… or a job. Well, to be fair, “[Isabel] Santa’s attorney, Christopher Markham, said even though Santa’s duties were taken away from her, she is still on the Project Veritas payroll.” As is James O’Keefe! And you thought the watercooler chats around your workplace were strained!
Maureen O’Conner at Gawker phrased it nicely:
Basically, “the right’s Bob Woodward” is the journalistic equivalent of a guy who shows his penis to you on the subway, then stands there chuckling under his breath.
Sure, the jokes practically write themselves, and yet here’s the scary part: O’Keefe’s closest female associate is reported to have told her attorney that she “… didn’t want what could have happened to occur. She thought it may have been a threat to the organization, and didn’t want it to happen to [Boudreau].” Us ladies, always so paranoid about guys when all they want is just to have a little fun, probably!… or so we all sincerely hope. We’re trained from an early age to be skittish about men who stand a little too close, stare a little too long, embarrass themselves trying for ‘romantic’ and landing on ‘stalker’. Spare a tear for all the genuinely Nice Guys who never get the chance to prove themselves (and say a prayer for the women who didn’t trust their own instincts).
Because — and since most of you are probably bicoastal elitists who went to the kind of High Progressive educational institutions where ‘women’s studies’ are not automatically a punchline, you’ve already been exposed to this theory — quite often, rape isn’t about sex, it’s about power. It’s a “weapon” that a person, usually male, resorts to when he believes he has been disrespected, humiliated, made less. And the disrespect is quite often not personal but institutional. The cultural stereotype is the guy who gets yelled at by his boss who goes home and beats his wife, but in this cruel modern world even men with dependent spouses are constrained by changes in law-enforcement policy around the concept of ‘domestic violence’. So some guys who feel they’ve been pushed beyond their limits go postal, while others… spend a lot of time documenting their proposed acquisition of “Viagra and stamina pills” and “fuzzy handcuffs”.
As the first Gawker commentor wondered: “Does he get to expense the sex toys to Fox News or did Andrew Breitbart already have them stocked in their top secret bunker?”
The humor, it is irresistable! And yet, slightly terrifying! Maybe it’s just, as Steven Thrasher reports in the Village Voice, “White America Has Lost Its Mind“. But how, in less than thirty years, have we moved from a young, overprivileged white guy attempting to use a presidential assassination as a tool to seduce the movie star he was stalking, to another young, overprivileged white guy attempting to use a “prank seduction” as a tool of… political assassination?
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
I like calling him “the right’s Bob Woodward”.
geg6
I’m right there with ya, Anne Laurie. Once all the jokes are told, this is a frightening turn of events. The fear of Izzy Santa, who is a true wingnut believer, tells me that something less than a “prank” was the true plan.
I mean, a boat? That he could take out into the water, making an escape more difficult? Restraints? Insisting on meeting her alone?
That sounds like somebody planning to rape someone to me. Rape or even the threat or hint of it is not a joke, not a prank. Abby Boudreau is lucky that Izzy Santa caught her before it all came down and Izzy, wingnut that she undoubtedly is, is a hero, IMHO.
Meanwhile, Breitbart is the weasly coward we’ve always known him to be (and Tbogg is truly a snark genius):
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2010/09/29/andrew-breitbart-no-longer-manloves-james-okeefe/
Zifnab
The way he’s been pimping foreign military conflicts, I thought Bob Woodward was the right’s Bob Woodward.
O’Keefe strikes me more as the Right’s young Howard Stern.
Chyron HR
Or, as mack daddy O’Keefe calls them, his “Senzu Beans”.
Just Some Fuckhead
I haven’t followed this story at all. What was this assclown attempting to do?
D. Mason
I love how you imply he might have been planning to rape this reporter. That’s as foul to me as the words “she asked for it” should be to your average Woman. You have now made me defend O’keefe, slimy piece of shit that he is, by pointing out how vile it is for anyone to just casually toss around that kind of insinuation. Do you not have any decency or shame for the things you say on a public forum? Glad to see John pick truly representative voices to demonstrate his blogs lurch towards the left.
