Remember James O’Keefe and Project Veritas, the Keystone Kops of Wingnut Sting? O’Keefe was instrumental in shutting down ACORN, which is a feather in his Huggy Bear pimp-cap. But he was later successfully sued for $100K by an ACORN employee he smeared with deceptively edited tapes.
As a follow-up own-goal, O’Keefe and crew dressed like telecom employees to try to bug the office of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu but ended up arrested, fined and sentenced to probation and community service instead. In another bizarre incident, O’Keefe tried to lure CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau onto a boat with a cargo of dildos to…embarrass her somehow? But he was outed by a female colleague, becoming the object of ridicule himself.
Oh, and who can forget when O’Keefe tried to set up a sting on a foundation funded by wingnut nemesis George Soros? His plan was foiled when O’Keefe failed to hang up the phone after leaving a voice mail under an assumed name at the foundation as bait, then regaled his comrades with a detailed account of the planned sting, all recorded on the foundation’s phone message system.
I mean, this guy is just a bumbling idiot. Only rank Republican cynicism and blue dog cowardice enabled the ACORN scam to gain any traction at all, and he’s done nothing but step on his own pee-pee ever since. Anyhoo, with that background in mind, when I saw an announcement on Twitter this morning that O’Keefe planned to reveal “hours of undercover audio recordings of employees at CNN” and read O’Keefe’s tweets squeeing that he even had Trump on tenterhooks for the big reveal, I was skeptical:
He'll probably accidentally release his own painfully embarrassing Christian Mingle intro vid, then slam his briefcase shut on his own dick. https://t.co/CckWgNqYtS
— Betty Cracker (@bettycrackerfl) February 23, 2017
Okay, that didn’t happen, but what did was almost as dumb. Via Politico:
For a few days, Project Veritas founder and conservative activist James O’Keefe has been hyping the release of what he said where hundreds of hours of undercover audio recordings of employees at CNN.. Before releasing the tapes Thursday, O’Keefe was featured on The Drudge Report and on Sean Hannity’s radio show, where he previewed their release.
Instead, what O’Keefe released on Thursday landed with a dud in the media world… What got the most attention on social media though was the unusual highlighting of a well-known journalism quote about how journalism is about ‘aiding the afflicted and afflicting the comforted.’ But Project Veritas portrayed the situation as Richard Griffiths, now Vice President and Senior Editorial Director, being “caught explaining” the role of a journalist.
Here is Griffiths’ quote, as ‘caught’ by Project Veritas:
“If we are journalists, what is our role as a journalist? What is the fundamental role as a journalist, for us to do? Tell a story. Tell what’s going on. There’s a secondary corollary to that, right? Aid the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. To a degree, right? Is that not part of the traditional role of a journalist. It’s actually one of the things I can be most proud of as a journalist. You know we try to show the ugly side of humanity so we can do something about it. It’s hard, very hard.”
O’Keefe suggested in a video that CNN is now working on afflicting President Donald Trump. The phrase “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” though sometimes attributed to H.L. Mencken, is best known for its use in the 1960 film “Inherit The Wind.”
Oh, and it turns out the audio is from 2009. And the other “bombshells” from the tape are a polling director slagging on Rasmussen, an assignment desk editor saying “Fox News is unbearable,” and a news desk editor saying “there’s no debate” about climate change. I’m sure CNN is rocked to its very foundations by these earth-shattering revelations. Or not.
But the right is never one to hold moronitude against someone who has successfully aided the defunding of an organization that helped poor people. So O’Keefe will remain what passes for a star in the conservative firmament: a dim, gaseous object that appears to shine only in contrast to the void around it. The end.
Steve!
The response from the CNN spokesperson was the best part:
Tractarian
<Slow clap>
Oatler.
Get him onto MSNBC! Chuck and Chris already have wood!
Lee
At the time that attack on ACORN was a fairly new style. Enough that the ‘journalist’ back then did not have the capacity to even ask ‘Let’s see the unedited tapes’. At least journalist now have learned that much.
