Last April 15, I was walking around the Capitol grounds during the first Tax Day Tea Party.\u00a0 There were thousands of people there.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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”.\u00a0 Including a few people with some anti-immigration signs that I could accurately call “groaningly racist”.<\/p>\n
And I thought…:<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 We saw this in the Twin Cities last year when local leftyblogger Jeff Fecke smeared Kevin Ecker and, by extension, all True North <\/em>writers,<\/a> for writing approvingly about a story about an anti-immigration activist who, it turned out much<\/em> later, was also a neo-nazi.<\/p>\n The point?\u00a0 Guilt by very tenuous, context-free association is stupid.<\/p>\n And after a year of eating their lunch, it’s perhaps inevitable that James O’Keefe<\/a>, of the classic ACORN “Pimp” stings, is on the receiving end, this time in a hit piece by Max Blumenthal at Salon<\/em>.<\/p>\n The first part; set it up so that everyone you disagree with is in the same boat as your victim:<\/p>\n Many of the conservatives who gleefully promoted James O\u2019Keefe\u2019s 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<\/a> the 25-year-old O\u2019Keefe as a creative genius and model of journalistic ethics. Andrew Breitbart, who has paid O\u2019Keefe, called him one of the all-time \u201cgreat journalists\u201d and said he deserved a Pulitzer for his undercover ACORN video. Fox News\u2019 Bill O\u2019Reilly declared he should have earned a \u201ccongressional medal.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, the whamma-jamma charge:<\/p>\n His right-wing admirers don’t seem to mind that O\u2019Keefe’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\u00a0 on the Web site of the anti-racism group One People’s Project<\/a>, shows O\u2019Keefe 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Wow.\u00a0<\/p>\n That’s a pretty serious charge, if it’s true.<\/p>\n Of course, it’s not.<\/p>\n How do we know?\u00a0\u00a0 Onward:<\/p>\n 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<\/a> and the Occidental Quarterly<\/a>.\u00a0 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But they responded to Larry O’Connor, at Breitbart’s <\/a>Big Journalism<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/em>Who notes:<\/p>\n We would think that Mr. Blumenthal at Salon or Stephen Thrasher at the Village Voice, as responsible reporters,\u00a0might have called Mr. O\u2019Keefe to get his response to the allegations made in an obscure blog. \u00a0But no. \u00a0Instead they ran the story and (in the case of the Voice) actually added new and juicy lies to the myth.<\/em><\/p>\n Well, here at Big Journalism<\/strong> we think it\u2019s a good idea to actually seek the truth.<\/em><\/p>\n So we spoke with James O\u2019Keefe today. \u00a0This is what he tells us:<\/em><\/p>\n We know all this because we called Mr. O\u2019Keefe and asked him.\u00a0 Which is more than other media outlets have done.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n And, to be fair, more than any <\/em>lefty does when “reporting” on this sort of defamatory character assassination.<\/p>\n We also spoke with Daryle Jenkins of One People\u2019s Project, the man who started this entire legend. \u00a0We asked if he had a photograph that actually showed O\u2019Keefe \u201cmanning the table\u201d as has been reported, and he said that this cropped photo was all they had.\u00a0 His claim that Mr. O\u2019Keefe \u201cmanned\u201d the table of literature is based on eye-witnesses who were at the event…<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n …Mr. Jenkins only produced the name of one witness:\u00a0<\/em> David Weigel<\/em><\/a> who, at the time was a reporter with Reason Magazine.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Weigel is a noted lefty alt-journalist and, as noted in this blog<\/a>, among the better among the species.<\/p>\n We called Mr. Weigel and he denied ever telling Mr. Jenkins that Mr. O\u2019Keefe was \u201cmanning the table.\u201d Indeed, he has already <\/em>gone on record denying<\/em><\/a> he said that.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n So let’s reset:<\/p>\n Here is the story they actually have:<\/em><\/p>\n James O\u2019Keefe attended a forum years ago that dealt with race and politics. \u00a0The forum was located at a Georgetown University building (that\u2019s right, a 21-year-old man attended an event on a college campus). \u00a0The forum had as one of its three speakers a controversial figure, Jared Taylor, with a track record of making racist statements.\u00a0 He was being debated by two other people including Mr. Martin (taking issue with the racist figure). \u00a0Mr. Taylor has also appeared with Phil Donohue, Queen Latifa and <\/em>Paula Zahn<\/em><\/a> on their TV shows to debate race.\u00a0 Are the audience members of the Donohue show racist for sitting and watching that debate?<\/em><\/p>\n Honestly, that isn\u2019t much of a story.\u00a0 But\u2026 you put Mr. O\u2019Keefe at a table full of racist literature and you say that he was manning the table.\u00a0 And you say you have a picture proving it.\u00a0 And you make it sound like he was one of the organizers of this event.\u00a0 And you call the event a \u201cWhite Supremacist Conference\u201d.\u00a0 Well\u2026 now you\u2019ve got a story.<\/em><\/p>\n Only problem:\u00a0 It\u2019s all a lie.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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.<\/p>\n Let’s go back to Blumenthal’s piece, and see if we can pick out the code words and manglings of context:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n “Baited African-American office workers”.\u00a0 So is Blumenthal suggesting O’Keefe avoided baiting white ACORN sleazeballs?\u00a0 Or is he just trying to create a sense of phony victimhood?<\/p>\n There were also lesser-known but equally inflammatory\u00a0 spectacles<\/a> like the \u201caffirmative action bake sale\u201d O\u2019Keefe and his conservative comrades held when they were students at Rutgers University.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0During the event, O\u2019Keefe 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.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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.<\/p>\n Next, Blumenthal digs back age…18?<\/p>\n By O\u2019Keefe\u2019s own account, his racial troubles became acute when he entered the multicultural atmosphere of Rutgers University\u2019s dormitory system. In an online diary<\/a> 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\u2019Keefe claimed his next roommate was \u201can Indian midget … who smelled like shit.\u201d The roommate left, however, and was replaced by \u201ca greek kid.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Stop the presses; a teenager saying something stupid.\u00a0<\/p>\n Or, should I say, maybe <\/em>saying somethign stupid, since even Blumenthal’s carefully-cropped context gives itself reasonable doubt:<\/p>\n \u00a0The new roommate complained to a residential administrator that O\u2019Keefe had called his neighbors \u201cniggers,\u201d prompting the school to expel him from the dorm. He rejected the accusation as a \u201ccomplete lie,\u201d writing, \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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?\u00a0<\/p>\n We can’t answer the question – but Blumenthal did, anyway.<\/p>\n The following year, despite this record, O\u2019Keefe secured a dream job in the conservative movement, employed by the Leadership Institute, a Northern Virginia-based outfit that serves as the movement\u2019s most prolific youth training operation. There, O\u2019Keefe met Marcus Epstein, a fellow ideologue who as editor of a conservative publication<\/a> at the College of William and Mary assailed Martin Luther King Jr. for \u201cphilandering and plagiarism\u201d and challenged his patriotism and Christianity.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n Catch that?\u00a0 Martin Luther King must not be questioned in any way.\u00a0 <\/em>In other words, in Max Blumenthal’s special little world, Political Incorrectness equals racism<\/em>.<\/p>\n Together, O\u2019Keefe and Epstein planned an event in August 2006 that would wed their extreme views on race with their ambitions. Epstein invited white nationalist\u00a0 Jared Taylor<\/a> [see above] and homophobic white-grievance peddler John Derbyshire of the National Review<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Um, huh?\u00a0<\/p>\n Again – asking politically-incorrect questions is racism?<\/p>\n\n
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