Chyron HR
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Lure her to his dildo-studded sex lair and secretly film himself having Pop-Pop with her.
geg6
@D. Mason:
So what was the plan, Einstein? Why the Viagra? Why alone on a boat with handcuffs?
beltane
Maybe if John Hinckley, Jr. had the same kind of easy access to porn that is available today, he would have behaved himself better.
I’m having a hard time laughing at O’Keefe’s latest stunt. This was a premeditated attempt to sexually assault a woman using a video camera as a proxy p-ns. This incident, along with the quite obvious fear of women prevalent in conservative circles, reveals more about the sexual insecurities of the Angry White Male than I ever wanted to know. Between O’Keefe and Christine O’Donnell it’s starting to feel like one must be a sexually dysfunctional pervert to gain full admission into the GOP’s inner circle. The “eeeew” factor is strong with these people.
geg6
And, dammit, I get so mad that I typed the boner pill’s name and get moderated.
Needless to say, D. Mason is an ass unless he is snarking.
cintibud
@D. Mason: My reply: “Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.”
Actually, there is a MUCH stronger basis for AL’s comments then in the original, joke circumstances in which this phrase was originally used.
Scott
That was one of the first things I thought, too — get her on the boat, film her, assault her, then edit the footage to make it look like she consented.
O’Keefe and his boss have Frustrated Rageoholic Fratster written all over ’em.
Omnes Omnibus
@D. Mason: A concern about sexual assault seems to be what motivated Ms. Santa to drop dime about the whole thing. You seem to be going off half cocked.
WereBear
I have been trying, and failing, to find a “good” explanation for this whole thing. Nope, sounds sick & twisted to me.
eric
@Omnes Omnibus: I see what you did there.
Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear: Yep, for any of it to make sense requires Underpants Gnome levels of skipping logical steps.
Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear: Yep, for any of it to make sense requires Underpants Gnome levels of skipping logical steps.
Zifnab
@Chyron HR: What’s the critical mass of Dragonball Z fans taking via gra necessary for that comparison to come into common usage?
jibeaux
@Omnes Omnibus:
I thought of it as sort of a “Chewbacca Offense”, but your South Park allusion works just as well.
beltane
@Omnes Omnibus: Mr. O’Keefe may not be physiologically capable of raping a woman but that does not mean he is not capable of sexual assault. O’Keefe would make a great subject for a CSI episode. Boing, Boing had a great discussion about this fellow’s motives, both politcal and psychological.
I am deeply disturbed by anyone who considers behavior like this to be a “prank”.
Earl Butz
Call me a simpering lefty, or whatever you will; the story has “planned rape” written all over it, and nobody who has read the entire thing can deny it. Nobody.
Good for Ms. Santa. She probably saved the CNN reporter from ending up dead and raped, face down and floating, in the river. That psycho O’Keefe has already proven that he is a sociopath; it wouldn’t take much, I’m guessing, to trigger him into a killing rage. The inevitable laughter at his cashew-like proportions would easily be enough.
Hugin & Munin
Omnes Omnibus: Dude, you must regularly post from inside a canyon or large stone hall.
elmo
@D. Mason:
Oh? And you know for absolutely certain that he wasn’t? How nice for you, to be able to read his mind with such clarity from so far away.
Here in this place called “objective reality,” we usually use external clues to determine people’s internal intentions. Like this:
External clue #1: Boat, not office. What’s the difference? Why is a boat more desirable, more conducive to his goals than an office would be? The immediately obvious difference is that a boat can move and isolate its occupants.
External clue #2: Izzy Santa’s reaction. She was genuinely upset and frightened — so much so that she risked her entire career, her relationship with her colleagues and probably friends, to stop what she thought was about to happen. It’s difficult enough to risk your career and endanger your relationships, even to unmask the worst kind of wrongdoing. Who would do that to stop a harmless prank?
External clue #3: The vile misogyny expressed in the planning documents. Particularly the part attacking the reporter for her “inherent sexuality.” This is an interpretation informed by experience, but that kind of male superiority and contempt for women is often accompanied by violence — particuarly sexual violence, designed to put a woman “in her place.”
External clue #4: Fuzzy handcuffs. Granted these are ambiguous, and in the absence of clues #1 and #2 would probably mean little. They are just as likely — by themselves — to be props in a prank. But combined with the other clues, they become less amusing and more menacing.
