James O'Keefe's race problem

[shawcomm]

Source: Salon.com

Many of the conservatives who gleefully promoted James O’Keefe’s past political stunts are feigning shock at his arrest on charges that he and three associates planned to tamper with Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu's phone lines. Once upon a time, right-wing pundits hailed the 25-year-old O’Keefe as a creative genius and model of journalistic ethics. Andrew Breitbart, who has paid O’Keefe, called him was one of the all-time “great journalists” and said he deserved a Pulitzer for his undercover ACORN video. Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly declared he should have earned a “congressional medal.”

His right-wing admirers don't seem to mind that O’Keefe's short but storied career has been defined by a series of political stunts shot through with racial resentment. Now an activist organization that monitors hate groups has produced a photo of O'Keefe at a 2006 conference on "Race and Conservatism" that featured leading white nationalists. The photo, first published Jan. 30 on the Web site of the anti-racism group One People's Project, shows O’Keefe at the gathering, which was so controversial even the ultra-right Leadership Institute, which employed O'Keefe at the time, withdrew its backing. But O'Keefe and fellow young conservative provocateur Marcus Epstein soldiered on to give anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism an opportunity to share their grievances and plans to make inroads in the GOP.

According to One Peoples Project founder Daryle Jenkins, O'Keefe was manning the literature table at the gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism. OPP covered the event at the time, sending a freelance photographer to document the gathering. Jenkins told me the table was filled with tracts from the white supremacist right, including two pseudo-academic publications that have called blacks and Latinos genetically inferior to whites: American Renaissance and the Occidental Quarterly. The leading speaker was Jared Taylor, founder of the white nationalist group American Renaissance. "We can say for certain that James O'Keefe was at the 2006 meeting with Jared Taylor. He has absolutely no way of denying that," Jenkins said. O'Keefe's attorney did not respond to a request for comment on his client's role in the conference.

O'Keefe's racial issues can be seen in many of his prior stunts, of course. The notorious ACORN videos highlighted images of himself dressed as a pimp, deceptively edited through hidden camera footage as he baited African-American office workers into making statements that could be perceived as incriminating. There were also lesser-known but equally inflammatory spectacles like the “affirmative action bake sale” O’Keefe and his conservative comrades held when they were students at Rutgers University. During the event, O’Keefe stood at a table in the center of campus offering baked goods at reduced prices to Latinos and African-Americans while whites were forced to pay exorbitant amounts. (Native Americans, he announced, would eat free.)

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

[eleny]

1. K&R for peeling the onion

Thanks for posting this.

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. O'Keefe wears his racism like a crown

The little fascist dumbass deserves prison time.

[Cirque du So-What]

3. Is all this just now coming to light?

Seems that if anyone knew about it sooner, it would have been good to reveal it during the ACORN kerfuffle. Mind you, I'm glad that it's becoming public knowledge, but it's unconscionable if someone sat on these details all these many months.

[shawcomm]

4. Don't know, first I heard it. But then,

I haven't paid too much attention to him until his breaking and entering. I'm sure some of the media would have suppressed it.

I hadn't read all the article yet when I posted it. The guy is direct from stormfront. And his buddy Epstein:

Epstein’s career unraveled in June 2009, when a violent racial assault he committed two years earlier was disclosed. According to a court affidavit, Epstein had karate-chopped a random African-American woman in the face and called her a “nigger” during a drunken late-night romp bar-hopping on Washington’s M Street in 2007, leading to his arrest by an off-duty Secret Service agent. He signed a plea bargain requiring him to attend alcohol rehabilitation courses and donate $1,000 to the United Negro College Fund as a token of his contrition.

I knew I heard of his name before.

[DLJ]

9. I can answer that.

I am one of the main people in One People's Project, and the reason is simply because we didn't catch it. We had the picture for four years, and O'Keefe wasn't on our radar enough to pick him out of that crowd. We were actually dealing with him because of the stuff he was doing while a student at Rutgers University, but he was still just a blip on that radar. It was after he was arrested that the lightbulb went off in our heads and we pulled the photo. And believe me, I so wish we had caught him then. All the things that he did since would have never happened. I have been beating myself up over it for the past week.

Anyone wants to confirm I wrote this feel free to email me at [e-mail] or [e-mail].

