Last April 15, I was walking around the Capitol grounds during the first Tax Day Tea Party. There were thousands of people there. The imponderably vast majority were just plain workadaddy, huggamommy Minnesotans who were upset about the Administration’s gargantuan mortgaging of our great-grandchildrens’ futures – people like me and, I suspect, most of you.
But as I wandered about, pondering what I was going to write about the event, I noticed a few people who I’d charitably call “fringe”. Including a few people with some anti-immigration signs that I could accurately call “groaningly racist”.
And I thought…:
- “Great; a dozen people out of 5,000 look like racist buffoons; you know who will get all the news coverage, don’t you?”
- “I’ll write about the Tea Party, and some leftyblogging wannabee moral watchdog will post one of those pictures, with post that says “Mitch Berg supports anti-hispanic racism”.
Declaring guilt by association – often the faintest, most tendentious assocation possible – is an oldie but goodie among those who’ve been 86ed from the marketplace of ideas. We saw this in the Twin Cities last year when local leftyblogger Jeff Fecke smeared Kevin Ecker and, by extension, all True North writers, for writing approvingly about a story about an anti-immigration activist who, it turned out much later, was also a neo-nazi.
The point? Guilt by very tenuous, context-free association is stupid.
And after a year of eating their lunch, it’s perhaps inevitable that James O’Keefe, of the classic ACORN “Pimp” stings, is on the receiving end, this time in a hit piece by Max Blumenthal at Salon.
The first part; set it up so that everyone you disagree with is in the same boat as your victim:
Many of the conservatives who gleefully promoted James O’Keefe’s past political stunts are feigning shock at his arrest on charges that he and three associates planned to tamper with Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s phone lines. Once upon a time, right-wing pundits hailed the 25-year-old O’Keefe as a creative genius and model of journalistic ethics. Andrew Breitbart, who has paid O’Keefe, called him one of the all-time “great journalists” and said he deserved a Pulitzer for his undercover ACORN video. Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly declared he should have earned a “congressional medal.”
Now, the whamma-jamma charge:
His right-wing admirers don’t seem to mind that O’Keefe’s short but storied career has been defined by a series of political stunts shot through with racial resentment. Now an activist organization that monitors hate groups has produced a photo of O’Keefe at a 2006 conference on “Race and Conservatism” that featured leading white nationalists. The photo, first published Jan. 30 on the Web site of the anti-racism group One People’s Project, shows O’Keefe at the gathering, which was so controversial even the ultra-right Leadership Institute, which employed O’Keefe at the time, withdrew its backing. But O’Keefe and fellow young conservative provocateur Marcus Epstein soldiered on to give anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism an opportunity to share their grievances and plans to make inroads in the GOP.
Wow.
That’s a pretty serious charge, if it’s true.
Of course, it’s not.
How do we know? Onward:
According to One People’s Project founder Daryle Jenkins, O’Keefe was manning the literature table at the gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism. OPP covered the event at the time, sending a freelance photographer to document the gathering. Jenkins told me the table was filled with tracts from the white supremacist right, including two pseudo-academic publications that have called blacks and Latinos genetically inferior to whites: American Renaissance and the Occidental Quarterly. The leading speaker was Jared Taylor, founder of the white nationalist group American Renaissance. “We can say for certain that James O’Keefe was at the 2006 meeting with Jared Taylor. He has absolutely no way of denying that,” Jenkins said. O’Keefe’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment on his client’s role in the conference.
But they responded to Larry O’Connor, at Breitbart’s Big Journalism. Who notes:
We would think that Mr. Blumenthal at Salon or Stephen Thrasher at the Village Voice, as responsible reporters, might have called Mr. O’Keefe to get his response to the allegations made in an obscure blog. But no. Instead they ran the story and (in the case of the Voice) actually added new and juicy lies to the myth.
Well, here at Big Journalism we think it’s a good idea to actually seek the truth.
So we spoke with James O’Keefe today. This is what he tells us:
- He was not “manning a table” at the event
- He was not involved with the organization or operations of the event.
- He attended the event with many of his Leadership Institute co-workers since it was right across the street from their building in Arlington, Va., and it was organized by other LI associates.
- The organizer who is being called a “White Supremacist” is half Jewish and half Korean.
- One of the panelist was an African-American named Kevin Martin.
- The event was forced to move to a Georgetown University building in Arlington, not at a cross-burning.
