O’Keefe and Giles portray a pimp and a prostitute, respectively, and walked into an ACORN office and proceeding to ask questions on how to go about setting up a business that would involve the prostitution of underage girls from South America, that were to be smuggled in across the border. While this seems like it should throw up a red flag to most people, the employees caught on hidden camera of ACORN said that there was no one in the office that would pass judgment on Giles’ questionable source of income, as well as attire when she went to these meetings with employees. Some videos have been reported to reveal that some employees actually suggested that the underage girls could be reported as dependents of Giles on tax papers to help their business grow. This seems like hardly a small story, however when the original videos and story was leaked out on Fox News, The New York Times did not report until days after.

This brings up the question of why did it take the NY Times that long to acknowledge the story? Answer, they wanted to make sure they had all the facts before publishing a story that would label them in favor or a political affiliation rather than another in an effort to remain unbiased and loyal to its readers. Clark Hoyt of the NY Times said in his Public Editor column that he was told from some editors that they did not know about the story. I find this a little hard to believe seeing as how a trip to the production level of the more local Star Ledger, based in Newark, NJ, showed desks with cable boxes in just about every section of desks in order for reporters to catch breaking news and possibly leads to developing stories.

However, in all of this it was the website Big Government and its owner/operator Andrew Breitbart who organized the release of the videos on the internet as well as their leak to Fox News. Brietbart used his website in order to release the videos that would bring upon the fall of ACORN, which has since lost funding from the government as well as others due to the lack of desire to be associated with an organization the provides advice to pimps and whores. In all of this I find this a prime example of how something posted on the internet can ruin the image of an organization or person that set out to do something good, more commonly heard of as libel, which if you read my previous post you know more or less about that fun topic.

Moreover, in searching for these articles about ACORN I found other various links to previous scandals and other dirty dealings that have happened with ACORN. It is possible also that with that many shady details about an organization as it stands already, does one want to publish anything more about them without having the proper information.

The Articles I referred to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/opinion/27pubed.html?_r=1 Clark Hoyt “Tuning In Too Late”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/opinion/04pubed.html Clark Hoyt “Notes about Bias, From Opposite Points of View”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/30/AR2009103003737.html Perry Bacon Jr. “ACORN video creates new conservative star”

http://biggovernment.com/2009/10/21/acorn-video-prostitution-scandal-in-philadelphia-pa-part-i/ James O’Keefe “ACORN Video: Prostitution Scandal in Philadelphia, PA Part I”

So I took it upon myself to take a closer look at what exactly comes up when I Google searched my name, seeing as how this would be the first step most employers and even I would assume professors would take if they wanted to learn about the private life of their employees or students, respectively. The first links that come up at my Twitter account, TruRiot, followed by a post I made on someone else’s twitter account, followed by Facebook, which I’ve actually looked through carefully to make sure that no images of me that are tagged are showing anything that is potentially harmful to my future. The next links that appear are my Classmates.com profile that I no longer use, Loopd.com, a website to sponsor athletes for snowboarding, and my name on a schedule for volunteering as CampMaster at Camp Glen Gray in Mahwah, NJ. Going deeper through the search I find articles that have been posted online that I have written for the NJIT Vector student newspaper, a posting on Craigslist.com, my personal NJIT website, my name appearing on friends’ Facebook Pages, my MySpace blog, and my name on the Dean’s List at NJIT. I thought this was not that bad of things to find on me, as they can potentially help my situation seeing as it shows I volunteer, I have written articles for  a newspaper, and that I made Dean’s List too, not to mention a little insight into my interests as well.

However, I wanted to see something a bit different. So I did a Google Image search of my name. Surprisingly, the only images of myself that came up are the default image pictures I have on Facebook. This actually leaves me somewhat happy to know that not every tagged picture of me shows up on an image search. Although, I took another step further I Bing.com image searched myself, and a picture of my father at work came up. Although, when using Bing to just search my name in general, It found my NJIT homepage and Facebook right away, followed by the same articles, as well as articles published about me from high school about being a contest winning poet.

I find that no matter which way you search my name. I find that I have a clean slate going into it either way but then again I make sure to be careful of what I personally post to the internet as well as what I publish to the internet. After a small snag during the summer, I have begun to take things differently and post different things on the web. I feel that maybe sometimes keeping stuff private is just as hard as trying to make yourself shine in the public.

My name is Brian and I am 20 years old, and will be 21 in December. I have lived in Newark, NJ my entire life and have always lived in the same house with my parents, and brother, who recently moved out after getting married this past December. I went to high school at Seton Hall Prep in West Orange, NJ and like I said before I am currently at NJIT. I have a lot of interests and feel like I spread myself out a little bit too much at times. Among my interests are music, snowboarding, graphic design, and photography.

My primary interest in music, is listening to it. I am an avid listener to all varieties of rock from Green Day to Pink Floyd and everything else in-between. I am also interested from the side of a musician as well. I have played guitar for about 8 years now and have recently have started to learn to play a bit of bass guitar and drums as well. However, my main role in the music scene is here local in NJ. I currently run my own company/organization that hosts shows in the surrounding area with local bands that I have become friends with over the years.

I have been snowboarding since I was a sophomore in high school, and have been trying to push myself every time I’m out on the mountain. I took the past season off for various reasons, but mostly financial reasons, and am anxious to get back this upcoming season. I am not sponsored though, although I really would like to be. I think I ride at an intermediate level and have a pretty unique style of riding that is laid back, but don’t get me wrong I love to go big on my jumps and do tricks. My only one injury from snowboarding was nearly breaking my shoulder when the nose of my board dug into ice while landing a jump and spun me around so fast that my shoulder and head crashed into the ice. On the other end of the spectrum, the craziest stunt I have done involved a camp with a foot a snow, and a giant’s staircase made out of logs and a steep hill. I flew down and jumped each “step” and then flew out off the last one onto the stone trail beyond the stairs.

Photography became a major interest of mine during my junior year in high school when I took a photography course. I developed knowledge of techniques and skills, but came into my own style during my college years when I started photographing bands. As for graphic design, I would say I picked it up through trade while working for a sign company in Bloomfield, NJ. Years later I’ve come to sharpen my skills and make a personal style in graphic design for myself that follows more of a European influence, rather than American. I push for simplicity and little details that make the work more unique.

That is a pretty rough sketch of what I do and at any given moment of any given day I am doing at least one of the above mentioned things. There are other sides to me and other smaller interests I do, but I will write more on those at a later time. This is the tip of the iceberg, but there are still miles to go to learn about me. However, I will leave you all with this line I came up with about myself: “I’m like new technology, months later you’re still finding new features.”

Brian V.