Or we could just pretend that rape never happens, sexual assault is rare, and that nice boy really just wanted to teach the uppity woman a well-deserved lesson. You could do that if you like.
eemom
I have to say that yesterday when I suggested she should have gotten on the boat and kneed him in the balls, I honestly had not thought of his sicko plan in terms of an attempted rape.
I hear y’all now and the point is well taken. I have this question though: to state the very obvious, if he had, God forbid, actually done that, not only would his “Bob Woodward” days be permanently over, he would likely spend the next several decades chilling his ass out in a max security prison.
So, is the theory that he really is a cold-blooded violent criminal instead of just another wingnut jokefest? Or that he himself might not have “planned” to rape her, but it might somehow have turned out that way when the boat ride was underway?
Omnes Omnibus
@Hugin & Munin: My large stone hall is in a canyon.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@geg6:
This is what I have been thinking too. It’s disturbing.
jibeaux
@D. Mason:
Dude, first of all, the stated “plan” overtly & on its face involved some sort of attempt at sex, on a boat, with her alone. If the plan involved eavesdropping on her at Starbucks, that would be different. Secondly, the plan makes no sense whatsoever. I once had a job involving weekly visits to the involuntarily committed, and at least half of those folks could identify that it makes no sense whatsoever. It is definitely speculation, but it’s at least as logical as any other speculation about what the hell he was trying to do.
Jeff
@D. Mason:
I love how you shift the blame for defending the indefensible onto us.
eemom
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
I take it you do not think highly of Mr. Woodward.
ppcli
@D. Mason:
You’re quite right that it isn’t an accusation that should be tossed out casually. It isn’t being tossed out casually. Even the most neutral description of what that guy was planning makes it evident that there is something quite disturbing going on in that little troll’s mind. I find it hard to imagine any set of circumstances where his plan would have been “successful” – that is, where events would have unfolded in the way that he seems to have been fervently hoping they would – and it wouldn’t have resulted in something I would call sexual assault.
He said he wanted to “seduce” her, and (though this reveals an astonishing level of self-deception) he evidently thought that thanks to his super-manliness he would be successful in this. Under false pretenses, with video cameras rolling and his horny buddies watching through peepholes. I would call that rape. Certainly if someone did it to my daughter, that’s what I’d call it. And I wouldn’t rest until he did serious time.
YellowDog
If O’Keefe was in Maryland when he recorded the phone conversation without the reporter’s permission, he violated Maryland’s wiretap law. This was the same law under which Linda Tripp was prosecuted, for taping conversations with Monica Lewinsky.
Omnes Omnibus
@YellowDog: Add this to the fact that he is on probation for the Lincoln wiretapping thing and his future becomes interesting.
Earl Butz
@eemom: None of that, quite. He’s a sociopath obsessed with power, revenge, fame and control. People with that particular blend of crazy don’t think in terms of consequences (see his break-in to Mary Landrieu’s office) or in terms of public perception; they just think in terms of what they want and how they’re going to get it.
Boudreau is likely alive today only because of Santa’s efforts. If O’Keefe had done what he obviously was planning to do, he would have killed her afterwards. He surely wasn’t planning on killing her – but that’s how it would have gone down. Can’t have that uppity CNN bitch spreading stories that would interfere with the cause and all that.
Original Lee
@eemom: “chilling his ass out in a max security prison”
Assuming he would be convicted, which is unlikely, if the plan had gone down the way he intended. Even if the jury had access to the unedited tape, given that a number of infamous rape trials acquitted the perps even with an unedited security tape, I do not share your optimism that his lily white privileged neothug ass would have seen the inside of any jail or prison worth the name.
Scott
@eemom:
I have this question though: to state the very obvious, if he had, God forbid, actually done that, not only would his “Bob Woodward” days be permanently over, he would likely spend the next several decades chilling his ass out in a max security prison.
Hence the cameras. Edit the tape to make it look like she consented. Not a perfect plan, since he’s well-known for selectively editing his tapes to make others look bad. But all he’s got to do is sway one juror, then Fox News and the rest of the thugs would declare him the Poor Victimized Hero.
