"The Watergate burglars look good compared to these guys"

May 23, 2016 6:18 PM

James O'Keefe accidentally stings himself
posted by Artw (42 comments total)

Surely this.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:34 PM on May 23, 2016 [8 favorites]

When reading this article, it helps if you imagine everything O'Keefe says in the piercingly loud, whining voice of a pubescent Louie Anderson. Try it:

“This is our base of operations.” Waving his hand around seven thousand square feet of empty office space, he said, “This is our NORAD. It’s our field operation.”
posted by duffell at 6:36 PM on May 23, 2016 [19 favorites]

How much Keefe is in our politics?
posted by octobersurprise at 6:44 PM on May 23, 2016 [13 favorites]

Oh my god this dude needs to go.
posted by glaucon at 6:48 PM on May 23, 2016

The thing to remember is this: these guys are not very good at what they do, and even their successful "stings" are lame garbage, but they get a massive boost from a media and from political interest that has an interest in selling you that garbage.

The other thing to member is that despite this massive boost and minimum standards of competence not even vaguely applying to them they are all convinced they are massive geniuses and their unearned success proves their worth.

Privilege at work.
posted by Artw at 6:53 PM on May 23, 2016 [31 favorites]

"Hey children... know of any good parties nearby with, uh, illegal drugs? I really dig illegal drugs, myself."
posted by Behemoth at 6:55 PM on May 23, 2016 [11 favorites]

In January, 2010, the F.B.I. arrested O’Keefe and three accomplices, two of whom had disguised themselves as telephone repairmen in order to enter the New Orleans office of Mary Landrieu, then a Democratic senator for Louisiana. (O’Keefe says he had hoped to disprove Landrieu’s claim that her phone lines were too clogged to answer the many angry calls coming from Tea Party activists.) O’Keefe was sentenced to three years of probation and a hundred hours of community service; he also paid a fifteen-hundred-dollar fine.

That ought to have ended them.
posted by traveler_ at 6:57 PM on May 23, 2016 [11 favorites]

I have no idea how they didn't see jail.

Actually, TBH, a pretty fair Idea.
posted by Artw at 7:01 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

How much Keefe is in our politics?

Miles O'Keefe.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 7:01 PM on May 23, 2016 [28 favorites]

The New Yorker also played the whole recording of his botched call on their Politics and More podcast (episode is about 10 min).
posted by p3t3 at 7:22 PM on May 23, 2016 [10 favorites]

Congratulations, you played yourself.
posted by Xere at 7:26 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

JK: Hello. My name is Mr. Kesh. I believe you have an organization for me.

DG: Okay, uh, what's your first name Mr. Kesh?

JK: I don't know...
posted by downtohisturtles at 7:34 PM on May 23, 2016 [28 favorites]

This guy couldn't organize a pissing contest at a brewery...
posted by jim in austin at 7:35 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

“This is our NORAD. It’s our field operation.”

Let's not forget crimes against metaphor. Cheyenne Mountain (alternate headquarters of NORAD and home of the Stargate program) is the polar opposite of a field operation.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 7:37 PM on May 23, 2016 [20 favorites]

In 1972, Segretti published a phony letter that he claimed had been written by one of Nixon’s rivals, the Democratic Presidential candidate Edmund Muskie. The letter slurred Canadians as “Canucks,” and the resulting furor sent Muskie’s campaign into a tailspin.

Now we know how to beat Trump! Surely this...
posted by sallybrown at 8:18 PM on May 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

If we'd had today's version of "News Media" when Watergate happened, Nixon would've completed his second term with Agnew succeeding him, and Woodward & Bernstein would've spent time in jail.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:21 PM on May 23, 2016 [31 favorites]

Less convincing than Plainclothes Mountie.


Also, "Canucks"? That's not even a slur. That's not even anything.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:22 PM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

There a lot of people getting a lot more money who are a lot better at this and especially the not being caught part.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:35 PM on May 23, 2016 [12 favorites]

And those ppl are: Bad. Thanks goodnight.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:36 PM on May 23, 2016

And now thanks to Citizens United they have unlimited and legal funding!
posted by XMLicious at 8:47 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

He's just a rich asshole cokehead, right? He seems extremely paranoid and schemy.
posted by glaucon at 8:54 PM on May 23, 2016

Not nearly enough cause for Schadenfreude in that article. Would never have clicked on it if I knew it was going to be mostly about how he's still running around lying.
posted by mark k at 8:55 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

That ought to have ended them.

We're post-scandal, the Russia of the mid 90s gave everyone the blueprint, scandals can't touch you have no shame and no one expects better from you. Since no one is going to jail, there's no pressure to even bother Covering Things up.
posted by The Whelk at 9:08 PM on May 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

He's just a rich asshole cokehead, right? He seems extremely paranoid and schemy.


They're the kind of conservative that is openly evil for the sake of it, rather than covering it up with a bunch of religion, so I expect lots of overt coke use (rather than lots of secret and shameful coke use).
posted by Artw at 9:32 PM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

There a lot of people getting a lot more money who are a lot better at this and especially the not being caught part.

The way I've phrased it is: you know those kids you knew in school and elsewhere who seemed to always be getting into shit? A lot of them wind up getting caught for something, going to jail, and moving on from that. The ones who don't have the opportunity to go pro and become dicks for a living. I feel like O'Keefe probably admires Roger Stone, Dick Morris, and owns Boogie Man on Blu-Ray, but can't quite seem to get a handle on staying low.
posted by rhizome at 10:29 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Balloon-Juice ""when else am I going to be able to use this picture?

