Pimping Lies

by digby

Via TPM I see that the Massachusetts Attorney General has released its report on ACORN and those videos. He found that the ACORN reps acted inappropriately and unprofessionally but not illegally. Surprise.

But this is really interesting:

The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O’Keefe’s and Ms. Giles’s comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.

Now why would they have done that do you suppose? (Has anyone ever watched a John Oliver or Stephen Colbert satirical interview? If you have, then I would guess you know what may have happened here …)

The greater question I have is why nobody in the media didn’t bother to look closely at those tapes (especially the New York Times which went to great lengths to atone for missing the original “story,” to the point of assigning an editor to watch FoxNews and listen to Rush Limbaugh so they wouldn’t be caught short again.) Apparently it didn’t even occur to them that since these lil’ wingnuts had an agenda that they might just doctor the videos.

The Democratic congress which reacted to the hissy fit with all the maturity of a seventh grade girl scout troop could have looked into this as well.

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