The despicable rise of conservative pranksters: Race-baiting & conspiracy theories in the age of Oba

[DonViejo]

The despicable rise of conservative pranksters: Race-baiting & conspiracy theories in the age of Obama

How Glenn Beck and James O'Keefe perfected a bizarre — and dangerous — new brand of conservative anger

KEMBREW MCLEOD

The history of political pranks is littered with lefty characters. Conservatives, on the other hand, do not gravitate toward irreverent hijinks. One exception is James O’Keefe, a right-wing prankster who uses hidden cameras to stage encounters with his ideological enemies. At the same time that progressive organizations such as MoveOn.org were hailed for their savvy uses of online media, O’Keefe, Andrew Breitbart, and other conservatives employed similar DIY methods. O’Keefe’s provocations began in 2004 while attending Rutgers University. In a satire of political correctness, what he viewed as a pious sensitivity to ethnicity on college campuses, he launched a campaign to remove Lucky Charms from the dining hall. He secretly videotaped himself complaining to a food-service employee about the leprechaun on the cereal box. While the school official earnestly scribbled notes, O’Keefe deadpanned, “As you can see, we’re not short and green—we have our differences of height—and we think this is stereotypical of all Irish Americans.” While at Rutgers, he gained notoriety by organizing an “affirmative-action bake sale,” in which whites paid exorbitant prices and African Americans got discounts.

In developing his craft, O’Keefe read Saul Alinsky’s ”Rules for Radicals,” the bible of many liberal activists. Rule Four especially inspired him: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” He applied this directive in 2007 when he punked Planned Parenthood in an attempt to expose white liberal hypocrisies about race, abortion, and eugenics. It is certainly true, for instance, that some early-twentieth-century Progressives could be racist. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger is a women’s right pioneer, but some of her projects ran hand in hand with a desire to reduce the size of “undesirable” populations. Particularly unsettling was Sanger’s “Negro Project,” which was arguably a thinly veiled eugenics scheme. This sordid history has enabled conservative commentators to take the moral high ground by claiming that white liberals are the real racists. To dramatize this claim, O’Keefe secretly taped a phone conversation with a Planned Parenthood staffer, who was asked if his donation could be used to abort black babies (so to prevent his future son from being discriminated against through affirmative action). He was told the organization would accept the money, for whatever reason. Even though Planned Parenthood dismissed the tapes as “heavily edited,” the public-relations damage was done.

An unsettling amount of racial resentment runs through O’Keefe’s stunts, from his Rutgers University “affirmative-action bake sale” to one of the pranks he is most known for: the ACORN pimp tapes. In 2009, he targeted the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which advocated for working-class citizens and minorities. Conservative talk-show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck turned it into a political punching bag during and after the 2008 election campaign, and O’Keefe piled on. Posing as a pimp—and accompanied by his associate Hannah Giles, who played the role of the prostitute—he videotaped low-level employees who appeared to endorse his proposed tax-fraud and child-prostitution schemes. The footage contained misleading cutaway shots of the skinny, white twenty-something in a pimp costume, making it look like he dressed this way in ACORN’s offices. It was one of many manipulations in O’Keefe’s viral videos (which, to be fair, are not unlike some edits found in films by liberal documentarian Michael Moore).

The incendiary footage prompted multiple criminal investigations, though no charges were ultimately filed. A report on ACORN activities produced by the California attorney general found that the organization suffered from mismanagement, but the AG also concluded that the videos were “heavily edited to feature only the worst or most inappropriate statements of various ACORN employees.” The report stated, “the impression of rampant illegal conduct . . . is not supported by the evidence related to the videos.” Additionally, at least one employee who seemed to play along while on camera contacted the police after the “pimp’s” visit. The District Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, where another hidden-camera sting occurred, also reported that “no criminality has been found.” O’Keefe’s tactics did not constitute investigative journalism, but as a prank—a staged provocation designed to persuade—they were very effective. The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to deny federal funding to ACORN, and by 2010 it was on the verge of bankruptcy. “That 20-minute video ruined 40 years of good work,” a former Maryland chapter co-chairwoman lamented. In 2011, O’Keefe pulled a similar prank on National Public Radio, which prompted legislation to defund public broadcasting. This was change the right could believe in.

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http://www.salon.com/2014/04/01/the_despicable_rise_of_conservative_pranksters_race_baiting_conspiracy_theories_in_the_age_of_obama/

[GeorgeGist]

1. What's most disheartening ...

is how many racists were available for pimping. IMO

[Sunlei]

2. stuffed them with pulled pork, macNcheese & endless open bars, & find Karma like brebart.