ACORN dissolving national structure due to “damage to the brand”

When they’re making pimp jokes about you on South Park, I guess it’s time to regroup. Let the regrouping begin!

“ACORN has dissolved as a national structure of state organizations,” said a senior official close to the group, who declined to be identified by name because of the fierce conservative attacks on the group that began when a conservative filmmaker caught some staffers of its tax advisory arms on tape appearing to offer advice on incorporating a prostitution business…

“Consistent with what the internal recommendations have been, each of the states are developing plans for reconstitution independence and self-sufficiency,” said the official, citing ACORN’s “diminished resources, damage to the brand, unprecedented attacks.”…

“It’s not like this is some kind of hostile thing,” said the New York source. “This is what Fox has produced. National Acorn and Bertha Lewis are continuing doing their thing, but the New York flagship has been foreed into this new organization.”

“As far as the work in the communities and policy campaigns, no one will notice the difference,” the source said. “It’s people who still believe in their basic mission of fighting for poor people.”

Sounds like it’s mainly a PR move to let the local chapters get out from under the weight of the scandal — the name changes have already begun — and, as DrewM says, to give them greater deniability the next time some lurid scandal breaks at a local chapter. To listen to wingnut propaganda, you’d think that bad behavior in Brooklyn and Philly and Baltimore and D.C. and San Diego and San Bernardino and god knows where else represented some kind of systemic problem.

You know who’s going to miss them the most? A special guy, that’s who.

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