Seriously, from now on, any media figure who has any dealings with O’Keefe needs to make sure they take a full camera crew with them.
eemom
@Scott:
I hear ya, but IMO he really is crazy if he think he could have edited a tape to make it look like she consented. I just don’t see how even a videographical genius could manage to do that.
ETA: Anyway, I guess my mistake here is in trying to impute logical thought processes to this lowlife. Point taken.
RobertB
Just hanging it off of this thread, but the next time I read, “White America has lost it’s mind”, I’m gonna punch a hippie. Go sling that brushload of tar some other way kthx.
Original Lee
@Scott: Actually, I would recommend not just a camera crew but also livestreaming video to a high-security Internet cache site. I trust O’Keefe’s backers about as far as I can throw a Volkswagen.
D. Mason
@ppcli:
Oh ok, I’m dealing with the seduction = rape crowd, got it(or planned seduction = planned rape as the case may be). It’s pretty obvious with any background information on this story that he wasn’t going to seduce this reporter, but he is clearly deluded in that regard. To make the leap from slimy, pathetic wanna-be player to would be rapist who tapes his own crimes is an extremely big logical jump even in a frothing fever swamp where the accused is on the other “team”. I suspect he had some humiliating (for whom is up in the air) events planned that would embarrass and defame her (but really end up making him look like the jackass he is). That’s pretty bad by itself, you know the thing he was obviously trying to do based on the documentation, but why twist it into something utterly unsupported? Why show your own biases so heavily by just making shit up? Isn’t this the fact based community? The facts indicate he was trying to do something extremely shameful but which falls well short of rape.
timb
Accidental truth exposed in the comments section of a conservative blog
Link
Somewhere Julian Sanchez is smiling and whispering “what was that phrase I championed?”
Chyron HR
@D. Mason:
See ya, champ.
someguy
I’m surprised a right wing woman is worried about rape. I’m pretty sure the Republican Party plank on this is, 1) She deserved it; and 2) Fetch the rope if a minority is accused of the act.
someguy
@RobertB:
Clearly, you’ve lost your fucking mind, whitey.
Ash Can
Color me squicked too. Even as we were all wondering yesterday just WTfucketyF this professional douchebag hoped to accomplish with this “punking,” I was thinking “hmm, delusional and psychopathic person without conscience or human decency plus sex paraphernalia plus entrapment agenda equals a real threat, nevermind any political, social, or media angles to this.” Thank goodness Izzy Santa still has a shred of sense, if not conscience. I have a nasty feeling that unless he turns his life around, O’Keefe’s eventually going to wind up behind bars or dead, and when it all goes down it ain’t gonna be pretty.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Earl Butz:
And once you’ve got a dead body on your hands, the only way a murdering sociopath can ensure he gets away with it is to cut up the body and eat it. All roads lead to cannibalism here.
Hugin & Munin
JSF: I think he would have had to nuke the boat from orbit.
It’s the only way to be sure.
soonergrunt
Everyone here knows I have a hair trigger on the subject of rape accusations. I freely and willfully admit it.
Having said that, this whole situation, with what we know about it, just screams “bad shit about to happen.”
I don’t know what the guy actually intended, but I don’t see how any confrontation in that situation between this individual with his numerous misogynistic and racist tendencies and ANY self-respecting woman would end well.
This guy is dangerous to women and to black people, and he is especially dangerous to any woman or black person who doesn’t know their place.
@Ash Can:
This is what I’ve been saying for a couple of days. This guy will be dead or in jail within two years, I think. Either way it’s going to involve sex paraphenalia, via gra, booze, and video tape.
georgia pig
@D. Mason: Depends on your perspective bucko. Would attempted false imprisonment make you happier? The point is that this fuck wanted to put the reporter in situation that could make her objectively fear being raped, which is mostly what the rapist wants to do anyway. His defense? Oh, it was a just a big fucking joke.
You’re showing your bias by thinking rape is only about the forcible sex. This guy is a fucking sociopath. It sure wouldn’t be a stretch to see it ending in actual rape, because this guy has already shown that he has little in the way of scruples.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Hugin & Munin:
Sure, after he eats the body, nuclear holocaust is the only logical step for this psychopathic madman.
Jeff
@soonergruntAMEN
: @D. Mason: Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick–let’s leave the reichtard aspect out of this and just see some socially inept, rage-filled young men in an isolated spot and an object for their rage in their power. I can think of a thousand way that can turn out, and 999 of them have felony charges attached to them.
