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“For O’Keefe and Breitbart to be targeting ACORN is incredibly sad and pathetic,” [Yes Men co-founder Mike] Bonanno told Raw Story. “Most of its members are lower-income home owners, so these are model Americans — pull themselves up by their bootstraps type of people — people who are often very poor.”
In a videotaped conversation with blogger Mike Stark at last month’s CPAC convention, Breitbart, probed about the morality of O’Keefe’s actions, pointed to The Yes Men as an example of progressive activists using similarly questionable means to attain their goals.
But it’s not his and O’Keefe’s tactics that The Yes Men take issue with; it’s whom they’re taking aim at, and the now-extinct community group didn’t deserve the treatment, Bonanno alleged.
“It’s why you’re lying and who’s gaining and who’s losing as a result,” he said. “There are liars and there are assholes. What James O’Keefe is doing is making a lot of lower-income people lose, unfortunately. And it’s supported by a bunch of very nasty, mean-spirited people.”
Here again is the video referred to above, which The BRAD BLOG originally published on March 1, where Andrew Breitbart invokes The Yes Men near the very end after he’s already been forced, by journalist Mike Stark, to toss his own employee, James O’Keefe under the bus for having duped him — or so Breitbart, an accomplished and acknowledged liar, is now claiming…
Brad – Why do you label Mike Stark a journalist? His claim to fame is crank calls to talk radio shows.
O’Keefe is White Supremacist. Breitbart shoudl be questioned abotu this fact.
Hey there duhrocks, what do have to say to this…a man from another country who tried to RAPE my niece…only problem is … it was from a country we provided aid… the country is all blown up now… an yet here back in america it is coming back to…we have not laws on the criminals who perpetrate WAR and create these monsters…? Can you say BLOWBACK [redacted]?
[Ed Note: Ancient, you know the rules for commenting here at The BRAD BLOG. Please mind them. I appreciate your anger, but still, no personal attacks on other commenters. Thank you. -BF]
An oh yeah, brave woman she is , she’s takin him to court!
I don’t know about the situation you are talking about, but if what you say is true, good for her for being so brave, and you for giving her so much support.
Who does ‘Sad, Pathetic, Assholes’ best fit — O’Keefe, Breitbart, or the mainstream media? I occasionally come across people expressing bizarre, illogical beliefs. I’ve heard well-to-do White males describe a belief of elaborate conspiracies against themselves, blaming feminists, Black people, immigrants, and others they probably don’t personally meet very often. It is a given that some people harbor destructive beliefs. How we react to such people and what they say, how they lie, what they do, is not a given. Again, that some people will harbor such beliefs and even lie to promote their cause is a given. It’d be nice if we could pay as much heed to such extremists as we do to people on the street talking to voices in their. Sadly, they’re not fringe anymore (if they ever even were). The mainstream media — the New York Times — has reacted to such extremists by broadcasting their lies and promoting their cause, and continues to do so. They seem to think that if repeat it enough, it will seem to be the truth in most people’s minds. The mainstream media, proudly led by Fox, the New York Times, and other “news” broadcasters, is actually more responsible for the damage done to ACORN than O’Keefe and Breitbart. Why did they do it? They’re obviously on the same side. For example, getting New York Times editor Clark Hoyt to retract at least part of the lies (certainly not all) on the ACORN pimp hoax repeatedly published in their paper was like pulling teeth. In contrast, he was quite enthusiastic when it came to broadcasting the lies in the first place, and even chided his paper for not doing so with more urgency.
Daley, its funny you guys over at Patterico’s blog call Okeefe a journalist even though he lacks scruples and ethics related to actual journalism.
DaleyRocks asked:
Um, because he’s a journalist. Ya know, someone who reports stuff accurately and honestly on video which isn’t deceptively edited to mislead about the subject being shown in that video.
That’s what real journalists do, though I realize you wingnuts have re-defined the term to apply to anybody who puts forward dishonest, deceptive propoganda meant to forward a partisan agenda which you approve of, rather than representing the truth in order to inform the citizenry.
Veritas, amigo!
HI all,
I guess it would be redundant to point out how truly out-there DaleyRocks’s first comment (#1)is.
Think of it this way, DailyRocks–, if a person can access and engage others, including high-ranking officials in a conversation about their work, and if that person has the ability to report on those exchanges in a RELIABLE capacity, that person is a type of journalist. You might as well get used to that fact. Your petty jab doesnt change it in the slightest.
Being a real journalist is very different from tricking well-meaning or helpful people into producing sound-bytes that you can re-arrange into a completely bogus misrepresentaion that suits your agenda.
That’s just being an asshole.
I am really glad that, among others, the Yes Men are calling out O’Keefe for what he is- a mean-spirited, ugly, bigoted elitist asshole. I hope we can get more people to condemn him, and demand accountability from him.
However, as evidenced in their strategy and in their rhetoric, Breitbart’s boys really get-off on the appearance of seeming “persecuted.†It’s a big sell among the Tea Baggers. They even try to actively orchestrate that appearance.
