James O'Keefe's History of Cringe Dance Videos

In honor of the recent Will Sommer piece at WaPo regarding just what embarrassing and much-lauded anti-journalist James O'Keefe III spent Project Veritas money on, I thought there was nothing more appropriate than to take note of what O'Keefe tried to convey with the power of DANCE! which is something TYT just variously touched on as being a real O'Keefe THING over the years. 

I know, I know, I just visited O'Keefe being a part of the vast RightWing Grifter ecosystem not that long ago, but it continues to be funny to me that this clown collected an award from Ginny Thomas and has been considered "untouchable" because knuckle-draggers like his irrelevant hits that mostly don't do anything in the real world. 

But this is so iconic, so truly choice, so much a beautiful indication of what it means to be a LEGEND of Griftopia:

In September 2021, according to the report, Hurricane Ida floodwaters threatened to destroy the Project Veritas office in Mamaroneck. The staff scrambled to save equipment and their own lives — one elderly employee was briefly pulled underwater and had to be rescued by colleagues. But O’Keefe had already left the scene, asking employees to prioritize his own evacuation so he could make it to Virginia for a performance of the musical “Oklahoma!” in which he had the lead role, according to staffers cited by the audit.

“Don’t worry, everything will be okay,” O’Keefe told his employees, according to recollection of a staffer cited in the audit, “but help me get out of here.” In 2022, Project Veritas admitted in a tax filing to improperly spending $20,500 moving some staff operations to Virginia during O’Keefe’s time with the musical production for his convenience.

OOOOOklahoma! where the wind comes sweeping down the sonofabitching middle-aged theater-kid ass plain as fuck Golden Boy nonsense with lashings of reality and so much lawsuits. 

He's not here to be the rightwing Woodward and Bernstein--his Pulitzer dreams are more Rodgers and Hammerstein! 

I'm just saying. So many of these rancid people want to be stars.They have big dreams. But the right wing stage is where they start paying in SWEAT! 

The Oversight Committee's Essential Business--Hunter Biden's Cock.

 

The job of the Oversight Committee is, per their web page: 

Our mission statement is to ensure the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the federal government and all its agencies. We provide a check and balance on the role and power of Washington - and a voice to the people it serves. 

Genuinely good government requires a commitment to expose waste, fraud, and abuse. We ultimately report to hard working taxpayers to ensure their investment in government is spent effectively, efficiently, and transparently. 

We identify problems, shine light on the situation, and propose reforms to prevent abuses from being repeated.

And this is somehow why this body grilled former Twitter employees about why there was a 24-hour suppression of a story that people could still see outside of Twitter, and also why pictures of naked Hunter Biden were taken down at the request of the Biden campaign. Look back up at that mission statement. They are supposed to be looking at waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. And they are instead looking into how a corporation might have blocked a story favorable to Trump's political campaign? How does that protect the American taxpayer from government abuse?

Ha! It doesn't! This hearing was actually about using the House process (funded by taxpayer dollars) to further Republican conspiracy theories--an actual example of waste, fraud and abuse. Literally doing the thing the committee is supposed to expose. And yet, ironically, it was exposed! Or to quote Rep. Gery Connolly: “My, my, my. What happens when you hold a hearing, and you can’t prove your point?”

Jimmy O'Keefe Gets Paid For What, Exactly?

So, I get that Project Veritas alleges that they are trying to entrap the lamestream media in the midst of their biases by means of dildo boats and whatnot, and that there was an actual minute when they thought that the Washington Post might actually pay 1000$ to them for dirt on Roy Moore because biasssed! But since this actually totally fell through for them, just like all the other fails, I have to ask--why are they fundraising off of a fuck up?  See, I think this is so that James O Keefe III gets paid a six figure salary for self-promoting, propaganda, and pretending to be a journalist, but that doesn't seem like an investment I'd be totally thrilled with if the whole entirety of things O'Keefe ever did was kill ACORN, and be an embarrassment to three generations of O'Keefes. That doesn't even sound like a real job. That right there, is wingnut welfare. 

Why are the conservatives giving this poor manchild a handout hammock? You are stunting his productivity by rewarding him for limited output. I think this is a crying shame, and maybe a little austerity might help clarify his purpose. 

Also, trying to malign people who come forward in a sexual harassment or assault matter by promoting the idea that accusers are liars is really gross, and not unsurprising from this corner of the fake-news-producing world. 