Tom Hilton
@D. Mason: I think the point is that what he was planning to do–sexually humiliate her–is, in fact, akin to (not the same as, but in the same basic category as) rape. Which strikes me as inarguable.
soonergrunt
@D. Mason: Dude, if I, with my own personal history as a victim of a false rape accusation, and my resultant tendency to believe that rape is very highly falsely accused (that is to say that I believe that a large percentage of rape accusations are pure and utter bullshit as opposed to misunderstandings/misconceptions/misidentifications and so on), if I, of all people, am creeped out by what this O’keefe character is up to, and if I, of all people, think it’s going to end in a sexual assault or rape or murder, or that the reporter would have a reasonable fear of those things given the known circumstances–well, then yeah, there’s something fucked up here and you’re on thin ethical and intellectual ice defending this guy.
Michael
@georgia pig:
I’m picturing Ann Coulter on Fox with a sneer on her face, defending it as “just a joke”. Fred Barnes would utter some snide comment with a grin (when he grins, I imagine that he’s just fired off a big, greasy wet fart) while Morton Kondracke makes the concerned sounds and has the concerned look, saying “it was inexcusable, but both sides do it”.
Mnemosyne
@georgia pig:
Yep, there’s nothing funnier than being trapped on a boat in the middle of a lake with a guy waving handcuffs and sex toys at you. There’s no possible way that a reasonable woman would see that as a dangerous situation so if she didn’t find it funny, that just proves she’s a humorless feminazi who hates men and is probably a lesbian.
To me, the thing that says that something extra-weird was going on is the fact that Izzy Santa ratted him out. He and his pals must have been saying some really scary shit to freak her out to that extent. Of course, I’m sure D. Mason will tell us that women are just too paranoid about rape and sexual assault and there’s no joke funnier than trapping someone in an isolated place and telling them that you’re planning to rape them. Who wouldn’t find that funny?
Oh, wait, every normal human being on the planet, that’s who, you dumbfuck.
JCT
@Mnemosyne: +1
Dead-on.
And don’t forget the strategically placed video camera.
And this is exactly what the right-wing narrative would be, accompanied by a good chuckle.
Scott
I’m picturing Ann Coulter on Fox with a sneer on her face, defending it as “just a joke”.
To Republicans, “just a joke” means “Well, I laughed at it.” And psychos tend to get the giggles over anything that involves them hurting someone…
daveNYC
Eh, wouldn’t be able to just cut and paste it to back up his story, but if he tried dubbing in new dialog for her it might work.
Everytime I learn more about this story, it gets worse and worse. There’s just no way that the plan to ‘seduce’ the CNN reporter on a boat isn’t going to end poorly.
slag
I’m with Just Some Fuckhead on this. It would be nice to be able to determine what a post is about within the post itself. It’s all getting a little too esoteric. Pretty soon the Balloon Juice comment section will end up reading like Eschaton’s.
/Friday rant
Earl Butz
@soonergrunt: What you said. I tend to not believe such allegations.
But not this time. I think that Boudreau had some good reason not to just fear sexual assault, but for her life, and for one reason…Santa’s reaction. You don’t rat out your psycho boss, who you know will be itching for payback for the rest of his life, without some really good reason. And she obviously felt that there was some really good reason – probably she did the math and figured that O’Keefe’s stalkerazzi treatment would be a preferable alternative to being named an accessory to rape and/or murder.
Jim C
@Scott:
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die. – Mel Brooks
WereBear
Precisely. If the wingnut In The Loop is scared… it’s bad shit.
Ash Can
@Earl Butz: And this is another thing I’m worried about. What might O’Keefe do to Santa now? If I were her I’d want police protection for as long as that shithead was on the loose.
wonkie
You kbow what bugs me the most about this situation? The way the corporate media will absorb it and minimize it. A buch of elected Dems will probably do the same thing. just like the rightwing violence gets absorbed and minimalized. juat like the lunatic viloent rhetoric gets absorbed and minimalized. Their are an awful lot of people in leadership positions in the media or governemnt who wiull refuse to see this as anything more than an isolated fringy incident of no consequence just like all the other incidents that they have managed to minimalize.