We know all this because we called Mr. O’Keefe and asked him. Which is more than other media outlets have done.
And, to be fair, more than any lefty does when “reporting” on this sort of defamatory character assassination.
We also spoke with Daryle Jenkins of One People’s Project, the man who started this entire legend. We asked if he had a photograph that actually showed O’Keefe “manning the table” as has been reported, and he said that this cropped photo was all they had. His claim that Mr. O’Keefe “manned” the table of literature is based on eye-witnesses who were at the event…
…Mr. Jenkins only produced the name of one witness: David Weigel who, at the time was a reporter with Reason Magazine.
Weigel is a noted lefty alt-journalist and, as noted in this blog, among the better among the species.
We called Mr. Weigel and he denied ever telling Mr. Jenkins that Mr. O’Keefe was “manning the table.” Indeed, he has already gone on record denying he said that.
So let’s reset:
Here is the story they actually have:
James O’Keefe attended a forum years ago that dealt with race and politics. The forum was located at a Georgetown University building (that’s right, a 21-year-old man attended an event on a college campus). The forum had as one of its three speakers a controversial figure, Jared Taylor, with a track record of making racist statements. He was being debated by two other people including Mr. Martin (taking issue with the racist figure). Mr. Taylor has also appeared with Phil Donohue, Queen Latifa and Paula Zahn on their TV shows to debate race. Are the audience members of the Donohue show racist for sitting and watching that debate?
Honestly, that isn’t much of a story. But… you put Mr. O’Keefe at a table full of racist literature and you say that he was manning the table. And you say you have a picture proving it. And you make it sound like he was one of the organizers of this event. And you call the event a “White Supremacist Conference”. Well… now you’ve got a story.
Only problem: It’s all a lie.
And when it comes to lefty character assassination – the only weapon they have against an activist who’s spent the last year eating their lunch in front of them – that’s the best they can do.
Let’s go back to Blumenthal’s piece, and see if we can pick out the code words and manglings of context:
O’Keefe’s racial issues can be seen in many of his prior stunts, of course. The notorious ACORN videos highlighted images of himself dressed as a pimp, deceptively edited through hidden camera footage as he baited African-American office workers into making statements that could be perceived as incriminating.
“Baited African-American office workers”. So is Blumenthal suggesting O’Keefe avoided baiting white ACORN sleazeballs? Or is he just trying to create a sense of phony victimhood?
There were also lesser-known but equally inflammatory spectacles like the “affirmative action bake sale” O’Keefe and his conservative comrades held when they were students at Rutgers University.
During the event, O’Keefe stood at a table in the center of campus offering baked goods at reduced prices to Latinos and African-Americans while whites were forced to pay exorbitant amounts. (Native Americans, he announced, would eat free.)
In other words, it satirized the insulting, demeaning aspects of affirmative action – the sort of thing that, if done by politically-correct “performance artists” to conservatives would get an NEA grant.
Next, Blumenthal digs back age…18?
By O’Keefe’s own account, his racial troubles became acute when he entered the multicultural atmosphere of Rutgers University’s dormitory system. In an online diary that has since been scrubbed from the Web (but not before being captured on Daily Kos), he wrote that he was forced to live on an all-black dormitory floor after refusing to live with the gay roommate he was initially assigned. O’Keefe claimed his next roommate was “an Indian midget … who smelled like shit.” The roommate left, however, and was replaced by “a greek kid.”
Stop the presses; a teenager saying something stupid.
Or, should I say, maybe saying somethign stupid, since even Blumenthal’s carefully-cropped context gives itself reasonable doubt:
The new roommate complained to a residential administrator that O’Keefe had called his neighbors “niggers,” prompting the school to expel him from the dorm. He rejected the accusation as a “complete lie,” writing, “I was lead out of the room crying and screaming at him and my situation, no friends, no one one [sic] to talk to, forced to go in front of a black man, Dean Tolbert, to defend myself and help explain that I did not call anyone any names.”
So – was O’Keefe a hardened 18 year old racist, or a wet-behind-the-ears teenager caught up in a bigoted setup, or something in between?
We can’t answer the question – but Blumenthal did, anyway.
The following year, despite this record, O’Keefe secured a dream job in the conservative movement, employed by the Leadership Institute, a Northern Virginia-based outfit that serves as the movement’s most prolific youth training operation. There, O’Keefe met Marcus Epstein, a fellow ideologue who as editor of a conservative publication at the College of William and Mary assailed Martin Luther King Jr. for “philandering and plagiarism” and challenged his patriotism and Christianity.
