Glenn Beck Throws ACORN Spokesman Out Of Studio

By: Kevin Mooney
Examiner Investigative Reporter
05/06/09 5:48 PM


ACORN National Spokesman Scott Levenson was ejected from a Fox News studio Wednesday following an off-camera altercation with host Glenn Beck that involved racially charged comments, as they were described by Beck.

“I threw him out of the studio, get the hell out of my studio,” Beck told viewers he said after Levenson accused him of being “afraid of black people.”

Beck told listeners after the break that Levenson was expelled from the studio after he accused the host of being racist. Levenson appeared on the “Glenn Beck” show to respond to criminal charges filed against ACORN employees in Nevada on Monday. The non-profit organization, formally known as the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now, is under investigation nationwide for voter fraud in at least 12 different states.

In his exchange with Beck, the ACORN spokesman insisted that individual employees were responsible for the violations but not the national organization. Beck was not persuaded by this defense and persisted in his questioning.

Beck described the off-camera altercation to viewers and asked off-camera assistants to verify what was said during the break. This description to television viewers is as follows.

Who thinks that he told me…That I, what was it I thought that he said that I hate black people. How many here thought that he said that, as soon as the cameras went off…you thought… I was afraid of black people. That’s actually what he said to me…let’s just take it...because actually better than just I hate black people.

I’m standing here and he gets up and I say you sir, you and your organization are bad for America. And says, I’ll use yours...you’re just afraid of black people. I threw him out of the studio – get the hell out of my studio.

And then he went off... he went off.

ACORN did release a statement on the criminal indictments in Nevada that was critical of state officials.

This recent attack by the Nevada Secretary of State and Attorney General is the latest in an ongoing assault designed to blame the victim and prioritize media grandstanding above the pursuit of justice.

From the time ACORN first suspected that some of its employees had tried to defraud ACORN by turning in bogus forms, ACORN repeatedly called its suspicions to the attention of election officials and requested that they investigate immediately.

Our policy all along has been to pay workers at an hourly rate and to not pay employees based on any bonus or incentive program. When it was discovered that an employee was offering bonuses linked to superior performance, that employee was ordered to stop immediately.

It is unfortunate that the Secretary of State can't distinguish the victim from the villain.