by F. Grey Parker
It will be a wonderful day when James O'Keefe is no longer mentioned in any way whatsoever during our political discourse. Yes, I refer to that James O'Keefe. He was the punk kid with white-supremacist ties who sank ACORN using Reifenstahl film techniques. He was the darling of Andrew Breitbart and FOX. He was the guy who broke federal law by trying to interfere with phone lines in the office of an elected official.
Celebrated by the reactionary right wing media as a "hero," he has at last gone too far.
When O'Keefe's tactics were exposed as fundamentally dishonest, his supporters and apologists trotted out the predictable accusation that the "MSM" was "targeting" him unfairly.
This is no small thing. The predicate concept of FOXNews and their acolytes has become the argument that "they" are somehow the little guy, all alone, out on a limb and trying to fight against a monolithically dangerous liberal propaganda machine (This link is for those of you who may have forgotten that Andrew Breitbart's meltdown at CPAC earlier this was a tantrum defending O'Keefe).
Enter CNN's Abbie Boudreau. She and the network offered to do a sober profile on the young "citizen journalist." O'keefe's reaction to the possibility of a fair hearing from the evil MSM? He set out to "punk" the interviewer, a woman, by setting up a hidden camera sexual harrasment scenario. This is not a joke.
From NJ.com:
"O'Keefe planned to use during his seduction: condom jar, dildos, music (Alicia Keys, 80s romance songs, thing that are typically James... lube, ceiling mirror, posters and paintings of naked women, playboys and pornographic magazines, candles, Viagra and stamina pills, fuzzy handcuffs, and blindfold."
O'Keefe's idea of being a journalist was to attempt to lure a woman on to his sailboat and drive her to tears through a series of unwanted advances.
One of O'Keefe's collaborators, Ben Wetmore, tried to convince Esquire Magazine that it was no big deal. He clucks that the whole thing is amusing:
"It was humor. There was a joke to it — James isn't a lothario of sexual conquest at all. It was going to be awkward, not sexually aggressive. It was meant to be outlandish and ridiculous. When you dissect and sterilize a joke, it's not funny anymore — when you read the transcript of an SNL skit, you're not going to laugh, but you do when it's performed. It seems one way in print, but the video would've looked very different."
Brent Bozell, the director of the ultra conservative Media Research Center puts it like this:
"The MRC unequivocally denounces James O’Keefe for his attempted assault on CNN. It isn’t just childish and immature; it’s ugly, dishonest and filthy. There is no place in the conservative movement for this type of behavior."
When Brent Bozell and I actually agree on something, there's just a chance that it is that it might be that cut and dry.
It will be interesting to see how the hard right, which has backed him so thoroughly up until now, proceeds. One has to wonder, in light of Dinesh D'Souza's residency yesterday and today on Glenn Beck, if we won't be seeing O'Keefe on Beck's show next week.
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