Heck yeah, the camera lies

Unless I'm watching a different ACORN-sting video than everyone else, what this episode mainly reveals is how hopelessly meaningless meaning has become. There are so many edits in the video, hardly any full sentences survive uncut. If I had to guess from watching the footage itself without the titles and voice-overs, I suppose I'd think I was watching someone get advice on hiding herself, her children and her assets from an abusive boyfriend. Maybe the people in the video are talking about what the filmmakers say they're talking about; it's simply impossible to tell from the available footage.

If mainstream media outlets, which actually try to fully represent what people say, are liars, how are these filmmakers, with their cuts and voice-overs and supertitles and dramatic music, not liars? After being told for years that accuracy itself is a liberal weakness, perhaps it makes sense that only a film that deliberately shuns the techniques of accuracy is to be believed.

On another level, as a onetime (and perhaps future) nonprofit manager, the ACORN fiasco has got me thinking about the wisdom of being a "volunteer-driven" organization. That always sounds good, but what you get when you have amateurs (which I mean in the dictionary-definition sense) do the work, is an amateurish (which I now mean in a slightly more pejorative sense) work product. With their emphasis on training and safety, volunteer fire and ambulance services perhaps should be the role models for the rest of the sector.