President Trump's "Fake News" Weak Sauce

There's something really stupid about President Trump' latest iteration of the "fake news" war cry--he's not actually the straightest shooter in the rifle cabinet. Just take a look at the two Time magazine covers in the above pic. The one on the right is an authentic Time cover, which depicts an orange-hued cartoon Trump with his yawp barbarically open in the process of a "meltdown". The one on the left, however, is a mock-up featuring an air-brushy Trump photo and snippets of The Apprentice television show puffery, which was copied, framed and hung at several of Trump's golf resorts. The melty Trump is the real news version. The puffery is fake, and yet, it is the version of Trump that he wants people to see. So, fake or not, it's the one he (or the toadies and yes-entities under him) run with.

This is par, to use an apt metaphor, for Trump's particular course. Trump is no stranger to using fake news and celebrity to self-promote for gain. He really has used fake news considerably to advance himself--I mean, he made his mark with the "birther" nonsense, right? And promoted the sick idea that Ted Cruz's dad helped assassinate President Kennedy. He's been entirely open about his admiration for The National Enquirer and Infowars, which are not, strictly speaking truly great and reliable news sources, and is literally a political entity today in large part because of the efforts of Breitbart and Fox News. 

His war against the media has been duly noted, but it should be also noted that there have been outlets that have been extraordinarily solicitous of him. Among some of Trump's followers, though (and I don't mind calling them followers--there are supporters, who are just regular conservatives or Republicans who hope he does ok, and then there's the cultists for whom Daddy can do no wrong), the war on "fake news" includes violence ideation on mainstream media whilst actually being a consumer of literal fake news.

It's no wonder, then, that Trump's insistence on rejecting stories that don't flatter him with the cry of "fake news" entered Tuesday's press briefing, with some vociferous pushback from Brian Karem (May his Twitter followers increase and his reputation grow from this day on!) But what is uniquely galling about the briefing was that, after calling out "fake news", Sarah Huckabee Sanders invited people to check out Project Veritas' (James O'Keefe's) latest thing to try and debunk all of CNN. An edited taped talk with a CNN health producer who doesn't cover politics.

I don't know how you decry fake news with one breath, then advertise James O'Keefe with the next, but this is a pretty special administration, and they do special things. I do know that O'Keefe's relationship with CNN is probably weird.  Also, yeah. O'Keefe.

This president has been trying to play fast and loose with the idea of what "real" is. He's been trying it out with his "leaks are real, news is fake" line, by which he implies that leaks of inside information should be stopped (by plumbers, one wonders?) and yet, somehow, once this inside true info is filtered to the various news outlets, it somehow becomes made-up--I still aver one can not have this both ways: it's either made-up, or a leak!

But what I think what Trump and his folks have done is create a lot of smoke to try and obscure real news, and if there wasn't already hints of fire, this smoke is quite alarming.  But if Trump wants to use"fake news" to wave away the Russia investigation, it remains that two congressional investigations, an FBI probe, a special prosecutor, and the consensus of the US intelligence community are not about the news media or ratings, and are completely real. And even if one story here or there needs to be retracted for sourcing reasons, this does not invalidate all that has come before--in fact, what CNN has done by owning up to an error and accepting the resignations of three journalists is called accountability--and wouldn't I just love to see Trump and Co held to the same standard of "tell the truth or leave" as the media, the much maligned media, just displayed?

Trump's whinge, now filtered through his press office and the surrogates talking him up on Fox News, about biased fake media, aren't anything new. But they are far off the mark, and maybe transparently so. It pains me to see well-respected people like Brit Hume and Sean Hannity undermine their credibility in his dubious service (I am half-kidding, but I leave to my reader to determine the extent of my jest).

James O'Keefe is Kind of a Weird Gun to Hire.

Ok, so I will probably always think of little Jimmy O'Keefe from down the street as the weird asshole in the 1970's Blaxploitation version of a pimp costume who "took down ACORN" with what was basically a lie about whether they were registering people illegally. ACORN did no wrong.  O'Keefe was just a flea on the ass of a bigger picture on the right to pretend that maybe they were losing not because they couldn't craft messages to a broader audience than white and uptight, but because there was some rigging.

So, in other words, he started out trash. And the saddest thing of all for such a young man who maybe showed promise is, he stayed trash. So think about this--his outfit got paid by the Trump Foundation a minute before Trump threw his hat in. In pecunia veritas, maybe? I don't even know.  But his product as info regarding voter fraud or stirring stuff up at rallies? Meh.  It hasn't got specifics, just speculation doctored to look definitive.  Sure, some folks will want to believe his version, but I'm thinking if you don't already buy what this dude stands for, you should probably ponder all the valid reasons why he needs to be handled with the containment suit.

