James O'Keefe: hoist by his own petard

Conservative activist James O'Keefe's latest stunt – to expose the liberal media bias – has only exposed him. As a sexist ass

To many rightwing Americans, fresh-faced political activist James O'Keefe is a hero. He is the conservative version of Michael Moore: an earnest prankster whose intrepid journalism exposes the liberal left for the anti-American force it really is.

After all, O'Keefe, 26, is the man who brought down the conservative bete noir Acorn – an organisation that advocated for low-income Americans and tried to get them to vote – by posing as a pimp with a prostitute and filming Acorn staff as he solicited them for advice on how to avoid taxes.

That "victory", which helped destroy Acorn, sealed O'Keefe's place in the pantheon of conservative heroes. Never mind that investigations in California and New York found no evidence of Acorn wrongdoing in the evidence that emerged from his stunt, and that O'Keefe's videos were, in fact, selectively edited and misleadingly used. Yet, O'Keefe was praised across the board by rightwing figures like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Andrew Breitbart (who, as the Shirley Sherrod episode showed, knows a thing or two about misleadingly edited videos).

O'Keefe's reputation was so high that it even survived him being arrested for a stunt involving conservative activists posing as telephone repairmen and trying to get into Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu's office in New Orleans. O'Keefe pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor; but, again, conservatives brushed it off as the price to be paid for youthful enthusiasm in a good anti-liberal cause.

One wonders, then, how O'Keefe and his fans will explain his latest stunt: an abortive attempt to lure a female CNN reporter onto a boat outfitted as a "pleasure palace" complete with a condom jar, dildos, Viagra pills, pictures of naked women, a blindfold and fuzzy handcuffs. O'Keefe's joke was to film the reporter as he attempted to seduce her (or, to put it more accurately, sexually harass her).

The CNN reporter, Abbie Boudreau, was doing a documentary story on O'Keefe and other young activists and was meeting O'Keefe to discuss the story. Evidently, O'Keefe wanted to undermine CNN: seen as a part of the liberal media conspiracy by most conservatives. But Boudreau was tipped off by a different conservative activist who (not surprisingly) though the stunt was a dreadful idea.

Boudreau was then given a detailed plan outlining O'Keefe's scheme, which even included sample bits of dialogue O'Keefe was meant to use as Boudreau boarded the boat. "Abby, this is the pleasure palace and I want to show you the inner sanctum," he was supposed to say, followed by: "CNN must be a tough place to work, let's make some headline love."

Quite how this trick was supposed to damage Boudreau or CNN is not entirely clear. But the document, excerpts of which CNN have now helpfully placed online, does at least provide a hint at O'Keefe's motivation. In a speech set to be recorded a part of the stunt before Boudreau boarded the boat, O'Keefe said he was angry at CNN's portrayal of conservatives as extremists and he wanted his revenge.

"They want to portray me and my friends as crazies, as non-journalists, as unprofessional and likely as homophobes, racists or bigots of some sort," O'Keefe fumed. But looking at O'Keefe's latest bizarre, sexist and misogynistic stunt, it is hard to see how anyone could portray him in any other way.