Michelle Malkin » Explaining the “community organizer” joke to the outraged Left

Explaining the “community organizer” joke to the outraged Left

By Michelle Malkin • September 5, 2008 09:23 AM

One of the best moments of Wednesday’s GOP convention — and there were many — was Rudy Giuliani’s jab at Barack Obama’s days as a “community organizer.” The follow-up from Gov. Sarah Palin was icing on the cake.

On cue, Team Obama and its satellites in the blogosphere reacted with ginned-up outrage. The Obama camp sent not one, but two, missives to its worshipers claiming grave offense and asking for donations to help fight the meanie Republicans. Kos posted an e-mailing likening Obama to the community organizer Jesus and Palin to Pontius Pilate. And the Atlantic suggested it was…RACIST!

My second syndicated column of the week patiently explains the joke the Left doesn’t seem to get. Adding to the punchline: After I filed my column yesterday afternoon, ACORN issued a press release condemning the “condescending attacks” on all the good-hearted community organizers like them.

Laughing out loud.

(**Check this out: Obama’s leftist claptrap on community organizing.**)

More fun: Here and here.

Plus: Hey, guess who else was a “community organizer?” And guess who wasn’t so fond of community organizing after all?

One more great satire you must read: Iowahawk.

***

Why Obama’s “community organizer” days are a joke
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2008

Rudy Giuliani had me in stitches during his red-meat keynote address at the GOP convention. I laughed out loud when Giuliani laughed out loud while noting Barack Obama’s deep experience as a “community organizer.” I laughed again when VP nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin cracked: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities.”

Team Obama was not amused. (Neither were the snarky left-wingers on cable TV who are now allergic to sarcasm.) They don’t get why we snicker when Obama dons his Community Organizer cape. Apparently, the jibes rendered Obama’s advisers sleepless. In a crack-of-dawn e-mail to Obama’s followers hours after Giuliani and Palin spoke, campaign manager David Plouffe attempted to gin up faux outrage (and, more importantly, donations) by claiming grave offense on the part of community organizers everywhere. Fumed Plouffe:

“Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack’s experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed. Let’s clarify something for them right now. Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.”

Let me clarify something. Nobody is mocking community organizers in church basements and community centers across the country working to improve their neighbors’ lives. What deserves ridicule is the notion that Barack Obama’s brief stint as a South Side rabble-rouser for tax-subsidized, partisan non-profits qualifies as executive experience you can believe in.

What deserves derision is “community organizing” that relies of a community of homeless people and ex-cons to organize for the purpose of registering dead people and shaking down corporations and using the race card as a bludgeon.

As I’ve reported previously, Obama’s community organizing days revolved around training grievance-mongers from the far left group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). The ACORN mob is infamous for its bully tactics (which they dub “direct actions”); Obama supporters have recounted his role in organizing an ambush of a government planning meeting on a landfill project opposed by Chicago minority lobbies.

With benefactors like Obama in office, ACORN has milked nearly four decades of government subsidies to prop up chapters that promote the welfare state, undermine the free market, and perpetuate illegal immigration and voter fraud. Since I last detailed ACORN’s illicit activities in this column in June (see “The ACORN Obama knows,” June 19, 2008), the group continues to garner scrutiny of law enforcement:

Last week, Milwaukee’s top election official announced plans to seek criminal investigations of 37 ACORN employees accused of offering gifts to sign up voters (including pre-paid gas cards and restaurant cards) or falsifying driver’s license numbers, Social Security numbers or other information on voter registration cards.

Last month, a New Mexico TV station reported on child rapists, drug offenders, and forgery convicts on ACORN’s payroll. In July, Pennsylvania investigators asked the public for help in locating a fugitive named Luis R. Torres-Serrano, who is accused “of submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registration forms he collected on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now to county election officials.” Also in July, a massive, nearly-$1 million embezzlement scheme by top ACORN officials was exposed.

ACORN’s political arm endorsed Obama in February and has ramped up efforts to sign up voters across the country. In the meantime, completely ignored by the mainstream commentariat and clean-election crusaders, the Obama campaign admitted failing to report $800,000 in campaign payments to ACORN. They were disguised as payments to a front group called “Citizen Services, Inc.” for “advance work.”