The Moar You Know
Here’s a prophecy: O’Keefe’s going to end up in prison for murder one day. It will happen. He’s a fucking psycho.
Ian G.
I’m glad to hear that CNN acknowledges that climate change is as much settled science as gravity. I really wish wingnuts would defy us libruls on gravity from the Golden Gate Bridge from time to time.
dmsilev
@Ian G.: I’m bitterly disappointed that President Obama, over his entire eight year tenure, not once gave a speech warning people against drinking bleach or licking live 3-phase power outlets. Thanks for nothing, Obama!
? Martin
@Tractarian: Indeed. Very well phrased.
sharl
Ah yes, “independent” video “journalist”.
He was an early recipient of secret funding from proud
AmericanKiwi billionaire Peter Thiel.@Lee: He even punked Jon Stewart, although that may have been in part because The Daily Show had a very non-diverse staff back then, who would have been less likely to see through the absurd dress-up depiction of a pimp that O’Keefe hyped to the media.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I wonder what kind of horrific childhood this guy had for him to turn out this way. I’d kind of feel sorry for him if he were some random boob, but after all the people he’s hurt in his quest to ease his psychic pain, well, fuck him.
kindness
Sadly the only thing that could save us from this evil moran is if he started bragging about his pedophelia exploits.
Writing comments is still a lot like stuttering. Fix that please.
grandpa john
@The Moar You Know: unless someone puts out a contract on him first which is possible if he fucks with the wrong people. It would be seen as a benefit to the betterment of humanity
sharl
@kindness: I saw an earlier comment from you that you were having problems with commenting. Did you see Alain’s response? He wanted details on what you’re using – hardware, OS, browser, stuff like that – so he could look into it.
geg6
This guy is pitifully inept. How is he still funded?
Nicole
I imagine we’ll see him on Bill Maher’s show soon enough. Maher’s tongue is lonely and seeks another RWNJ to bathe.
hovercraft
@dmsilev:
Also against using rat poison as a condiment, experimenting to see how much carbon monoxide renders you unconscious. So many dangers in the world that he did nothing to war us about,
Iowa Old Lady
The most entertaining part of O’Keefe’s act is how his stings all aim at made-up scandals. He doesn’t seem capable of finding something real to object to and exposing it.
Dave
@grandpa john: Some people I would waste zero time mourning would even cackle a bit. O’Keefe is one of them
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
I could easily see him winding up as the
victimsubject of a justifiable homicide first.EBT
O’Keefe is almost certainly a pedophile.
In other news deadbeat donnie fucked over trans school kids.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
He succeeded once. You only have to destroy a small fraction of your targets to be worth funding. ETA: also, too, I bet he’s pretty cheap these days.
hovercraft
@geg6:
He took down ACORN, the organization that stole an election and gave us Obama. he will never want for money.
Wingnut welfare will keep him funded for years to come.
SFAW
@dmsilev:
Not to worry! VIle bag of shit Jimmy O’Queefe is about to release — any day now! — a tape of Obama chanting “Kill my landlord! Kill my landlord! C-I-L-L my land lord.”
Because all them Coloreds look alike anyway. Well, to O’Queefe and the RWNJs, that is.
[I realize this is not quite in the same spirit as the bleach/outlet thing, of course.]
Miss Bianca
@kindness:
Psychic justice would be if someone edited a whole lot of tape to make it LOOK like O’Keefe was bragging about it.
MattF
O’Keefe is clearly too dumb and too inept to be an actual threat to anyone these days. It’s possible that someday he’ll try to punk the wrong person, or accidentally get information that is actually dangerous to his well-being. If he does, we’ll all note, again, how dumb he must be, and that will be that.
Shalimar
@The Moar You Know: He doesn’t seem like he has the guts to kill someone. Given the Boudreau incident and what his former female colleagues say about him, I strongly suspect he has raped multiple women. Wouldn’t surprise me at all to see him finally go to prison for that.
hovercraft
@geg6:
Sourcewatch has a list of both his greatest hits, (failure), and they note a few donors who listed them in tax documents, but they do not disclose their donors. Shocker.