The dots must not be connected!
Linda Featheringill
@soonergrunt:
I agree with you. I don’t know for sure what was going to happen but it certainly looks like the reporter dodged a bullet.
Especially since Izzy Santa chose to deliver her warning. If Izzy was worried . . . .
Brachiator
No, it’s about sex.
And I did go to one of those very elitist educational institutions. And while I don’t think that “women’s studies” is automatically a punchline, much of what passes for knowledge there is just tiresome drivel.
That said, I didn’t pay much attention to the O’Keefe story because whatever was planned never came together, but I noted that there was something despicably sleazy and hateful about this supposed prank.
The sad thing is the the people who were busy hatching these idiotic schemes are blind to any moral or ethical considerations.
D. Mason
@soonergrunt:
Sorry to hear about you having gone through something like that, honestly, but I’m only on ice at all because Anne Laurie is ignorantly tossing around baseless accusations and your perspective through experience doesn’t change that. There are emails and a manifesto outlining this clowns “plan” and, disgusting as it may be, rape isn’t part of it. Nothing I might do could ever prove that he wasn’t planning to rape her because one can’t prove a negative and she thankfully didn’t give him a chance, but he did have several accomplices and he was planning to film the whole incident so rape seems unlikely to the point of being ridiculous.
Look I won’t argue that he was being decent or acting legitimate, he was probably going to commit several crimes of a clearly sexual nature against this reporter in an elaborate premeditated way as part of a conspiracy to defame her and CNN. It doesn’t just look like character assassination, it is openly such. That’s already some sick shit so why get into out gross hyperbole like rape accusations?
D. Mason
@Mnemosyne:
It’s easy to tear down someone else for something they didn’t say isn’t it?
Earl Butz
@D. Mason: But rape is off the table, right?
Your own words, again: he was probably going to commit several crimes of a clearly sexual nature against this reporter
But not rape her.
Clinton didn’t inhale, either.
What a joke you are.
Ash Can
@Brachiator:
Then what you’re thinking of isn’t rape.
@D. Mason: You’re twisting so hard to avoid the obvious connections here you’re going to hurt yourself. You’re basing your entire “not-rape” argument on the fact that O’Keefe was planning to film the proceedings? Really? The same O’Keefe who mangles and butchers video to the point of making it show whatever he wants it to show?
We get that you don’t like what this douchebag did, and we know that no actual rape occurred. And we also know that no intentions have been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. But you’re breaking your neck over denying a pattern of behavior and events that set up an uncomfortably strong likelihood.
Montysano
Was anyone else as disappointed as I was to see Breitbart on Bill Maher’s show last week? I had to turn it off; watching him hector and shout down Ann Druyan was too much.
D. Mason
@Ash Can:
I just don’t think it was a strong likelihood and I find the notion that someone can so casually float the idea that he was planning to rape her a bit off-putting. As far as I’m concerned it’s akin to the things O’Keefe does, selectively editing “facts” to fit some outrageous narrative dreamed up in a fever swamp. I find it extremely dishonest and all of the people nodding in agreement with very concerned looks on their faces don’t change that impression. Hey, maybe because he’s so dishonest it makes it ok for people to treat him dishonestly too, and if that’s your stand I can appreciate it, but to pretend like this is reasoned speculation is as laughable as O’Keefe’s seduction technique.
Bobby Thomson
@D. Mason: Dude, just look at the guy. There’s no way he was going to have consensual sex with her, especially taking into account what he considers to be “game.”
YellowDog
1. I have to agree with others, that the most compelling part of the story is Santa’s behavior. She knew that something strange was going on and could not let another woman walk into that situation unawares. Whatever she knew about O’Keefe’s plans, it upset her.
2. O’Keefe’s choices for role playing are interesting, to say the least. First, he plays a pimp (in the edited version). Second, he plays a repairman, to set up recording equipment to monitor an attractive female politician. (O’Keefe lives in Maryland, but he didn’t try to tap Barbara Mikulski’s phones.) Third, he was prepared to pose as some sort of Ladies Man/Dungeon Master. Control and domination, and blondes, seem to be recurring themes.