Daryle Lamont Jenkins
One People's Project
www.onepeoplesproject.com

[Spazito]

13. Thanks for explaining how this was missed...

your post is much appreciated and it is still 'better late than never' when it comes to shining the light on the rat, O'Keefe.

[Starry Messenger]

28. Thank you.

Welcome to DU. :hi:

[No Elephants]

20. Good point. Don't know, but it is possible that few heard of him before ACORN, then

starting investigating.

Even as I type that, though, I find it hard to believe because I donfess to being biased against the media. I don't think many of them investigate anything these days.

[thereismore]

5. That smug face of his is a dead giveaway. A face of superiority and contempt. nt

[CreekDog]

6. Why would anyone think a guy that dresses like this has a race problem?

[fascisthunter]

8. no shit... the stereotypical garb was a huge giveaway

I fail to believe ANYONE thought he was a "real" pimp, but a parody of one.

[ronnie624]

10. I read somewhere that he wasn't wearing that garb during his "sting".

Those images of him were apparently edited in as part of the presentation in his video. But they definitely say something about his attitude on race. No less offensive than racist blackface.

[uppityperson]

12. This picture doesn't mean anything either, does it? Kkklassy "affimative action bake sale"

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/f/g/fgdesign/2010/01/okeefes-affirmative-action-bak.php

"This from Mr. O'Keefe's many albums online here. " http://community.webshots.com/user/featherofsteel/profile

[TuxedoKat]

34. I wonder if the other students

there are embarrassed by their participation.

[No Elephants]

22. He looked more like a clown or a nutcase than a pimp.-

I don't know that I've ever seen a pimp outside movies and TV, so I'm probably working off an exaggerated image to begin with--and this guy still looked nutty to me.

[fascisthunter]

7. he's a little nazi boy like most right wingers

extremist backward losers.

[democratdoug]

11. I would love to help O'Keefe promote his views

right here in Memphis. I would set up his little table and stack it full of his small minded media, pull his chair out so he could sit, step a good distance away with my video camera in hand, and watch with great pleasure while his skinny little punk ass got smacked down. And yes, O'Keefe, that is a genuine invitation.... come on down to Memphis, I'll hook you up!

[KamaAina]

14. "fellow young conservative provocateur Marcus Epstein"?!

:wtf:

Uh, maybe he's related to Juan Epstein from the Sweathogs? Otherwise, why the hell would he "soldier on to give anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism an opportunity to share their grievances and plans to make inroads in the GOP"?!

[Jim__]

23. Marcus Epstein is "half-Jewish"

According to wikipedia:

Epstein is half-Korean and half-Jewish. In his brief biography on his personal website Epstein sums up his political beliefs as follows: "My political sympathies support traditional American values, a restrictive immigration policy, the free market, States' rights and decentralism, and a non-interventionist foreign policy."<2>

Epstein formerly served as the executive director of Team America PAC, a political action committee founded by Tom Tancredo, and of The American Cause, a foundation created by Pat Buchanan.

He is a co-founder of the Robert Taft Club, a monthly meeting of paleoconservative journalists and thinkers in the Washington, D.C. area.

[shawcomm]

27. Tancredo... says it all, doesn't it?

[No Elephants]

24. LOL. The RW media is really wearing out their thesauruses for this guy, aren't they?

Investigative journalist.

Boyish prank

caper

conservative provacateur.

Give it a rest folks. He's just another a RW racist ass.

[unpossibles]

31. and of course, his tactics are far worse than what the right complains about Michael Moore

typical hypocritical asshats.

[defendandprotect]

15. So O'Keefe is a white-supremacist? This is the right wing laid bare . . . !!

GOP: Sexist, racist, homophobic -- the corporate agenda of exploitation laid bare!

[provis99]

16. isn't Marcus Epstein that self-hating jew who beat up a black woman?

what pieces of shit these guys are.

[starroute]

17. I'm going to add some stuff I posted on another thread about this

Because the racist connections of all the organizations associated with O'Keefe can't be repeated often enough:

The OP mentions the Occidental Quarterly. The publisher of Occidental Quarterly is William H. Regnery, an unabashed white supremacist who got into the news several years ago when he proposed starting a whites-only dating service.