Catch that? Martin Luther King must not be questioned in any way. In other words, in Max Blumenthal’s special little world, Political Incorrectness equals racism.
Together, O’Keefe and Epstein planned an event in August 2006 that would wed their extreme views on race with their ambitions. Epstein invited white nationalist Jared Taylor [see above] and homophobic white-grievance peddler John Derbyshire of the National Review
Um, huh?
Again – asking politically-incorrect questions is racism?
According to a post on the white supremacist Web site Stormfront, Taylor and Derbyshire debate “the role of race in policy decisions and the racial future of the Republican party.”
And here Blumenthal has descended into pure fantasy. Republicans are constantly discussing, debating and arguing about racial issues; “how do we get blacks, hispanics and asians, who all should be Republicans due to their interest in, respectively, eduation reform, social conservatism and free markets.
So what was said at the debate? Blumenthal doesn’t trouble himself to tell the reader. Indeed, the only “racist” act in the story seems to be the fact that the story was reported in Stormfront, which is certainly a racist site. But what did they say?
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So, if some other person at this conference got a picture of the OPP photographer at the conference, that photographer can legitimately be accused of racism? I’m trying to understand the ground rules, here.
Or maybe O’Keefe is being accused of being a communist. Here’s Hitchens on North Korea:
http://www.slate.com/id/2243112/
Of course you far-right kooks lap up O’Keefe’s alibis uncritically. He only lies to lib’rals, after all.
“Rule 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
-Saul Alinsky
Of course you far-right kooks lap up O’Keefe’s alibis uncritically. He only lies to lib’rals, after all.
Clown is right, of course. And don’t forget O’Keefe’s other sins against humanity. I have it on good authority that:
O’Keefe causes global warming.
O‘Keefe is Bush’s fault.
O’Keefe can see Alaska from his house.
O’Keefe probably hates the Mets, too.
Blumenthal’s second report will disclose that O’Keefe shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
Clearly we should have joined Blumenthal in reading Stormfront, so we’d understand the full level of O’Keefe’s calumny. He’s a witch. Burn him!
Funny that the only people who ever quote Saul Alinsky are you silly wingnuts.
He only lies to lib’rals, after all.
Where “lies to” = “stings”.
For those who recognize the distinction (for non-liberals).
Blumenthal reads Stormfront?
F’n nazi bastard.
Mitch Berg Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
He only lies to lib’rals, after all.
Where “lies to” = “stings”.
For those who recognize the distinction (for non-liberals).
I take exception to that Mitch. O’Keefe faked some of the footage of the ACORN video, filming it separately and then cutting it in later. He is accused, further, of editing the video so as to remove any statements which contradict those he included so as to alter the meaning of what was said.
For the record, I disapprove of ACORN or anyone else aiding and abetting prostitution, especially illegal alien child prostitution – IF that is what they did.
Given that O’Keefe has repeatedly refused to make the full and original information available to contradict the accusations, and as he has apparently admitted to altering what was actually recorded to appear differently, there seems to be at least a reasonable basis to question the reliability and validity of what he has represented as his ACORN video.
I’ve heard his explanation for why he and his colleagues were in Landrieu’s office. I have a few problems with that, but what really raises red flags for me is that while he insists that he and his associates had no intention of interfering or altering the phones serving Landrieu’s office…..why go to the main phonebank area on another floor?
What O’Keefe does is not by any stretch ‘journalism’. It is to set up ‘gottcha’ scenarios, and I don’t have a problem with that say, the way 60 minutes does it. But O’Keefe doesn’t do it fairly; he cheats, he alters, he distorts, and he is not willing to allow what he does to be scrutinized the way he wishes to scrutinize others.
One of the definitions of a ‘sting’ operation as I understand it (and I’m not an attorney) as distinct from entrapment is that entrapment involves encouraging someone to do something specific that is illegal and in some way pressing them to act in a way they would not have initiated otherwise.
By that definition, it would seem O’Keefe excels at entrapment, at encouraging bad behavior, and not subsequently fairly presenting what occurred, both good and bad.
I can’t applaud that, and it has nothing to do with liberal or conservative; it has to do with basic fairness and accountability. It should be the standard by which both conservative and liberal and independent conduct is considered.
