Is ‘Sting Videographer’ Jim O’Keefe a Racist? Or does it really matter anymore?

“The bolder you are, the opportunities will be open to you. The less bold you are, the less opportunities in life will be open to you. The more you put yourself out there and you take those calculated risks-the contrary of what people actually think is going to happen-you’re actually going to get opportunities.”

On Monday, January 25th, four men were arrested in New Orleans and charged with entering a federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony. This changed the picture considerably for James O’Keefe. He was one of the men charged with this plot to tamper with the telephone system of Senator Mary Landrieu, a democrat from Louisiana.

For a good while O’Keefe was an ace in the hands of arch-conservative stalwarts, with his video sting of Acorn, but now he takes a tumble from this right-wing pedestal like Icarus (in the Greek myth), whose wings of wax melt when he soars too close to the sun. Everyone, especially liberals, are reviewing the episodes of his past, his other videos, and his shady associations in the political arena.

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A still from the video, Taxpayers Clearing House, that shows James O’Keefe cajoling an AfricanAmerican woman with a FAKE sweepstake check. Photo by John Kays

Allegations of racism towards James O’Keefe have been made after the Landrieu incident. The best case for his racism has been argued on Salon.com with an article, James O’Keefe’s race problem, written by Max Blumenthal. While the proof was not definitive, Blumenthal gives three good examples of it as well as sketching a pattern of behavior that demonstrates O’Keefe’s repeated associations with right-wing extremists.

The most serious allegation of racism comes when O’Keefe attended a 2006 conference on “Race and Conservatism” that featured many big names in the white nationalist movement. A photo of O’Keefe at this conference has surfaced on the web site of the anti-racism group One’s People’s Project. Apparently, James was manning a literature table there that included such disturbing publications as American Renaissance and the Occidental Quarterly.

I took a look at these two publications last night and saw them for what they were: white supremacist racial propaganda. I read a piece in American Renaissance after going to their archives, entitled: The Unknown Martin Luther King, Jr.-King was hardly the greatest American, by Benjamin J. Ryan; this piece cast King in an ugly light and portrayed him as a villain. I wonder if O’Keefe has ever read this one?

Then I read an awful one in the Occidental Quarterly, A Modest Proposal by Sam G. Dickson. “In the many decades I have toiled in the vineyards of American racial nationalism, I have heard very few solutions offered to our people.” Mister Dickson proposes partitioning America off, so that whites will be separated geographically from Blacks and Latinos. He cites an Irish poem, An Old Woman of the Roads, because it has the metaphor of longing for a home. In his twisted mind, the home is a pure white America, free of Blacks and Latinos.

Part of James problem is who he keeps company with. O’Keefe met Marcus Epstein at the Leadership Institute, the conservative movement’s primary youth training organization. Epstein was the editor of a conservative publication at the College of William and Mary, who also assailed Martin Luther King. You know the rap; Martin was a philanderer, a plagiarist, a Communist and not a real Christian. This is just what J. Edgar Hoover had accused MLK of! One can see exactly where they get this hate propaganda from. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Lo and behold, it was Marcus Epstein who organized the “Race and Conservatism” symposium. Two speakers were featured at this symposium, Jared Taylor and John Derbyshire, who debated the ‘role of race in policy decisions.’ Marcus got into trouble for a 2007 incident in which he karate-chopped an African-American woman in the face and called her the N word.

The Blumenthal article cites several other examples of events in the short career of Jim O’Keefe that are suspiciously racist. Please review these and see what you think. I found an example of my own that is not cited in the salon.com article. In February of 2009 O’Keefe posted his video to YouTube, Taxpayers Clearing House.

Jim dupes many African-Americans in the video into believing that they have won sweepstake money, a sick parody of Publishers Clearing House. Actually they are given a bill for $28,000 that would be their portion of the federal bank bailout. How can Jim get up the courage to go to the houses of these non-white targets and try to cajole them in such a deceptive manner? This is fraudulent behavior, entrapment really. A sick, rogue of a candid camera con job!

