The fact that it sounds like they're planning a rape is a coincidence.

While the fact that none of the major conservative blogs have rushed to O’Keefe’s defense is amusing, the document CNN acquired is not.  Or only differently.  It contains statements like:

That the people planning the prank—O’Keefe included—know that O’Keefe’s normal persona (or “personality”) is “sleazy” shows improved judgment on their part, at least as concerns character.  Association?  Not so much.  Most reasonable people would rather not associate with someone they consider sleazy.  They also seem to have a problem with hyphens and parallelism (or a very odd notion of what goes on necklaces), but grammar is less significant than the fact that they believed she would fall for something “entirely over the top.”  

Going over the top, much less “entirely over the top,” involves creating situations that cross beyond the boundary of believability and into the realm of the unbelievable. The unbelievable (yet merely exaggerated) persona O’Keefe would have employed wouldn’t have been an element of the prank so much as its undoing.  Even if circumstances conspired such that his dress and demeanor didn’t tip Abbie Boudreau off—for example, she could have gone to an eye doctor for an ear infection and boarded the boat with her ears plugged and eyes dilated—the room he had planned for her quickly would:

The only possible conclusion is that they never planned to prank her but merely wanted enough footage so that they could later edit to make it appear as if they pranked her.  They come out and say as much:

All they want to do is “keep her on the boat” long enough to score footage for some future redaction.  They even wrote a script in which the “catalytic [sic] moment” would be having Boudreau call O’Keefe’s unprofessional behavior what it clearly is:

I’m sure they had some entirely unrelated matter against which to juxtapose her accurate assessment of O’Keefe’s behavior, but as that will inevitably be juxtaposed against some other entirely unrelated matter, I think we should all focus on what this lot thought their joke would prove:

I don’t want to be the guy who “writes” posts that consist mostly of photographs, but since they speak for themselves, here are the “hot blondes” who work at CNN:

And here are the “hot blondes” who work at O’Keefe’s de facto employer:

The fact that I had to make the CNN one myself whereas the FOX was alreadyfloating around out there makes me wonder what tables they thought they were turning (and on whom)?

 

Comments

[todd.]

Not to miss the point entirely, but how do you recognize that Marvin Gaye would be cliche, but think fuzzy handcuffs would be a good way to go? "Oh, we'd never make a lame knock-knock joke. But I have this one about a chicken who crosses the road ..."

[Ahistoricality]

I think the tip-off and the document leak are much more interesting than the punk: O'Keefe doing his sleazy thing isn't news, even when he targets CNN. Though it does shine a light on the Acorn scam.

O'Keefe's band of true believers pulling the rug out from under him in a fundamentally irredeemable way, on the other hand, is weird, fascinating, and begging further study. I want to know more about the tip-off, and I want to know who passed the doc to CNN. (I'd also love to know what idiot puts these kinds of details on paper, and how long it'll take ACORN to sue and subpoena someone.)

[Malcolm Harris]

"Bubble-headed bleach blondes who come on at 5" as O'Keefe wrote verbatim, is a line from the Don Henley song "Dirty Laundry." He was quoting fucking Don Henley, how embarrassing is that?

[John Emerson]

The idea that O'Keefe could seduce someone, or even seem to seduce someone, strikes me as ludicrous. Geek chic didn't sink that low, did it?

[The Modesto Kid]

Malcolm -- isn't "Dirty Laundry" by Glen Frey?

Ahistoricality -- Boudreau wrote out a narrative of the tip-off, I'm not sure now where it is but I believe I found it via Huffington Post.

[Falconer]

Man, I hear "Dirty Laundry" on the radio every so often, so I recognized the allusion the moment I read it.

I'm fascinated by the fact that it was an O'Keefe insider who tipped Ms. Boudreau off. I seem to recall this insider was a woman, although I'm blanking on her name right now. I guess not everyone at the brainstorming session was being sincere, huh?

I think it took courage to talk to Ms. Boudreau, and I am not faulting this person for not standing up at the brainstorming session and calling a halt to it. O'Keefe is a right-wing darling and he must have a lot of power among his followers right now, enough to blacken someone's name for a while.

[Mary Stack]

"O’Keefe’s de facto employer" O'Keefe is employed by Fox News? Come on! Those conservatives don't believe in having sex.

-unless it's with Congressional pages that are subject to your authority
-unless it's in airport bathrooms. Must be a case of coprophilia
-unless it's offering to blow a guy in the park, when you support a ban on gays adopting
-unless you're in Argentina. Must be the weather.