These rats fuck themselves.
posted by C.A.S. at 12:19 AM on May 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

What a mess American politics is! These awful 'dark money' organisations are thoroughly reprehensible.

By contrast, in late April the dark-money arm of Rhoades’s group, America Rising Squared, announced the creation of a negative campaign to target leading environmentalists as well as prominent donors to environmental causes and candidates. The campaign’s initial budget was a hundred thousand dollars, which, among other things, would cover the extensive use of video trackers. According to the political tip sheet The Hill, the campaign would subject environmentalists to “the same level of scrutiny . . . that opposition research firms apply to presidential candidates.” America Rising Squared’s executive director, Brian Rogers, told The Hill that his group planned to hold “the Environmentalist Left accountable for their epic hypocrisy and extreme positions which threaten America’s future prosperity.”

posted by asok at 2:04 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

The thing to remember is this: these guys are not very good at what they do, and even their successful "stings" are lame garbage

Yes, but as laughable as their tactics are, O'Keefe took down ACORN with a ridiculously amateurish undercover "sting." I am not sure if he could pull that off again given his reputation and record, but he has other people working for him now. I am honestly not sure what to think of this fuckup. Some people use a flaw to mislead other people into underestimating them, like Trump with his hair. I'm not saying O'Keefe is smart, but he's far from being harmless.
posted by krinklyfig at 2:11 AM on May 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

Thanks for the podcast link. I'd rather read a transcript but that's just as good.
posted by tilde at 4:00 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't think these types of organizations exist to actually do what they purport to do, they exist to simply bring negative attention that acts as cover for actually competent operatives to take action over. krinklyfig calls it correctly, they don't "take down" anyone, but they push the window open and then someone with actual chops can get in there.
posted by NiteMayr at 4:50 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

The Watergate comparison is a great pullquote, but for my money, I'm riding this all the way to the general election:

“It seems like most of the fraud O’Keefe uncovers he commits himself,” Richard Hasen, a professor of election law at the University of California, Irvine, says.

He took down ACORN because no one had ever seen these tactics deployed through such a populist channel, and thus because ACORN didn't know how to respond. Seven years later, I'll bet it's all spelled out in the employee handbook. Unless O'Keefe has another rabbit up his sleeve, this kind of thing will never work again.
posted by Mayor West at 5:04 AM on May 24, 2016

He took down ACORN because no one had ever seen these tactics deployed through such a populist channel, and thus because ACORN didn't know how to respond.

I'm not sure it matters. ACORN is no longer. And it will work again. It's like the undercover video of Planned Parenthood, which is heavily edited to portray a false narrative. In this case, the guy responsible for producing the videos is actually being prosecuted, but in the meantime a number of state legislatures took up legislation defunding Planned Parenthood on the basis of what the videos allege. It became a narrative, and sure it is obviously based on a lie, but a lot of people have woven it into their own narrative of what abortion providers do ("selling baby parts!"), and they're repeating it to others. Once it is repeated enough times, this stuff never goes away.
posted by krinklyfig at 5:42 AM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

I still can't decide if I'm proud that I saw some of this guy's first pranks in action. He staged a petition during a campus event I was a part of that tried to convince people to outlaw water. I'm shocked he's still relevant post-arrest, but I would guess compared to TV ad campaigns his operation is much cheaper to run, so its easy for them to hang on.
posted by lownote at 6:02 AM on May 24, 2016

I'm shocked he's still relevant post-arrest...

You mean arrests. Plural. His attempts to commit voter fraud in NH and elsewhere not only didn't wind up with him in jail, it's being noised about all over the Right-wing web as demonstrating how easy it is to subvert the voting process. He's a career criminal, and belongs in prison.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:22 AM on May 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

He took down ACORN

Not without the benefit of a massive echo chamber primed and ready to go he wouldn't have.
posted by Artw at 6:40 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Not without the benefit of a massive echo chamber primed and ready to go he wouldn't have.

And a national media that either couldn't tell how dishonest the video was or was too afraid of being called liberal for ignoring something that was all over the Drudge Report.
posted by Gelatin at 6:47 AM on May 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

No one talks about it much but he also brought down a wisconsin republican by catching him on tape suggesting doing coordinating that was illegal but s.o.p. in WI republican politics. I can't prove it but I'm pretty sure the guy he brought down was standing in the way of some changes Walker wanted to make with state schools. (The politician was Michael Ellis)
posted by drezdn at 7:30 AM on May 24, 2016

The idea that criminals and malefactors like O'Keefe are largely ignorant, incompetent grifters affords me no comfort whatsoever, since it makes them more dangerous, not less.
posted by Flexagon at 7:32 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

In the words of the immortal Bugs Bunny: "Whatta maroon!"
posted by briank at 7:49 AM on May 24, 2016

It's funny that people are surprised that O'Keefe is still going strong when G. Gordon Liddy was still in circulation in the last 2 decades, as in one of the original Watergate scandaleros. (I made up the word, but you get my drift)

If being associated with something that brought down a President doesn't do you in, why would shady nasty crap like the Sex Boat that O'Keefe engaged in take him down?
posted by NiteMayr at 8:53 AM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'm more interested in who funds these turds. Follow the money.
posted by Chuffy at 12:23 PM on May 24, 2016

Bill McKibben on Exxon, the Power of Divestment, and Being Targeted by Shadowy Right-Wing Group
posted by homunculus at 12:20 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]