@EBT: Who’s going to get caught first, O’Keefe or Milo?
Jeffro
@Roger Moore: same here – O’Keefe will be a homicide victim, or barring that, overdose, within a few more years. Crazy and offensive and not-really-employable doesn’t usually end well.
trollhattan
@Jeffro:
More than a little Zimmerman in O’Keefe, and I don’t mean Bob. I could see his life’s goal being to “bag a bad guy” and he’s probably literally jealous of George.
Starfish
Wasn’t he involved with the “OMG! Planned Parenthood is selling baby parts!” video as well.
mai naem mobile
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I would bet that a good part of conservative men(maybe women too) seem to either have daddy issues(Dolt 45,Dubbya),had parents who never gave them positive reinforcement or were bullied as kids(Grover Norquist,Tucker Carlson,Ted Cruz.) I can totally see Grover being shoved into a locker.
These conservative assholes should be put up as shining examples to new parents and young school bullies as what happens to kids you berate and bully.
Death Panel Truck
“Th newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’ banks, commands th’ milishy, controls th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young, marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’comfortable, buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward.”
–Finley Peter Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley (1902)
HeidiMom
I remember reading that he was accused of luring a woman onto a boat in order to seduce her, and thinking, “A real woman??? A grown-up woman? Who is he kidding???”
Mnemosyne
Project Veritas has been doing a lot of “Planned Parenthood kills babies!” videos that my wingnut cousin occasionally likes on Facebook. That’s where they’re doing a majority of their harm these days.
The videos star delusional asshole Lila Rose, whose name will be familiar to many pro-choice people.
Captain C
@Roger Moore: @EBT: I suspect he’ll go down for what EBT said before murder, perhaps at the same time as what Roger Moore said.
Mnemosyne
@Starfish:
Yep. And he’s made more videos for the forced birth crowd since then, starring insane nutjob Lila Rose.
StringOnAStick
OT, but I just got back from spending the morning at a presentation, lobbying training, and attempt to find our reps to lobby them at our state capital, then a rally (with media present). The group that organized it is the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, and after the Lt. Governor spoke, we had a 3 person panel of useful people to ask questions of and had some great in-depth answers. Then each table got their very own lobbying captain (most were fresh faced young people who have chosen politics as their field of duty and are lobbyists for various organizations), and after we determined who had which representatives, we headed off to the capital to attempt to find them. Our only success was an aide at my liberal state representative’s office since the house and senate had just adjourned for the day, but I’m glad we did it. Then we made signs and attended a cold and snowy rally on the capital steps to listen to a state senator (an MD) and representative talk about the evils of SB 3, a state bill that will shut down the state health insurance exchange the state paid $180 million to create; obviously this is a huge issue here right now.
So, I learned a few things. One is that it doesn’t take very many phone calls to have an impact at the state level just because they get so few calls (so call them!). Another is that people who are so angry about an issue that they can’t talk rationally to an elected representative aren’t at all effective; we had a single payer guy who said he was so upset that he knew he couldn’t speak rationally to his republican reps so he didn’t even try (Wilmer bro for sure). Another thing I learned is that we need to coalesce into bigger groups; there is so much organizing happening that it makes sense to not reinvent the wheel, because trying to hold a protest every day in the same place over the same thing dilutes it all a bit – there was a rep from a progressive democratic group of some kind that wants people to show up Friday or Saturday (she was neither sure of the day or the time) at the park across the street to protest repealing the ACA. Knowing what day and time would have helped her cause, especially when it costs $15 to park downtown and it is cold and snowing here now.
Tomorrow evening I’m going to another town hall that has been called for our R Senator, which he won’t be at. There is a nice short story about an attempted town hall for the same Senator in this New Yorker story: Senator “paid protesters” Gardner
bystander
@HeidiMom: You have to realize that whatever woman it is, she’s passed some rightwingkook purity test. If not, Jimmy can’t…well, you can guess.
rumpole
“will remain what passes for a star in the conservative firmament: a dim, gaseous object that appears to shine only in contrast to the void around it
That, right there, is some fine writing. (I’m totally stealing it).
gene108
@Lee:
The right-wing media has very powerful cannons that can destroy. They sometimes lack enough ammo to blow shit up.