Jim Terry, an official from the Consumer Rights League, a watchdog group that monitors ACORN, noted: “ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain. Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama’s political gain.” With a wave of his magic wand, Obama changed his FEC forms to change the “advance work” to “get-out-the-vote” work.

Now, don’t you dare challenge his commitment to following tax and election laws. And don’t you even think of entertaining the possibility that The One exploited a non-profit supposedly focused on helping low-income people for political gain.

He was just “organizing” his “community.” Guffaw.

Posted in: ACORN Watch, Voter fraud

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#442610

On September 5th, 2008 at 8:06 pm, AlohaGuy said:

Remind me…has it come out that he actually (not part of the myth) turned down more lucrative job offers? I ask because I read he graduated without honors so I wondered if he was like many college graduates who were just drifting after college without the prospects they hoped for.

In actual fairness – not my usual – after being Editor of the Harvard Law Journal, he would have been inundated with six figure jobs from everywhere. SCOTUS law clerking, law firms, major corporations, the mailbox would have exploded – no wait, that was the letter from Ayers…
#442639

On September 5th, 2008 at 8:49 pm, FilmLadd said:

On September 5th, 2008 at 7:55 pm, b-cat said:

I appreciate your posts, FilmLadd. You are not easily distracted from the distaste you have for socialism.

Thanks b! It’s pretty much for any collectivism, which is anathema to true freedom of discourse.

Speaking of freedom of discourse, too bad the current site doesn’t have a user’s lounge, lots of great folks here, and lots of fun to be had with hive-minds…

Maybe a future upgrade? Malkin 2.0…
#442644

On September 5th, 2008 at 8:51 pm, Khyris said:

There is no lounge because they do not make chairs small enough for hive-minds

That is all.
#442703

On September 5th, 2008 at 10:08 pm, desertdweller said:

The crowd participation chanting “Zero! Zero! Zero!” is one of my favorite parts of Rudy’s speech.

But there’s been NO mention of it anywhere.
#442776

On September 5th, 2008 at 11:25 pm, texrunner2003 said:

I heard today that when Palin became the mayor of the town in Alaska that the town had a balanced budget. When she left it was 27 million dollars in the deficit. Does anyone know if this is a true or not?
#442780

On September 5th, 2008 at 11:34 pm, St. Louis Blue said:

On September 5th, 2008 at 11:25 pm, texrunner2003 said:

I heard today that when Palin became the mayor of the town in Alaska that the town had a balanced budget. When she left it was 27 million dollars in the deficit. Does anyone know if this is a true or not?

I heard that a certain poster owns way too many Elton John albums.

Does anyone know if this is a true or not?
#442781

On September 5th, 2008 at 11:36 pm, nyk said:

Food panties? You mean like those “Sweet Cheeks” edibles they used to advertise?

You poor thing. Is this your way of telling us you’re illiterate? Because that would explain A LOT.
#442783

On September 5th, 2008 at 11:37 pm, St. Louis Blue said:

And I just don’t think that aiding those in need (aren’t most of you here Christians?) is ever a bad thing.

Robbing others is always wrong, no matter what you do with the proceeds.
#442787

On September 5th, 2008 at 11:43 pm, Dimsdale said:

On September 5th, 2008 at 4:39 pm, Goldwater Knight said:

Nyk said:

Republicans place as much value on working for the poor as they do on the poor themselves — little to none. For at least part of the day after Palin’s speech my friends and I emailed jokes about how quintessentially Republican it is to imply that community organizing is worthless: The premise, basically? “Why, of course they’d think it’s not important! After all, that’s pretty much the same thing they think of the very people in those communities.”

Conservatives charitably donate 30% more than liberals as a whole?

abcnews.go.com — ABC reports on charitable donations: “It turns out that this idea that liberals give more …is a myth. Of the top 25 states where people give an above average percent of their income, 24 were red states in the last presidential election… Turns out conservatives give about 30 percent more, [despite] making less money.” Hopefully both can give more.

It is interesting to note that the Obama’s are loathe to part with their own money for charitable donations unless it benefits them politically.