One further note – when I first heard about the events in Landrieu’s office, the question that came to my mind was “Why Landrieu”.
You might want to take a look at the events surrounding her past two elections to the senate. If you don’t have the time to investigate them, including the oh…..Republican connections to voter fraud……..you can read my investigation into it. Landrieu being targeted was not an accident, and the pretext that was offered by O’Keefe doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of why.
dg says:
O’Keefe faked some of the footage of the ACORN video, filming it separately and then cutting it in later.
DG don’t you recognize the technique? Its how Michael Moore shot his “documentary” “Roger and Me”, then later “Bowling for Columbine”. Al Gore used the same cut and paste narrative building in his “Inconvenient Truth”. Are you suggesting that that isn’t how “reputable” (and very wealthy) filmmakers make documentaries.
I take exception to that Mitch. O’Keefe faked some of the footage of the ACORN video, filming it separately and then cutting it in later. He is accused, further, of editing the video so as to remove any statements which contradict those he included so as to alter the meaning of what was said.
How very “Michael Moore” of him.
I take exception to that Mitch. O’Keefe faked some of the footage of the ACORN video, filming it separately and then cutting it in later.
Stop the presses! A video was edited! I missed the part where O’Keefe refused to show raw footage. Did ACORN claim that? And ACORN, of course, is such a trustworthy organization. It’s not under indictment or anything.
For the record, I disapprove of ACORN or anyone else aiding and abetting prostitution, especially illegal alien child prostitution – IF that is what they did.
It is 2:00PM and it is day out. Oh, you say it is actually night? Of course, you can’t believe your own eyes, you are compelled to recite Dear Leader lies.
Dog Gone, CBS has never released all the footage of the Couric-Palin interview, despite requests from Palin that they do so. Palin says CBS edited the film to make her look bad and to reinforce a negative story line.
Why aren’t you as angry about this as you are with the O’Keefe stuff? He’s just a college student.
Why aren’t you as angry about this as you are with the O’Keefe stuff? If doesn’t fit the narrative fed by Dear Leader. G*d forbid lib develops an independent thought.
Funny that the only people who ever quote Saul Alinsky are you silly wingnuts.
yeah, only because you leftists actually use his tactics.
You might want to take a look at the events surrounding her past two elections to the senate. If you don’t have the time to investigate them, including the oh…..Republican connections to voter fraud……..you can read my investigation into it. Landrieu being targeted was not an accident, and the pretext that was offered by O’Keefe doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of why
Or, alternatively, you could recall three things that are a lot more on point, to wit:
1) Landrieu took a big payoff for her vote;
2) Numerous citizens complained that it was well nigh impossible to get through to Landrieu’s offices via telephone, which is why O’Keefe wanted to see if the phones were ringing in her office; and
3) Landrieu is up for re-election this year.
And considering that Landrieu has won her last two elections, Republican voter fraud hardly seems to be the problem. If the Republicans are cheating down in Louisiana, they apparently suck at it.
Stormfront, marched in Crawford Texas to protest President Bush. Collen what ever her name is….the lady who was the Democrat running against Congressman Kline, marched against Bush in Crawford the same week. Therefore Democrats = Stormfront.
Dog gone, if you want to know why so many conservatives are so frustrated with the ‘mainstream’ media, check out this from a WaPo story — from the politics section, not the op-ed section;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/02/AR2010020202644.html?nav=hcmodule
Obama went from Harvard to a high-paying Chicago law firm. He became a community organizer after graduating from Columbia, not Harvard. When he met Michelle Obama, she was also a highly payed Harvard Law grad.
Elitists are apparently willing to go to great lengths to assume cover as people who work for a living.
More at Anne Althouse’s blog. Althouse is a tenured con law professor and voted for Obama in 2008.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/02/obama-turned-down-high-paying-jobs.html
I should have mentioned the precious headline to the WaPo piece:
Despite his roots, Obama struggles to show he’s connected to middle class
Despite his roots? His mother was an anthropologist. His father was a government economist. Lolo Soetaro, Obama’s stepfather, was a geologist and an oil company consultant.
Obama spent his teenage years living with his maternal grandparents while attended an exclusive prep school. His grandfather managed a furniture store and his grandmother was a bank VP.
