Update: Matthew Vadum responds to the questions that the Huffington Post refused to ask him.
Specifically, their "reporter" Seth Colter Walls in "Fox News, GOP Tag-Team Obama With Voter Fraud Smear." Let's begin the deconstruction.
Friday morning, I made a 7:45am appearance on the Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends to discuss how nearly every media outlet is avoiding like the plague any coverage of Illinois Senator Barack Obama's long relationship with ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), the serially criminal voter registration outfit.
So as to better explain why the press, who love Sen. Obama with the intensity of a thousand suns, would be steering clear of reporting on the connections, I cited briefly some basic factual information about Sen. Obama's dealings with ACORN. The media are sitting on this information because they know it would be very damaging to Sen. Obama and his Presidential campaign.
I utilized a variety of sources in conducting my research. The National Review's Stanley Kurtz has been, sometimes while under vicious assault from the Obama campaign, researching and reporting on Sen. Obama's past relationships with radical individuals and groups, including ACORN. I read several of his essays, including "Inside Obama's Acorn." The Wall Street Journal's John Fund has just written a very pertinent book entitled Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, and he graciously sent me some choice words to peruse.
But most of my information came from Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center. Matthew is a good friend and a very intelligent guy, and he and Elias Crim co-wrote an investigative opus on Sen. Obama and his left-wing ties entitled Barack Obama: A Radical Leftist's Journey from Community Organizing to Politics.
Published in June of this year, it is thoroughly researched, comprehensive and very well written, and it has been so well-received and is so respected that it has already been cited in three books: Fund's aforementioned Stealing Elections, David Freddoso's The Case Against Barack Obama (he too has received the Obama campaign's censorship treatment) and Brad O'Leary's The Audacity of Deceit.
I spoke with Vadum at length and he kindly provided me with much information.
Later in the day on Friday, a transcript of my appearance was - unbeknownst to me -- sent out via email by the Republican National Committee. (Judging by the title of Walls's piece, it appears the Huffington Post is shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that the RNC watches Fox News and occasionally sends things that it finds there to its list. To the Huffington Post, that's not media monitoring, that's a tag-team conspiracy.)
We have so often seen left-wing hack attack journalists playing games with what someone says. They pull words and phrases out of their proper context and intentionally fail to include things that would completely destroy the premise of the hit-pieces they wish to fictitiously produce.
And so it is with the thoroughly dishonest Walls.
Friday afternoon, I returned to my office to find a voicemail message from Walls. I cheerfully and in good spirits and faith returned his call. I know the Huffington Post to be a generally horrid entity, but I am friendly with one of their contributors, Norman Horowitz, a liberal man of honesty, honor and integrity. I figured I would give Walls the benefit of the doubt. My mistake.
From his hit piece:
Seton Motley, reached at his Media Research Center office Friday afternoon, abruptly refused to engage in depth with the Obama camp's response to his Fox & Friends segment (after first saying "I'm all ears").
Asked whether he would similarly condemn the Justice Department for joining ACORN in the suit against Illinois, he said, "well, yes I would, but that's not the issue." Before the Obama spokesman's other charges could be detailed, Motley put the brakes on the conversation. "The name of our group is Media Research Center," he said, noting that the only purpose of his effort on Fox was to draw attention to a lack of stories on the matter. "I'm not going to be able to respond to challenges from the Obama campaign."
I was indeed, in the spirit of ingenuous cooperation, "all ears." At the OUTSET of the call, when NO indication as to the content of the questions was yet made known to me. I "abruptly refused to engage in depth" with him the moment I learned of what his queries consisted. Here's why.
As Walls wrote, I said that "(t)he name of our group is Media Research Center," and that we analyze the media. He omitted what I said next, which was that examining the media is our sole mission because we, as a 501(c)3 organization (on the phone, I said something like "by our charter"), are prohibited from doing anything like "respond(ing) to challenges from the Obama campaign."
Leaving out the additional information I provided allowed Walls to paint me as unreasonably unresponsive and uncooperative. I was in fact quite accommodating.
Still operating under the assumption that Walls was seeking facts for a fair presentation, I offered up two people with whom he should speak to get answers to his questions. I first briefly mentioned Kurtz, as Walls mentions.
But then I immediately mentioned Vadum, which Walls omits. I referenced his research paper and explained how he was THE man with whom to speak. I then gave Walls Vadum's cell phone number, again suggesting that Walls should definitely speak with Vadum.
The conversation with Walls ended there. So too obviously did his feeble search for the truth.
Needless to say, Walls never called Vadum, choosing instead to pull two short excerpts from Kurtz's ACORN piece, use them to set-up a fraudulent straw-man and then knock it down. So much easier to do that than to actually engage someone in a dialogue.
Vadum was ready and able to do so. Walls clearly was not.
Update: So willing was Vadum that he wrote his responses to the questions that never came, which you can find here. Perhaps someone should send this link to the incurious Walls and the dishonest Huffington Post.