The backer of this bad-taste-video, who gave $30,000, was Peter Thiel, a billionaire who acquired his money from being on the ground floor of PayPal and Facebook. Thiel has been known to rail against the evils of “multiculturalism.” James makes claims that he is totally independent in his films, and that would include the Acorn Project also. (Crooks and Liars-‘Independent’ Filmmaker James O’Keefe Has A Right-Wing Sugar Daddy by Susie Madrak-9/27/2009)

After his arrest in New Orleans, James O’Keefe experiences a ‘Fall from Grace’. His House of Cards comes crashing down. The scam at Mary Landrieu’s office is being characterized as ‘Watergate Junior’ by MSNBC. Did they commit wiretapping as alleged? That’s not been proven but it looks suspiciously so. Conservatives, with the exception of Andrew Breitbart, are now distancing themselves from O’Keefe. Yesterday, I noticed that the links on the Huffington Post to Sean Hannity’s interviews with James III have disappeared?

But just how did the Acorn videos get so much clout in the first place? The short answer is that Fox News hyped them as a big break-through for investigative journalism and as a consummate exposure of a corrupt organization, Acorn. This then snowballed through the mainstream media, and no one came in the defense of Acorn. No one looked very closely either at the context of these Acorn videos.

In actuality the videos were highly doctored. When outside the Acorn offices Jim has the pimp getup on, but when inside he just dresses normally, acting as a boyfriend to Hannah Giles, who dresses up like a prostitute. Many of the offices turned them away or refused to give them aid, but this was edited out.

Yet a more important question is why would O’Keefe and Giles target Acorn in the first place, if not for racial and political reasons. Acorn’s primary mission is to help working poor African Americans and Latinos. O’Keefe is obviously trying to entrap Acorn employees and humiliate them, and I suspect this is racially driven hatred.

The videographer posted these words on a conservative web page about Acorn. “Acorn’s world is a revolutionary, socialistic, atheistic world, where all means are justifiable. And they create chaos, again, for its own sake.” Pure propaganda, Jim! Acorn’s real mission is to simply help minorities register to vote and to aid with their housing needs. And allegations of voter fraud have not been substantiated.

Even with so much damage done to Acorn by these videos, a report by Scott Harshbarger, issued on December 7, 2009, cleared Acorn of any illegal activity. “While some of the advice and counsel given by Acorn employees and volunteers was clearly inappropriate and unprofessional, we did not find a pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by Acorn staff; in fact, there is no evidence that action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by any Acorn employee on behalf of the videographers.” (Huffington Post-Acorn Is Back in the News, but the News Still Gets it Wrong by John Atlas and Peter Dreier-Jan. 27, 2010)

All I am arguing for is that after the arrest of Jim O’Keefe in January, his whole world of ‘gonzo journalism for the right’ begins to unwind. One day he was a champion for mainstream conservatives, almost a Michael Moore figure for the right, then the next day, he was exposed as a fraudulent racist with a loaded agenda, guilty by association with his documented affiliations to Andrew Breitbart, Marcus Epstein and Jared Taylor.

The problem is that earlier on, during his heyday in the sun, no one bothered to look that closely at his behavioral record and his assortment of ‘vituperative videos’. That’s all changed now. Now connections are being made regarding O’Keefe’s past, which cast doubt on his good judgment. I was offended by his film, Taxpayers Clearing House. See it for yourself. In one scene he hands a giant check to an African American women who is working in a toll booth. James has a smirk on his face that is most offensive.

So yes, leftist publications have been spinning Mister O’Keefe out to be a racist. So what! The evidence that they have provided is ample, convincing; it packs a wallop to the snickering smacker of Mister Jim! The best thing for you to do is look at the videos for yourself. And go over to the haunted houses of American Renaissance and Occidental Quarterly. Appalled and shocked! I became sick to my stomach from what I read over there.

But the liberals win this battle in the wider war against conservatives. Through the stupidity of Jim O’Keefe, All the King’s Men have fled the arena. Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Riley-all have hit the freeway-they won’t have anything to do with poor Jim anymore. And moderate conservatives are quivering like shy possums up in trees. The pulverized weasel Jim had to move back in with his parents. Wimpola!

Oh well, a little corny, but I think it fits. “Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.” It doesn’t matter anymore for James O’Keefe, he’s a cooked goose in a red jumpsuit.

James O’Keefe’s race problem by Max Blumenthal.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/02/03/james_okeefe_white_nationalists