Pundit theory vs. activist practice, ACORN edition.  In 2008, I
(and most of the rest of the Online Right) engaged in a long and
unsuccessful fight against the notorious group ACORN.  It was,
honestly, a frustrating one: although you could show, time after
time after time again, that ACORN was routinely involved in
election fraud (including election registration fraud, which was
its usual apologists’ prime excuse/primary distraction) we never
could get any traction from that.  And ACORN knew this, and was
insufferably smug about it as they went on their merry way
urinating on the election process for the eventual benefit of
the Democratic party.  In 2009, I watched Andrew Breitbart and
his band of Merry Pranksters casually swat ACORN out of the air
like the annoying fly that it was – and they did it by
destroying the group’s primary reputation as a community group. 
Once people associated ACORN with ‘adviser to pimps of underage
El Salvadorean brothels,’ the money dried up, the name got
radioactive, and the g