Mr. D wrote:”And considering that Landrieu has won her last two elections, Republican voter fraud hardly seems to be the problem. If the Republicans are cheating down in Louisiana, they apparently suck at it.”
Her first election, Landrieu’s opponent lost, refused to concede her win, claimed she had committed voter fraud.
First the FBI, then a Republican committe investigated those accusations, delaying the seating of Landrieu for some 10 months. BOTH investigations uncovered that Jenkins – the Republican candidate – had hired a felon convicted of multiple crimes including attempted murder – to pay people to LIE, falsely claiming that they had voted for Landrieu multiple times, and / or they had driven vanloads of people around to different locations multiple times.
But in the meantime, the Republican majority succeeded in keeping Landrieu out of the Senate – unfairly as it turned out, but that didn’t seem to matter too much to them.
By what O’Keefe did, and apparently he does not deny that he was never in ACORN offices dressed as a pimp, he completely faked footage in that video. Whatever ACORN may have done wrong, it is now far less clear, not more clear, as a result of his actions.
No one is claiming the Couric footage for example is faked; just that it was unfavorably edited. Palin’s other interviews, including the one with ABC’s Charlie Gibson, and a lot of the fact checking of her statements, and of “her”” book tend to support that she is not very well versed on a variety of subjects including history and world affairs, and further that she is not a very honest person in her statements. This makes me a lot more skeptical of Palin’s claims; further, no legal actions have resulted from the CBS interviews, unlike the ACORN/O’Keefe activities.
Is O’Keefe currently a college student anywhere? He’s 25 years old. I know that he was required to live with his parents as a condition of his bail; perhaps that led to your confusion?
Dog Bone observed: “Is O’Keefe currently a college student anywhere? He’s 25 years old. I know that he was required to live with his parents as a condition of his bail; perhaps that led to your confusion?”
Most of the Mitchketeers liver with their parents too, Dog Bone. It’s kind of a sensitive topic.
First the FBI, then a Republican committe investigated those accusations, delaying the seating of Landrieu for some 10 months. BOTH investigations uncovered that Jenkins – the Republican candidate – had hired a felon convicted of multiple crimes including attempted murder – to pay people to LIE, falsely claiming that they had voted for Landrieu multiple times, and / or they had driven vanloads of people around to different locations multiple times.
Well, that’s not exactly how it happened, DG. There were two investigations, which did uncover irregularities on both sides, but the overall results were inconclusive and as a result Landrieu’s election stood. You can find plenty of articles on the Internet on both sides of the debate, including some that support your theory, with an equal number that support the notion that Landrieu benefited from irregularities.
Bottom line — there is little dispute that Landrieu’s 100,000 margin of victory in the City of New Orleans was dubious, just as there is no doubt that Jenkins used some very shady operatives, including the convicted felon you mention, although it was never proven that he coached witnesses to lie.
It’s pretty shocking that politicians in Louisiana would do such a thing, of course and you should be scandalized. I’ll admit it — I’m shocked, shocked to discover such a thing.
Like I said, the Republicans suck at cheating. You should be happy about that, DG.
And none of the foregoing changes the reasons why Landrieu was O’Keefe’s target, which I laid out earlier.
And, to be fair, more than any lefty does when “reporting” on this sort of defamatory character assassination.
Unlike you, Mitch. I know you personally contacted the ACORN workers to get their side of the story before talking about O’Keefe’s videos.
Or not.
Dog Gone, I can’t help but notice that while I wrote nothing to defend O’Keefe, other than to note that he was ‘just a college student’, in your response you slammed Palin for — what exactly? Writing a book full of lies? Not writing a book full of lies?
You hint at ‘legal actions’ taken against O’Keefe for his ACORN expose, yet you can’t claim that he was charged with any criminal violation.
Acorn, on the other hand, was stripped of funding because they were a taxpayer funded agency willing to advise and accommodate criminals involved in sexual slavery.
You should take a clear-eyed look at which side you are on.
I don’t care what was legal and what was illegal in a technical sense. Who has Maryland’s Democrat AG ever prosecuted for recording a person without their consent? There are a lot of people with cam corders filming family and friends. Where are their signed release forms?
Edwards is an abusive adulterer. He was very nearly the Dem’s presidential candidate. You don’t care. ACORN takes taxpayer dollars and has no problem with advising would-be sex-slavers on the best way to game the system. You don’t care, or rather, you fantasize that the person who exposed this will be be put in jail.
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