To wit:

For Obama, charity really began in the U.S. Senate

By Bob Secter | Tribune staff reporter
April 25, 2007

(snip)
The national average for charitable giving has long hovered at 2.2 percent of household income, according to the Glenview-based Giving USA Foundation, which tracks trends in philanthropy. Obama tax returns dating to 1997 show he fell well below that benchmark until 2005, the year he arrived in Washington.
(snip)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0704250022apr25,0,3205433.story

and

Obamas’ Tax Returns Show Donation Spike
By LESLIE WAYNE
Published: March 26, 2008

(snip)
The Obamas’ returns are striking on a number of levels. They show that the couple made very few charitable contributions, sometimes less than 1 percent of taxable income, until Mr. Obama began his run for the White House.

In 2004, before Mr. Obama entered the Senate, he and his wife gave $2,500 to charity, 1.2 percent of the taxable income. The next year, the donations jumped, to $77,315, or nearly 5 percent of the taxable income.

“Their charitable giving only went up when it looked like he was campaigning for the presidential office,” said Paul L. Caron, a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law and editor of the TaxProf Blog, which examines tax questions and has posted the returns.
(snip)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/us/politics/26taxes.html

I recommend you read both articles for all the details.

Do you see a trend here? Do you remember the pathetic donations made by Gore and Clinton?

It is really easy to tell others how, when and how much to give while neglecting to do the same oneself.

Is that hypocrisy? I mean, how does one reconcile what the Obamas do with what they preach?
#442791

On September 5th, 2008 at 11:54 pm, nyk said:

I recommend you read both articles for all the details.

I absolutely will. Promise.
#443129

On September 6th, 2008 at 10:14 am, FilmLadd said:

On September 5th, 2008 at 11:43 pm, Dimsdale said:

It is really easy to tell others how, when and how much to give while neglecting to do the same oneself.

Good, but let’s reword a bit to say instead:

It is really easy to get the State to confiscate private property from individuals in the name of the poor than to give one’s own money to the poor.

Which is exactly why hive-mind, possessing the body of the poster known as

NYK

ignored post #365.

Hive-mind has no answer.
#443155

On September 6th, 2008 at 10:31 am, lgm said:

How would you know whether Obama is a joke? You obviously have no sense of humor. The letter posted by Kos: “Jesus was a community organizer, …” was a joke.

Clue for the clueless: it was poking fun at wingnuts complaining that liberals think Obama is Jesus.
#443193

On September 6th, 2008 at 11:10 am, FilmLadd said:

On September 6th, 2008 at 10:31 am, lgm said:

How would you know whether Obama is a joke?

Because he makes us laugh, hive-mind.
#443607

On September 6th, 2008 at 4:53 pm, onthow said:

Firstly, not until Democrats repeatedly characterized Governor Palin’s experience as essentially that of a small-town mayor did she and other Republicans counter, quite fairly, by characterizing Senator Obama’s experience as essentially that of a community organizer. A very natural and effective retort. You misleadingly characterize my experience as consisting solely of a relatively unimpressive job that I once held, and I will return the favor and misleadingly characterize your experience as consisting solely of a relatively unimpressive job that you once held. Turnabout is fair arguing.

But not to The Great Teleprompter Reader. As only a lawyer can do, he took the very argument first used by Democrats against Governor Palin and distorted its reuse on him into an “attack” on community organizers. Quite sleazy. Obviously he is an intelligent man and no doubt understands that the purpose of the Republican rebuttal was to contrast the position of community organizer (is there such a thing?) with the position of President of the United States precisely in the same manner that Democrats contrasted the position of small-town mayor with the position of Vice President of the United States.

But I guess turnabout of a distortion is fair as well. Let me see:

Why would Democrats spend the days following the announcement of Governor Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate attacking ordinary people? With the whole nation watching, Democrats on the Internet and on television derided and ridiculed the thousands of Americans who are serving as mayors of our cities and towns. I’d like to know, Mr. Obama, how vitriolic attacks on the patriotic mayors of America will help lower health care costs and gas prices? How will the contempt Democrats have for American mayors– and the Americans who support them– help improve my child’s education and the security of our country?

And one last point: anyone who engages in Saul Alinsky-izing communities is not an ordinary person.
#448224

On September 9th, 2008 at 10:43 pm, Scottie said:

Didn’t Pilot vote ‘present’ when he was consulted?

I’m just saying, maybe this Jesus was a Community Organizer meme may have some unforeseen drawbacks. I also don’t recall Jesus asking the government for programs for the poor. Did you?