How embarrassing for people who ever set this little jerk up as any kind of young conservative model. Basically, he tried to set CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau up with a boat cruise that involved strawberries, champagne and hidden cameras and microphones. Apparently there were also sexually suggestive props already set up on the boat. He meanwhile would hit on her. Has no one told him he would be playing out of his league? Is this guy like a rapist wanna be?
O’Keefe’s one and only claim to fame is a bogus, poorly doctored video of him playing a pimp with a fake prostitute asking hourly ACORN workers for help with various tasks of questionable legality. He left off the part where several called the police on him. He also left off the part where he and his friend really didn’t go into the offices dressed like a couple of fools. O’Keefe later got arrested in the offices of Senator Mary Landrieu for tampering with her phones. Somewhere in all this ACORN was exonerated.
Another young conservative with a conscience named Izzy Santos, ran out to the car to meet Abbie Boudreau and warn her of the plot. O’Keefe seemed to back down when Abbie Boudreau began trying to hold him to the original agreed upon plan for their meeting.
According to CNN:
“The plans appeared so outlandish and so juvenile in tone, I questioned whether it was part of a second attempted punk,” Boudreau said.
But in a phone conversation, Santa confirmed the document was authentic. Listed under “equipment needed,” is “hidden cams on the boat,” and a “tripod and overt recorder near the bed, an obvious sex tape machine.”
Among the props listed were a “condom jar, dildos, posters and paintings of naked women, fuzzy handcuffs” and a blindfold.
According to the document, O’Keefe was to record a video of the following script before Boudreau arrived: “My name is James. I work in video activism and journalism. I’ve been approached by CNN for an interview where I know what their angle is: they want to portray me and my friends as crazies, as non-journalists, as unprofessional and likely as homophobes, racists or bigots of some sort….
“Instead, I’ve decided to have a little fun. Instead of giving her a serious interview, I’m going to punk CNN. Abbie has been trying to seduce me to use me, in order to spin a lie about me. So, I’m going to seduce her, on camera, to use her for a video. This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five will get a taste of her own medicine, she’ll get seduced on camera and you’ll get to see the awkwardness and the aftermath.
The CNN show aired Oct. 2, and 3 and was called “Right On The Edge.” Someone needs to take O’Keefe out and throttle him, if for no other reason, so he will grow up and quit playing havoc with people’s lives. Maybe this little boy needs to do some jail time. He is getting fairly close. Even Breitbart, who advanced the ACORN/pimp story, has told him he owes an explanation and has critcized him harshly.
3 am
I just watched “Right on the Edge” Pt 2. I felt several of the young people interviewed had an anything goes for political gain point of view. In my world, the people filmed lacked ethics and morals. They set their own political goals ahead of anything else and the right soon became wrong. The ends did not justify the means. How does any man justify trying to seduce a woman, on camera, to advance his cause. O’Keefe is simply lower than whale dung.
I don’t think you can get jail time for hitting on a woman or trying to embarass her … but certainly the guy is “out there”. No surprise to anyone with common sense that females on staff would not help him to harass a female reporter sexually. He hit gold with the ACORN thing but he does seem more likely to embroiil himself in controbversy than to do anything that will help his “cause” again.
Can’t disagree with a word you have said, Rick. He is enraging to me. He is so intent on ruining everything he perceives as being ‘liberal’ that he simply is immoral and unethical.
That part 2 I watched in the wee hours of the morning was very scary to me. There is a lawlessness involved with some of these young culture warriors that makes me not only extremely ill at ease but also fearful for our country.
It is interesting, for those who espouse to be more moral and ethical, they seemed so eager to do anything for fame. It was all very depressing. What is even more depressing is that they have been successful, in editing their movies to express views that were not true or real. Where is the same outrage toward the right expressed against a democratic senator doing JUST that very thing, misrepresenting his opponent? Where is FOX news and their outrage?
It seems that OKeefe’s “cause” is attention whoring.
Don’t really see the issue here. This act has probably shot his credibility. I think he did himself in. Maybe those wings were made of wax? 😉
On the ACORN videos, he did selective editing, but also stumbled onto real moments that demonstrated ACORN to be unworthy of public trust. The first video, particularly.
Some of the later ones, there was nothing there, but through selective diting and hyping he and Brietbart tried to keep the story going. The woman who said she killed her husband was clearly pranking them. the guy in I think San diego who offered to help smuggle prostitutes was quite likely trying to garner info to give to law enforcement.
ACORN is what it is. Sleazy, unethical, partisan at any cost.
Rick, I would agree with you had he gone after the top or even middle management with ACORN. I never heard of it until Obama ran for office. Must not be big around here. I don’t know if they are sleazy or not other than what the conservative print and e-mags are all saying. No creds here with either.
What it appeared to be, at least to the public, was picking on women who really were hourly workers just trying to earn a living–women who were not in decision making positions.
I find it odd that ACORN has been exonerated of all charges. Probably the best thing to do if one wants to make a point on a national scale is to not make it come across looking like one is just picking on poor minority women.
O’Keefe shot himself in the foot but there are plenty more followers, according to “Right on the Edge.” I suppose what appalled me the most was the disrespect of these young people and sense of lawlessness …at any cost to prove their point.
There is a certain sense of respecting one’s elders that is built in to our society. Granted, at my age the ‘elders’ are running a little thin. 🙄
Great use of myth marin. Clap clap. Humanities minor here. He did fly too close to the sun. One of my favorite myths!!!
“picking on poor minority women”
I hope you weren’t talking about this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UOL9Jh61S8
That tape from Baltimore’s ACORN is astonishing. Speaks for itself.
O’Keefe stumbled into something so gross disgusting and vile there that he’s probably doomed the rest of his life to chasing something similarly dramatic. He’ll probably have to fish wide and low to stumble into something that far out again.
Rick, I hear you but….that is only one woman. It is also very patched video. What makes someone a tax specialist? A day long class? They might have also been punking O’Keefe to turn him over to the cops. We just don’t know.
I am not even defending ACORN. O’Keefe and Giles are bad people. They lie about who they are. They aren’t honest. They somehow justify that lying and misrepresentation is for a common good. No it isn’t.
He is a crud ball. Not sure about Hannah Giles.
If what I saw really happened, the ACORN woman was wrong. But so was O’Keefe.
I think he was every bit as low as that woman was. Who plots to seduce a reporter and set her up in compromising positions? Nasty.
Wasn’t that the woman who was fired in the video? Both are trash if you ask me.
Since we will never have the full vidoes that O’Keefe created, it is almost impossible to know how much was edited. Like the USDA woman who was fired for being “racist”, had someone else not filmed that entire event, she would have lived her life, forever being known as a racist.
The unedited transcripts are available.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACORN_2009_undercover_videos_controversy#Hidden_camera_recordings_and_video_releases