Not the new Borat - Update

Supporters of James O’Keefe give him waaaay too much credit for the ACORN sting.

The boy is clearly a Sacha Baron Cohen wannabee. He engineered a stupid Punk’d gig that he shopped around to rightwing media people. Someone – not saying Karl Rove but perhaps someone aspiring to his crown – saw how it could be leveraged for political gain against the Democrats and Obama.

So O’Keefe was commissioned - by FoxNews? - to go out and do the prank 2 more times. The audio on the tapes was professionally 'sweetened' and the whole thing edited. Voilà! He's now Mr Bigtime investigative journalist. Then the newbie political operative got a little too ambitious. Without doing any serious research about exactly what the type of criminal offenses he might be flirting with, he used twitter at the beginning of January to announce that he was going after something MASSIVE.

Based on "intelligence" provided by local teabaggers, he dropped by Mary Landrieu’s office with frat boy buddies. Amateur? No, worse than that, he’s some sort of idjit non-savant.

Opponents of health-care reform legislation had complained this month that they repeatedly heard busy signals when they called Landrieu's office to register their views.[...]

O'Keefe considers himself a journalist with creative approaches to exposing wrongdoing. He told conservative talk show host Glenn Beck that he was not afraid to go to prison if necessary to do his work. In late December, he again tweeted about the power of undercover citizen-journalists. "Hidden audio/video is the new gun: 1st grade teacher fired after being caught on book bag tape http://bit.ly/7Yipse."

Oh, and by the way Jim-bo, your great-granny wants you to return her sheared grey mouton fur jacket.

Update: JJ at unrepentant old hippie connects some of the usual suspects to James O'Keefe. He's in good company - Lie-là Rose to name one. And read the weasel words he uses to describe his dirty tricks:

James O’Keefe has admitted spearheading a misguided “phone-tampering” operation at Sen. Mary Landieu’s office in New Orleans this week. “As an investigative journalist, my goal is to expose corruption and lack of concern for citizens by government and other institutions,” writes O’Keefe. “On reflection, I could have used a different approach to this investigation, particularly given the sensitivities that people understandably have about security in a federal building.”

"Sensitivities"?!?! WTF? Those are laws you're flouting boy-o, not "sensitivities". From here.