It’s part of the bogus 8th -grade posturing that suffuses Breitbart’s work.
While raging against the truly disempowered, Breitbart and O’Keefe just LOVE to wet their pants over the idea of appearing martyred. It seems that they have tricked themselves into thinking that it conveys more “pathosâ€, then just being truly pathetic.
Nevertheless, while hob-nobbing with high-rollers like of Karl Rove, and flying from one end of the country to the other ON OTHER PEOPLES DIMES (thanks papa Thiel!!!) Breitbart and O’keefe act like it’s the poor who have what the former owns– the connections, the funds, the infrastructure, the editing machinery, the hidden cameras and the time to waste libeling others with piece-meal sound-bytes in a witch-trial with an obvious political motive.
(Consider the quote by famed court Inquisitor and torturer Baron De Laubardemont, “Give me 3 lines of a man’s hand writing and I will hang him.†O’Keefe’s editing technique is as archaic as the class-based hatred which inspires it.)
The irony is that, as pointed out by the Yes Men, good and innocent people (who really ARE impoverished) have lost so much because of this. James and Hannah have libeled the innocent, and have taken away the supports from those who have nothing, but who are trying to make good with their lives.
Their aim is at Obama, their proxy was ACORN, and their victims are poor families who are working hard to achieve the basics that Hannah and James take for granted. For that matter, the next time any of these idiots complains about being “impugnedâ€, I hope some one just gives them a tight slap.
Here’s the thing, Giles and O’Keefe are too young to realize what they are doing. And their backgrounds show that they lack the supports to teach them right from wrong.
Giles’s father clearly has accountability issues. His “church†is a scam, and his books, (eg, “Raising Boys Feminists Will Hateâ€) speaks to a person who ought to be kept away from children, let alone young girls. The guy doesnt just look like a deranged meth head, he acts like one to. I couldnt imagine having that as a dad. Like James, the girl has a boat-load of skeletons in her closet.
Then there’s James, who has all the fore-sight of a murder-suicide (eg, his criminal conviction in New Orleans). His rhetoric speaks of someone who has learned only to hate during the course of his short and misguided life. For someone so young, he looks/acts so old and embittered. Nevertheless, he truly doesnt know what he’s doing because he’s too young, naive and privileged. And his fans have disabled him with a euphoric sense of esteem that actually exacerbates his imbalances … he cant see past his own smoke and mirrors.
These juvenile delinquents have cracked-out blow-hards like Breitbart paying them to capitalize on their dishonesty, and to avoid accountability with an almost religious sense of impunity. Breitbart is too much of a tool to realize that he’s setting them up for a BIG fall.
And those kids are too young to realize that they are wailing on powerless people who are trying to make the best with meager supports.
However, Nature wont bypass Hannah and James.
In the next 5 to 10 years, they will start to grow a conscience, whether they want to or not. They don’t realize that the older you get, the more you reflect on your life. They will come to understand that excuses like “attack attack attack, never defend!†(Giles at a conference last year) don’t hold up to maturity. They assume that they will be just as “sure†as people like Breitbart when they get that age… and they are in for a real shocker!
When that happens (and it will), they are going to be a couple of VERY upset people.
I have so much to say, but will limit it in the hopes of getting it out there.
You people are INSANE. Criminally INSANE! There is absolutely no other way to describe You.
I have looked down upon You on the “left” side of the red sea with disgust till now, but I have come to the conclusion, that I truly, unapologetically, honestly and openly HATE You. I have never seen this Breitbart(?) fella before, but he has an other fan from what I’ve heard here, and will look into this ACORN abortion as well. I have crawled out from under a rock in Hungary.
Thanx for Your tolerance in the marketplace of ideas(_*_) and thanx for listening.
TC what are you on about? You call people insane but fail to posit a reason why. What do you mean that Breitbart “has an other fan”? You’re saying you’ve become a fan of Breitbart based on nothing.
… tc said on 4/1/2010 @ 5:01 am PT…
If you really are from Hungary (and not hiding your ip with Tor or something), what’s eating you? If you embittered because of the ugly effects of Communism on your country, I can understand that. However, to generalize people (some of whom are not the “left” at all but actually *genuinely* conservative vs big-government corporate-welfare Republican)of a wide variety of opinions and stances as “you” is just plain ignorant. To openly hate all sorts of different you don’t know and have never met without specifying a single reason for it makes *you* come across as insane.
I wouldnt worry about TC. He’s just another tea-bagger, fully aware of what we are talking about, but trying to play it off like he just “stumbled” into the conversation, because he honestly has no response to the arguments.
“I have never seen this Breitbart… will look into this ACORN abortion as well. I have crawled out from under a rock in Hungary”… lol, I’m sure of it.
You’ve crawled from out under your own backside deary. It’s better if you stay put!
Breitbart is an uncouth jackass and insulting loud mouth who is lucky to be alive in the 21st century for his antics would have resulted in his demise were the code duello still in fashion.