Regnery's name appears on a list of the officers and executives of the Intercollegiate Studies Association which I found a few years ago and which probably dates from the late 90's. The Collegiate Network which funded the conservative college papers founded or edited by O'Keefe, Basel, and Dai is part of ISI.

The president of ISI, T. Kenneth Cribb, is an old-school southern racist. Something I saved a while back that's no longer online mentions "Edwin Meese, who was President Ronald Reagan's attorney general and so anti-civil rights that, according to the Washington Post, Reagan aides James Baker and Michael Deaver called him 'Big Bigot' and his top assistant, T. Kenneth Cribb, 'Baby Bigot.'"

The list of ISI officers isn't online any more either -- but I found it at the website of the Capital Research Center, a group founded in the 80's at the instigation of the Heritage Foundation which has done more than any place else to promote scurrilous stories about ACORN. (Some of O'Keefe's statements about ACORN use language that appears to be drawn directly from CRC.)

A list from 2001 of CRC's own trustees and advisers includes both Cribb and his former boss, Ed Meese. This is important, because it suggests that CRC's anti-ACORN agenda is explicitly racist and not merely motivated by a dislike of any group that helps poor people or supports the Democratic Party.

In addition, Cribb and former Heritage Foundation president Edwin Feulner are long-time friends, and Feulner's name also appears on that ISI officers list. And Cribb is associated with Young America's Foundation, another group with roots in the Reagan era which gave O'Keefe's faux-hooker pal Hannah Giles a "Young Activist" award. (http://www.politicususa.com/en/O-Keefe-Landrieu)

For that matter, Meese himself has just re-surfaced as head of something called the Conservative Action Project. (http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/020210.html)

So what's behind O'Keefe (and probably paying for his top-level lawyers) is a dense network of old-line ultra-conservative groups with multiple racist overtones and extensive funding from right-wing foundations. Clearly O'Keefe's own racism is no anomaly.

[Kingofalldems]

21. Keith will be all over this one--tonight's show is a must watch

Thanks.

[MisterP]

29. and OQ is tied to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_B._MacDonald
more "science you can't deny just because it gives conclusions you don't approve of," I suppose?
and of course this white nationalist network intersects a lot with "mainstream" conservatism--Tommy Thompson, all those people saying you can't criticize something big-business or conservative because it's "scientific"

[Kingofalldems]

18. Keep this on the front burner

K and R Yeah----->:shrug: Special Prosecutor needed to investigate this and any news organization that may be involved.

[liberation]

19. Someone should let Mr. O'keefe know that "Fetal Alcohol Syndrome" is not a race....

... technically it is a disorder.

[No Elephants]

25. That assumes O'Keefe is educable. I would not bet on that.

My guess is that talking to him is a waste of time.

[defendandprotect]

26. K*R

[Kingofalldems]

30. Kick all Watergate II threads

This was in LBN, what happened? Hmmm---:shrug:

[louis-t]

32. I remember that 'bake sale'! That was him?

Holy......

[LaPera]

33. Republicans always praise & encourage racist acts, slurs. lies, anything

legal or illegal to try to pretend that whites are better and superior, (talk about an inferiority complex) they can't and won't accept the fact that we are ALL just people,....I'm a white Italian American I know how their racist daddy's told them blacks & others are inferior, stupid, lazy, looking for a handout, mostly expecting special treatment (that's the one that the republicans, Limbaugh and the like use most to get to the uneducated, uniformed no self esteem whites, O'Keeffe is no different).

Most spend their whole lives with the taught hatred & misconceptions, always trying to prove daddy right for the sake of their own egos.. You know, put someone else down in order to feel better about ones self, especially to others ..It's the same age old story of hate to make up for ones lack of self esteem....While the idiot moronic liars, stooges like O'Keeffe & company will do anything to harass & setup, to try and prove their points are valid, in justify hurting others that they despise, it gives them incentive, while the paranoid hateful republicans hail & applaud as if it was of some earth shattering significance.....simply because republicans have nothing else to offer but greed hate & lies so they must divide people to ensure their power.

To understand republicans..... Is to know they are the exact example of the classic "bully complex".

[Kingofalldems]

35. Kick this for Nixon