassy. I sent the Ambassador and the State Dept, and the City business community the audio clips of the host saying we should kill everyone in Iraq. I also made sure that his bosses knew that he was calling for genocide of our allies.
I made it into an ‘international incident’ because I wanted everyone to know that this radio host is not just bad for business he is bad for international relations.
Now you might laugh it off, but that is not the kind of publicity the radio station wanted. They told the host to knock it off and he was too stubborn to obey his corporate master. So they fired him. He couldn’t cry about his 1st Amendment rights being violated because it wasn’t the government telling him to knock it off. It was his own corporation, who pay him. And if he wanted to keep getting paid he would need to modify his behavior. He wouldn’t so they fired him. Ironically he used his labor union to sue them for breach of conflict and won. He always would bitch about the Unions, but when he needed them they were there. Typical Right Winger.
” he is trying to censor me!, it would be untrue.
Wow – you are one smart cookie! :)
the people you need to talk to are the rich. the very rich people in this country who find foaming at the mouth conservatism distasteful. there are a few of them. often, the wives are much more liberal than the husbands. rich gays would be a good target for this discussion, as well.
a lot of rich people just don’t think about politics, or worry for the direction this country is headed in. they don’t have to, they’re rich. but i’m sure at least some of them actually care about the plight of the poorest and most vulnerable, the environment, gay rights, etc.
it’s getting in the door that is the hard part. one of the problems the left has right now is that the obama administration has been very good, and very consistent, telling rich liberal donors to only give to groups the administration approves, which of course is not a list that has a lot of progressive groups on it.
i think a guerilla approach is called for. people like spocko aren’t going to get invited to tony celebrity politician rich people fundraisers and shindigs and parties. you don’t get in the door unless you’ve got a big check in your hand. but rich people, who often don’t really care about politics that much, have other hobbies. track some down on the golf course, or at a restaurant, or something like that.
have a fundraising list/argument in hand. short, to the point, impassioned but not to desperate sounding. they find that distasteful. something like “Hello Ms. Richee. My name is spoko. i did some research and discovered you gave money to X charity last year. i’m working on a story that will improve the condition of X in america. i’d like to ask if you’d donate to (tax exempt organization that employs spoko that he’s created for this purpose) so that we can make that possible.” don’t badger, don’t froth at the mouth at the fact that she’s wearing rocks worth more than you’ll make in 20 years. flattery works too. “you’re so generous, we really respect that in a great humanitarian like you.” be sure to have a short list of “victories” to present as proof of your abilities. expect skepticism. but smile, and remain friendly.
“Did you read about the recent Payola story about foreign governments funding RW ‘Journalists?’”
So aside from the hippie intertube sites, where did that story appear? Did any “legitimate” media pick it up? (Question is partially facetious and partially serious – I’ve been holed up with work for weeks and haven’t been following even the intertubes that much!)
“i’d like to ask if you’d donate to (tax exempt organization that employs spoko that he’s created for this purpose)…” Don’t forget to push the Spocko buttons and sweatshirts! :)
You are correct sir. One of the reasons that this won’t get picked up by the MSM is that if you scratched some of their OP-ED writers you might find the same stuff.
I figured out a long time ago that the MSM has too people covering to much crap that you have to Make the News (as the Scoop Niscker used to say on KFOG) and if THEY are part of the scandal it’s hard for them cover it.
I actually did go to a party like this with a Ms Richee. I found that I’m very bad at asking for money, especially for myself.
A Scoop Nisker reference! *sigh* You’re so dreamy! :)
Apologies to those already aware of this latest example of O’Keefe’s perfidy:
“Conservative activist James O’Keefe earned praise for secretly taping Virginia Rep. Jim Moran’s son Patrick seemingly giving advice on how to commit voter fraud in October, but three months later law enforcement has closed their investigation because, they say, O’Keefe wouldn’t cooperate.”
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/01/cops-blame-james-okeefe-sinking-their-investigation-his-voter-fraud-sting/61660/
Yes, despite secretly taping Patrick Moran, editing the footage so Moran seemed to be espousing voter fraud, and then releasing it as his latest “expose” of left-wing corruption, O’Keefe has steadfastly refused to release the unedited footage to investigators — investigators who could file criminal charges against Moran … if there’s any ACTUAL proof against him.