O’Keefe gave them ammo. They blew shit up (ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, and an executive at NPR).
Right-wing media got millions worried about the New Black Panther Party, back in 2008. They really can fuck with reality.
We’ve just realized O’Keefe’s ammo is just blanks, so there’s no reason to worry about noise.
Villago Delenda Est
@gene108: The noise can be every bit as effective as the explosion. The entire purpose of automatic weapons is not to kill or wound, but to force the other guy to duck.
AdamK
@Death Panel Truck: Don’t you just love it when dull people mangle other peoples’ witticisms beyond all recognition?
Miss Bianca
@StringOnAStick: nice! thanks for the update! I’ll have to be better about calling our state reps – lately I’ve been busy with ‘Dear Senator Gardner/Bennett” letters…
Patricia Kayden
@EBT: But so many people promised us that he’d leave gays alone. What the hell happened?
Patricia Kayden
@StringOnAStick: The irony is that Democrats faced actual paid protesters at town hall meetings held when the ACA was being debated. I don’t recall Democratic Senators/Representatives skipping out on town hall meetings though. Our side is not full of cowards who can dish it out but not take it in.
Aleta
OT OK?
Yarrow
Anyone who spends this much time digging and exposing things other people are doing is someone who likely is hiding some big things themselves. Normal people don’t behave this way. At some point it will all come out. Whoever knows will tire of keeping it secret or be offered enough incentive to spill.
scav
My personal vote outcome for OâKeefe is for an on-film utterly ridiculous injury (possibly even leading to death) that goes massively viral.
Sloane Ranger
There’s a piece over at Raw Story about some satirical news site posting what they say is an extract from O’Keefe’s CNN “expose” where Jake Tapper goes on a racist rant.
Apparently RWNJ’s don’t understand the concept of satire and they’very been taunting Tapper about his hypocrisy. Tapper has pointed out that it’s actually an audio taken from some Dog the Bounty Hunter episode.
Do they even sound similar?
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know: Or a corpse after screwing with the wrong victim.
Captain C
@scav: Combined with him committing a felony for which he gets successfully prosecuted. Preferably with no victims other than his assistants.
PK
The whole conservative movement is mediocre. Mediocre minds, stupid ideas and populated by worthless humans. But, they don’t need to be smart. The’re catering to a bunch of even more worthless idiots. What does it say that an obvious idiot like O’ Keefe was able to destroy Acorn, and Shirley Sherod’s career? And the biggest moron was elected president and the party has absolute power. For all their smartness liberals have not been to defeat this combination of stupid and evil.
?eric
@geg6: cocks dont suck themselves.
debbie
@geg6:
Whoever is funding him should be sued for wasting their money so ridiculously.
XTPD
@HeidiMom: O’Keefe is literally Dennis from It’s Alwsys Sunny In Philadelphia.
liberal
@PK: Agreed. He’s an evil fuck, but he’s had some damaging wins.
liberal
@PK:
And let’s be clear why this is: they just have fucktons of cash.
liberal
@StringOnAStick:
You’re way, way, way underselling this point, and it goes well beyond protest alone.
I can’t see how having a bazillion little groups doing things is the most efficient way to go about things. I’m sure it’s not terribly inefficient, since there’s probably not much “fat” in these groups. OTOH, we’re outspent by the thugs on the right by a huge ratio, so increases in efficiency are important.
schrodingers_cat
Jon Stewart ran a segment against ACORN based on what this clown did. I lost all respect for JS after that. Broder schtick is one thing, this was a bridge too far.
BruceFromOhio
Driving this like I stole it. So very nicely, sweetly said, BC.
BruceFromOhio
@PK: This x 16 jillion.
Conclude:
a) it won’t be saved by Dems alone, or
b) it really ain’t worth saving.