(h/t derekthered)

(Original story and full letter can be seen at The Washington Independent)

Much has come out about Andrew Breitbart's now-infamous "Hooker & Pimp" charade, and smear campaign against ACORN. Now that ACORN has been cleared and it has been proven that the video was heavily edited and that James O'Keefe was in fact not dressed as a pimp, the community organizing group is firing back and the rats are scattering, begging for help.

Hannah Giles, who posed as a hooker in Breitbart's hit piece, is now appealing to wealthy, Republican donors to help pay her legal fees. Her appeal has come in the form of a letter, (pictured above) which can be described as nothing less than a delusional, right wing rant that is sure to trigger your gag reflex. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Sean Hannity himself wrote it. Notice how she claims credit for the video, referring to it as "my undercover video."

Poor thing, she chose to lie down with dogs and now she's crying about the fleas.

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I recently attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in D.C., with video camera in hand, to report on the attendees. I was particularly interested in interviewing James O'Keefe, the miscreant (and accused felon) responsible for the ACORN video media hoax that The BRAD BLOG has been meticulously detailing for several weeks, including the important focus on how the mainstream corporate media (the old-media) has been had by the scam.

O'Keefe's phony "pimp" story has been debunked, but, as Brad Friedman has shown, the old-media remains remarkably reticent to admit their errors, and the publisher of the videos, O'Keefe's employer and promoter, Andrew Breitbart has been unwilling to help them off the hook. Witness the outrageous email responses from the NYTimes' Senior Editor for Standards Greg Brock and then from their Public Editor Clark Hoyt, when it was shown to them that "the paper of record" had been had -- that O'Keefe had never "visited Acorn offices...dressed so outlandishly" in the now-infamous "pimp" costume as the paper had reported, as O'Keefe had represented, and as Breitbart himself had claimed in his own column, to the public.

While I didn't get the chance to speak with O'Keefe, I did catch up with his partner in fraud, Hannah Giles. Alas, she was surrounded by a protective coterie and fled without answering any questions when one of her entourage recognized me.

But then my luck turned. I trekked to the basement to cover the "XPAC" party and found myself standing shoulder to shoulder with Breitbart, O'Keefe's promoter, publisher and employer, and owner of the website which launched the infamously damaging, misleading, deceptive and highly doctored video tapes. I had previously questioned Breitbart at a press conference at the National Press Club press last October. He's had a pretty easy ride of it since then, facing questioning only from a largely adulatory press.

Though old-media, as Brad has shown, have been remarkably reluctant to demand answers to hard questions from Breitbart -- or any of the players involved in the ACORN secret video scheme -- I felt it important to do so for a number of reasons. The results were revealing, both in Breitbart's insanely manic demeanor, and in the substantive content of his answers to my questions.

Ultimately, as I believe you'll find in the video, he reveals a lot about his own editorial judgment, professionalism and reliability -- none of it is good…

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Max Blumenthal just posted his video from his weekend at CPAC. Max used to be able to go to these things and post some great guerrilla videos, but nowadays they all know what he looks like and he attracts a crowd of camera-carrying wingers.

He also manages anyway to elicit some prime goofiness when Hannah Giles, the woman who posed as a prostitute in James O'Keefe's ACORN videos, defends O'Keefe when Blumenthal asks why O'Keefe and Breitbart falsely pretended that he had worn an outlandish "pimp" outfit into those ACORN sessions (he hadn't). Blumenthal wonders why O'Keefe was putting on this "minstrel show", and Giles responded:

Giles: But James is a man. He couldn't have a menstrual cycle.

Then a right-wing kook tried to argue that the Black Congressional Caucus was an innately racist organization since it excludes whites. Nevermind that the difference between minority civil-rights organizations and white supremacists is that one is about defending people's civil rights, the other is about taking them away. Minority caucuses, unlike white-supremacist organization, are not about demonizing and belittling and disenfranchising other people. Equating minority caucuses with hate groups is the height of wingnuttery.

But the best was reserved for Breitbart, who wouldn't even deign to engage Blumenthal in a reasoned debate over the facts of the matter involving Max's on-point reportage about O'Keefe's dalliance with white supremacist Jared Taylor.

All Breitbart could manage was rage and spittle:

Breitbart: You're ridiculous. You are a joke. You are a despicable human being -- the lowest life form that I have ever seen. Your entire job is trying to destroy people with Alinsky tactics.

Explain to me what your political philosophy that you have, other than this nihilist --

Blumenthal: Did you want me to finish what I was gonna say, which is that --?

Breitbart: Not particularly, you've already said it.

Blumenthal: Well, then, do you have anything -- do you have any more insults?

Breitbart: You try to destroy people. I don't care -- yes, absolutely. I could go on for a year. You're disgusting.

I cannot believe that you're fighting your father's battles. I can't believe what you did to Christopher Hitchens, you are -- you have been programmed by some ungodly creature to be this character of hatred.

Blumenthal: So the --

Breitbart: Accusing a person of racism is the worst thing that you can do to someone.

Blumenthal: So you're defending Jared Taylor?

Breitbart: I'm not at all! Of course I'm not!

Blumenthal: Sounds like you're defending Jared Taylor.

Breitbart: No it isn't! No, you --

Blumenthal: John Derbyshire?

Breitbart: What do you mean? -- What are you talking about?

Blumenthal: I don't know. I mean, this is an event with two people who believe that whites are genetically superior. And Marcus Epstein planned it --

Breitbart: Kevin Martin was there debating at the Georgetown Law Center! You think -- this smearing tactic --

Blumenthal: Kevin Martin ended the event with his arm around Jared Taylor. He's from a total -- a front, a front group, he's from a front group that defends white nationalists.

Breitbart: Make your case. Make your case.

Blumenthal: I made my case.

