Skip to main content

I do enjoy a story where the stingers get stung...

Image result for voice mail


especially where the would-be stinger is as full of himself in general as is James O'Keefe.

For those who may have forgotten his name, O'Keefe acquired a certain degree of notoriety by stinging ACORN in 2009. He arranged and recorded meetings with ACORN staffers in which he represented himself as a pimp, and asked for their help. The (heavily edited) tapes that he later released did seem to indicate that some staffers were willing to assist him, suggesting he describe his presumed underage brothel as a "group home" etc.

A fair summary of the complicated controversy that resulted is this: in at least one case, possibly in more, the heavy editing of the tapes amounted to defamation. But in some cases, ACORN staffs did make damning statements which are not mitigated by context.

The matter inspired a South Park episode, which is always a good thing to contribute to the world.

Anyway: O'Keefe has rather faded from the spotlight since then. There are so many strutters in the fever swamps it is hard to stand out by strutting there.

He presumably was trying to relive his 15 minutes of fame when he decided to infiltrate the George Soros organization Open Society Foundations. The OSF grants a lot of money to a lot of organizations that O'Keefe dislikes, which use them for a lot of causes he also dislikes.

So O'Keefe apparently decided to pull some version of the ACORN stunt again, and get footage he could edit to discredit OSF staffers and the organization itself.

On March 16 of this year, he placed a call to OSF using the name "Victor Kesh." He described himself to Dana Geraghty, a 28 year old whose work there is in connection with the promotion of democracy in Eurasia. She has programmed her phone so that calls from strangers go directly to voice mail, and that is what happened to O'Keefe.

When she eventually played the tape, it was 7 minutes long. It was clearly divided into two parts, which you might call the "intended call" and the "accidental call." 

 The first part, the intended call, consisted of O'Keefe (he has admitted this was him) in full let's-set-up-a-sting mode: My name is, uh, Victor Kesh. I’m a Hungarian-American who represents a, uh, foundation . . . that would like to get involved with you and aid what you do in fighting for, um, European values.” He spoke about "supporting you guys and coördinating with you on some of your efforts.” He asked her to call back, and then left a 914 number. I refer you to the May 30th issue of The New Yorker for the rest,. It is precious.

 Then the fun part. HE FAILED TO HANG UP. Geraghty heard a click, and then a pause, and then a conversation she presumably wasn't supposed to hear. 

Get a hold of the article for the rest.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a majesti
7 comments
Read more

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

  Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave.   First, Plato  is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability.  I  only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable assigns a task to philosophers
Post a Comment
Read more

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak
13 comments
Read more