This boy lies for money. That's what he made his job. And anything out of his shop needs transparency.  Because this partisan performance artist thinks lies are just as good as reality. And they are not and never were.

As for the charge Democrats were ever starting shit at Trump rallies--you know what that sounds like to me? Locker room talk. You know how men do. If Team Offensive Orange can try denial, I don't see why I have different rules. Locker room talk. Sometimes people just brag and show off and whatnot. Sometimes they pretend more electoral involvement than is actually possible might be obtained because #tryinghard.  But that doesn't mean "proof positive"--does it?

See how it works? But based on the polling this isn't going to be close enough to steal, so find another reason to be, Trumplodytes.

The "Nigerian Prince Who Really Needs Your Help" of Journalism

Call it a kind of schadenfreude if you must, but there's something kind of delightful to the liberal blogger running this D-List political opinion outfit to know that at last, maybe, people who do journalism for a living aren't taking James O'Keefe III seriously anymore. As a result, the pretend-pimp who once brought down ACORN, brought to you by Big Dead Breitbart, has to aim a little lower sometimes.  And when he aims high, a swing and a miss is good enough to qualify for the Big Leagues where he's concerned. But as for anyone else?

So, if one of his hybrid source/journalists (what even is that--a journalource? a sojournalist?) runs into a rando Canadian and films a Hillary Clinton campaign person politely saying that no, a foreign person can't contribute to the campaign, and then that American journamalource puts some kind of money down, and no, GODDAMN IT, we actually don't have a Canadian somehow even contributing chump change to Team Hillary; I don't know what's for sale here. Is Hillary Clinton now supposed to intercede in foreign affairs to benefit Canadian maple syrup over the Vermont kind? Should I see this as a great reason to throw my support to Sanders? Is this just some kind of gray area of campaign finance that an enterprising liberal journalist should try to dog the GOP candidates with? In a world where major newspapers are misrepresenting how classified electronic transmissions work--isn't this terribly small ball?

Hillary Clinton has been swatting bigger bugs than this since Jimmy O'Keefe was wearing rubber pants. I guess this display was to get Veritas some kind of contributions to actually come across with real serious journalistic stuff eventually (self-promote or die), but son--there are professionals already all over this particular scenery. Go on home before you're sent home.

(Yeah--as to the title. I thought it fit.)

One Rather Expected More--Or Not

Josh Marshall says "You kind of have to see this video." And he's exactly right. James O'Keefe has, I am afraid to say, completely descended into farce. And there were such hopes for him, too, weren't there? But anyhow:



You know, when young James took it upon himself to manufacture an essentially fallacious narrative about ACORN that ultimately resulted in the disbanding of the group, I thought he'd got his foot in the door for star treatment on the wingnut welfare circuit but would need to up his game to remain viable for long. His output since has been hit or miss, mostly miss. Probably because he makes things up. And then there are the occasional civil prices paid. He's a damn liability to any credible journalism outfit, and even conservative media seems a little tired of him. That why I guess he's on this topical tip--one could hope for his sake he's trolling to fund some bigger project, but it looks mostly like performance art and bottom-feeding.

So what's a boy to do?

It would be neat if he applied himself to knowing the details that make foreign ISIL fighters crossing our borders nearly irrelevant, like the way that ISIL uses propaganda to recruit people right here in the west--even the US. O'Keefe must know how dangerous propaganda can be by now, certainly? He could even bother looking into how threats that ISIL makes regarding potential attacks here are aspirational and reflect the mixed messages ISIL keeps trying to make to project strength. Or even ask what kind of wall would have protected Australia (get a map, if you like, Jimmy) from terror plans. Porous border much?

He's a disappointment. One wants better targets of one's loathing, don't you think?

Note to Future Targets of James O'Keefe

In view of the weird little so-called "sting" against the allegedly liberal--leaning NPR, and considering the sheer wankery involved in his ACORN "sting"  and his creepy attempt at "punking" a CNN reporter, might I suggest two simple steps for responding to finding that your agency or business has just been the target of one of young James' adventures in Jackass Journalism:

1)  Tell the complete and unvarnished truth:

"James O'Keefe is a biased and unethical serial liar who has no serious credibility. Being targeted by such a conniving, self-interested nuisance is proof I must be doing something effective, so I will continue about my business, because O'Keefe is a total shit weasel."

2) Apologize:

To shit and to weasels, because that's actually a pretty unfair comparison.

That is all.