Breitbart: This isn't a case, that's guilt by association, you punk.

Blumenthal: Why are you so angry?

Breitbart: Because you're a punk you destroy people.

Blumenthal: Your face is trembling.

Breitbart: Because you try to destroy people's lives through innuendo!

Blumenthal: I'm not calling any names.

Breitbart: Innuendo! We're done with you! Innuendo! Innuendo! In order to destroy people's lives! You're the most despicable life form I've ever seen!

[Applause]

Yeah, that's right: Andrew Breitbart has the chutzpah to accuse someone else of indulging in "innuendo" in order to "destroy people."

And what Blumenthal reported wasn't "guilt by association", which by definition involves irrelevant associations; whereas these associations are entirely relevant, since they speak directly to O'Keefe's motives and his ideology. Guys like Breitbart love to shout "guilt by association!" whenever they're called out for playing footsie with white supremacists, but they have no idea what it really means.

All in all, it's quite the hilarious spectacle. Somehow, Jonah Goldberg's description of Breitbart as a "crack addict on ten espressos" sounds about right, if understated.

When will Breitbart apologize for the phony O'Keefe/pimp-dressing ACORN story? I've been writing a lot about this story as has Neiwert and many others because it reminded us what "ratf*&king is all about. O'Keefe is Breitbart's Nixonian hit man.
And Brietbart pays the man a salary don't forget.

Eric Boehlert writes a great piece on Breitbart and the phony pimp story:

Last September, when the ACORN scandal that his website helped launch was breaking in the press, Andrew Breitbart wrote a column for The Washington Times detailing the rollout of the undercover, right-wing gotcha. He recalled a 2009 meeting with "filmmaker and provocateur James O'Keefe" that took place in Breitbart's office in June. It was there that O'Keefe played the columnist the surreptitiously recorded videos he'd made with his sidekick, Hannah Giles, and which captured the two famously getting advice from ACORN workers on how prostitutes could skirt tax laws.

In his Times column, Breitbart was quite clear about what he saw that day in his office: He watched videos of O'Keefe "dressed as a pimp" sitting inside ACORN offices "asking for -- and getting -- help" from the misguided employees.

But today we know that's almost certainly not true. Breitbart didn't huddle in his office and watch clips of O'Keefe "dressed as a pimp" chatting with ACORN employees, because based on all the available evidence, O'Keefe wasn't dressed as a pimp while taping inside the ACORN offices.

Make no mistake: Last fall, both Breitbart and O'Keefe, with the help of Fox News, did their best to confuse people about that fact. It's true the duo seemed to purposefully push that falsehood and mislead the public and the press about the ACORN story. And more importantly, they did it to make the ACORN workers captured on video look like complete jackasses for not being able to spot O'Keefe's pimp ruse a mile away.

But the story was not true...read on

Breitbart is a wanker for pushing the obvious lies, but the media and Congress were also duped and made to look like fools.

Digby has more:

This story is important. There's a long tradition of undercover muckraking that's initiated many an important social change in this country. But this isn't muckraking, it's political theatre. The level of cynical deception in this "story" runs several layers deeper than anything I've ever seen before, tapping into some really nasty, subterranean veins of stereotype, prejudice and racism --- on everyone's part --- to make what ends up being a completely distorted point.

The fact that what should have been instantly seen as an obviously absurd proposition was taken at face value even by the US congress and the major media institutions of this country should inform us a little bit about how tenuous our racial progress might just be. This was a shameful episode deserving of more scrutiny than it's gotten so far...read on

Congress should immediately reinstate funds to ACORN. This knee-jerk action by Congress was a travesty.

Remember, James O'Keefe's partner on an abortion documentary stopped working with him. She said he edited the video in a misleading way to make it look like things happened that didn't. (Imagine that!)

Anyway, now he and his newest collaborator can explain to a federal judge why he broke Pennsylvania's wiretap laws:

The Philadelphia-office director of the anti-poverty group ACORN filed a civil lawsuit late Thursday in federal district court alleging that two conservative filmmakers violated state law when they recorded an interview with her without her consent and then disseminated it.

State law prohibits the intentional interception, disclosure or use of oral communications.

The lawsuit alleges James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles showed up at ACORN's Philadelphia office last July "on the pretext" they were there for housing and mortgage advice and interviewed director Katherine Conway-Russell in her office.

According to the lawsuit, O'Keefe and Giles met with Conway-Russell in an "attempt to entrap" ACORN workers into behaving inappropriately. Conway-Russell told O'Keefe and Giles that she could help them only with mortgage opportunities but not with other matters, the lawsuit said.

O'Keefe and Giles later disseminated the audio and video recording of the interview to "injure and harm" Conway-Russell, according to the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages.

David Rudovsky, Conway-Russell's attorney, declined comment on the lawsuit. Contacted on his cell phone, O'Keefe declined comment and didn't respond to a reporter's e-mail questions.

O'Keefe and Giles attracted national media attention last summer when, posing as a pimp and prostitute, they approached two female seasonal workers in ACORN's Baltimore office, made a secret video recording of the meeting, then posted it online.

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(King Crimson - Went from "The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles, Giles and Fripp" to this - and never looked back)

A special installment of the Roundtable tonight. A live performance during what is considered the heyday of one of the milestone Progressive rock bands, King Crimson. This 1970 concert, recorded by the BBC has as close to the original lineup as possible.

I've often wondered what would have happened, had King Crimson never existed in the first place. So many bands from 1969 on owe so much to the pioneering work of Robert Fripp and company. I'm sure someone would have come along, and maybe the direction would have been totally different. Or maybe it would have stayed frozen in time.

No. The nice part about music is that it constantly changes - it never quite stays the same. That's what's great about it.

And that's what was so great about King Crimson - they were constantly evolving.

as are we . .