O’Keefe responded to the above story via email:
“The video and the subsequent actions of both Patrick Moran and Congressman Moran speak for themselves. What we saw on the video was so obviously damning and inappropriate that Pat Moran immediately resigned, and his father’s office released a statement saying that what he had done was wrong. I don’t need to make any comment beyond that.”
I think the problem with progressives is that not only are we disinclined to sink to O’Keefe’s gutter level tactics, we’re still shocked by and unprepared for them when they’re employed.
I’m not suggesting we use O’Keefe’s gutter level tactics, mostly because in many cases actual journalism can get the goods. But one of the things that journalist don’t often understand is the picking of and then selling of a story.
At O’Keefe University he talked about how they would do stuff that involved an elected official like a Governor. Then when they broke the story on Big Government the MSM would need to get a quote from the governor commenting on the story. If they didn’t involve the governor they could have just ignored it.
Also, not just the targets but the whole premises of his “stings” are designed for controversy. We could do the same, and legally, but too often people think that it would have “sink to their level” to get the story. Not true.
Right now I’ve been working on learning to edit and video tape people in public discussions. I do it in places that are public, where I can legally tape. Now I will act like a journalist to get the story, but then I will act like a PR guy to push the story. “What’s the sexy bit? What might get the MSM to write about this?” And I started it all out as an activist thinking, “What story can I do that will be interesting and also illustrate my point?”
Sometimes its something funny. Sometimes it’s controversial.
Sometimes it involves celebrities.
For example when my blog was shut down by ABC/Disney because of a bogus claim of copyright infringement I went out with a story (backed by the EFF) about fair use and copyright. That give the MSM a “real hook” to cover, but the stuff that made it ‘sexy’ were the vicious audio clips of the hosts talking about killing people, blowing their brains out and their Muslim bigotry.
I had a strategy about how to bring attention to these host’s violent rhetoric and then a method to defund them followed by a way to get coverage in the MSM. I made the story exciting. Good guys, bad guys, juicy audio clips PLUS a legal issue. Multiple layers to the story for different media to focus on.
To support a progressive activist who is media savvy doesn’t mean you have to support a RW O’Keefe, but there are some things that he does that are media savvy. He has to make stuff up to get his story, we don’t, since the RW is so often breaking the law, overreaching or overreacting. And if we don’t find the vicious comment, law breaking or smoking gun we just don’t do the story!
We don’t ignore all the tactics he uses that gets attention, just the unethical and illegal ones.
I suspected a lot of what I heard at the seminar, but to hear the RW media come out and say, ‘Send me your out of context quotes and I’ll play them until the politician call us to correct us” was astonishing. And that is the kind of stuff that someone above mentioned. We need to know how to respond to their crap. Instantly and then turn it around on them (and where possible) make it cost them. I’m all for figuring out leverage points. What do they really care about? Who do they really listen to? What will force them to change behavior? What do they ignore? Who are they afraid of? Who do they think is in their pocket?”
The answers to all these questions help decide what strategy to use against them.
“I think the problem with progressives is that not only are we disinclined to sink to O’Keefe’s gutter level tactics, we’re still shocked by and unprepared for them when they’re employed.” Yep – absotively posilutely.
Obama signed off on the defunding. What’s that say about him and the Dems. ACORN was never going to get it’s day in court because the right owns both parties these days.
Book Salon up with Sarah Erdreich’s Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement hosted by Pamela Merritt (Sharkfu)
The important takeaway from this story is that the DEMOCRATIC PARTY DID NOT EVEN ATTEMPT TO HELP ACORN after this debacle for little to no fault of ACORN. This says all there is to say about how ungrateful an institution the Democratic party really is. Buyer beware. Everything including allegiance is for sale to the highest bidder.
The whole country was sucker to the mainstreen media, at the time.
At least, there has been plenty of exposure of crooked journalism and the American people has wised-up to it. I just hope all our politicians have finally wised-up to the dirty tricks journalism also.