Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Train of Thought Field Trip: James O’Keefe Is Still A Moron

In case you’ve forgotten, James O’Keefe is the guy who asked ACORN employees silly questions whilst dressed in silly costumes and got silly answers in return. Conservatives then tried to transmogrify these videos into a vindication of the decades they’ve spent accusing ACORN of voter fraud, a serious allegation for which they’ve never been able to secure any evidence. How did those videos prove that charge? That part is still a mystery, but the right spent the better part of a month shitting itself with joy at the chance to attack an organization whose insidious mission is to support low-income families.

O’Keefe made the news again today with his latest venture, which was somehow even stupider: he and a number of accomplices entered federal property under false pretenses with the intent to wiretap the office of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu.

Yep.

Personally, I think we should consider an experiment in radical transparency in which everything senators say and do is recorded on camera and put up on the internet for everyone to see. Landrieu would make an excellent choice for a test case, actually- her willingness to make it easier to wiretap people abroad, as per her vote on FISA, seems to signal that she’s really comfortable with the idea of being covertly kept under surveillance. But there’s a time and a place to have that debate, and this clod seems to have decided that he would just skip that part and go straight to law-breaking. Seriously, I might have a bit more sympathy for him if his last target wasn’t a group dedicated to “working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues.”

That’s where I was going to leave it- O’Keefe is an idiot who deserves to be caught, Landrieu sucks and should probably take some time to rethink her stances on wiretapping. But JJ reminded me that it’s been a while since the last Train Field Trip, and that Freepers might have some invaluable contributions to this discussion. They sure do have plenty of threads on the subject- why don’t we start with this post by A CA Guy?
If true, dumb move and possibly highly illegal.
Whoa, that was actually pretty reasonable! Off to a good start-
IF true.

On the other hand, the left is anxious to make an example of O'Keefe & they're definitely not above setting him up.

I'll need more info.
There we have skeeter, who apparently thinks it’s entirely reasonable to imagine that ACORN captured O’Keefe, dressed up his friends like telephone mechanics, gave them a wiretapping advice, and tricked them into sneaking past security and into the office of an American senator. Real plausible. Mazda77 actually has something even more nonsensical:
As I posted to an earlier thread, my view is they were doing a sting on the lax security in the secure building. That is the only logical solution I can come up with since they were in the building without ID for the “phone company” clothes and tools they were carrying. Gonna be intersting to see if they release the security point video.
Sure, so here O’Keefe went from taking down the great white whale of conservative mythology to harassing the security at a federal building in Louisiana? What’s next, O’Keefe foils the mall cops at a shopping center in Thompson Falls, Montana? O’Keefe engages students from a local preschool in a battle of wits?  Machogirl has a hunch:
This smells of lib payback.
Liberals get revenge by having conservative activists attempt and fail to commit felonies against them? That sounds like a really roundabout form of revenge, but what do I know?  Tirednvirginia wants to add a little perspective to the discussion:
How many times was MLK arrested and now he has a national holiday named after him?

Who knows what they were on the verge of uncovering? Maybe some light will be shed on this whole incident in the next few days.
MLK fought tirelessly for the downtrodden, which makes him a natural comparison for O’Keefe, whose magnum opus at this time is the smearing of an organization which fights tirelessly for the downtrodden. Perhaps one day we’ll celebrate O’Keefe day, where everyone finds a poor person and takes a dump on them.  Plutarch is apparently from some alternate universe where the videos weren’t broadcast constantly for days:
The MSM will have to explain how it is the filmaker was a big deal, when they never showed the films.
In Conservative Fantasy World the media overtly battles them at all times in order to justify their persecution complex. The next one is also from Fantasy World, although this time it’s my own fantasy:
The ridicoulis thing is that Okeefe may be charged under RICO because of the pending charges out of Maryland and California.
Thanks Thunder90, but I’ll believe that when I see it.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks, situations like this are really begging for TOT Field trips!

    Glad to see that the freepers are doing their part. The idea that this was a fake security sting is pretty great.

    I stopped by our old friends at resistnet and am sad to say that I couldn't find any mention of this whatsoever. http://bit.ly/cOPN4L

    However, I was able to find possibly the most nonsensical graphic/chart ever created, so I'll be posting that later.

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