3. This latest incident was about humiliation, whether during the encounter or afterward with an edited version. Look at O’Keefe. Did this guy have a date in high school or in college? He’s playing out some sort of revenge-humiliation scenario, perhaps because the blonde cheerleader laughed at his awkward attempt to ask her out.
ruemara
@daveNYC:
Voiceover edits, they work wonders. I know how to make you say shit you never said using juxtaposition and selective editing. The camera lies. Constantly.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@D. Mason: What do you make of Izzy Santa’s reaction? Honestly curious.
Ash Can
@D. Mason: Individual who gets his kicks out of humiliating and inflicting suffering on other people seeks to figuratively and literally entrap someone presumably physically weaker than he is in a sexually suggestive environment, for purposes of teaching her a lesson.
Nope, no “reasoned speculation” here.
I used the phrase “uncomfortably strong” for a reason. We can argue about how strong “strong” is, but the fact is, the pattern of circumstances give me no confidence that a rape would not occur. And that’s what I call an uncomfortably strong likelihood.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Bobby Thomson:
Well, Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-it… I doubt if O’Keefe could manage ‘consensual sex’ with his own hand…
The Republic of Stupidity
And would that be a case of “Electile Dysfunction”?
Comrade Darkness
As fun as it is, I think too much is being read into this. O’Keefe, like a spoiled dog that gets a cookie every single time it barks, is merely acting on his well-established privileges. He’s been rewarded well by the media for acting like a jackass. That IS his power. Why wouldn’t he test the limits on that in a grab for more?
Alwhite
The plan was simple – get CNN to call him out for the stunt while providing FAUX news with a heavily edited version of what happened that would make it appear as if SHE were the predator. Jimmy would be able to then declare that the MSM had it in for him and everything they ever said about him was a lie while FAUX would pretend that they were the more reliable source of news & CNN was slanting the story as part of the eeeee-vil librule plot.
D. Mason
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): I suspect it’s as the CNN story says, she was worried about the organization. Honestly I don’t know much about Santa, but she must have some belief system that brought her to Project Veritas, to which she has hitched her wagon. I would suspect either a belief in right wing politics or possibly a desire to rise in the “conservative media” power structure which can be quite lucrative or most likely, both. Being an accomplice in such a “plan” would hamstring her either way, much more than crossing a little shitstain like O’Keefe. It also wouldn’t surprise me if she was trying to shield others higher up in the Veritas funding structure from the fallout to help bolster her prospects of moving up in said structure. These seem like plausible reasons to turn without the need for such ironclad motivation as avoiding being an accomplice to rape.
Edit: There’s also the possibility (though I consider it extremely slim) that she is simply playing her part in a more elaborate “punking”.
Binzinerator
@soonergrunt: Agree totally.
As for possible futures, I’d rather it be the one where he does the shotgun under the chin thing. He’s always going to be a predator. And he won’t always be in jail.
Better if the concerns about this creep end with the emptying of a mop bucket.
JohnR
@YellowDog:
But was Tripp actually prosecuted? Perhaps my memory is even weaker than usual, but I thought the charges were in fact dropped without indictment, let alone prosecution. I remember being disgusted and outraged, but not surprised. (Let me tell you about the very Right. They are different from you and me.)
I don’t know whether rape was any more than an implied part of the whole thing, but privileged young resent-wads like O’Keefe don’t have a good record when it comes to rape and even murder. Once the action is started it has a nasty habit of escalating. In other times and places, gentlemen of O’Keefe’s sort have even been known to band together and go out looking for “sub-humans” to brutalize. Of course that sort of thing could never happen here.
Oh, and just for the record, I have no qualms whatsoever about blackening O’Keefe’s good name with baseless accusations; in his world, we’re all fair game, so sauce for the goose, etc.
YellowDog
Tripp was prosecuted (i.e., the state pursued a criminal case against her), but the charges were later dropped because a Maryland judge ruled that much of the evidence was inadmissable due to immunity agreements with the Independent Counsel’s office and because the main witness against Tripp–Monica Lewinsky–was deemed not credible because she had already admitted to lying under oath.
soonergrunt
@D. Mason: I’ll give you that, and thanks for the clarification.
JohnR
@YellowDog:
Thanks – boy, it’s amazing about memory. I must have overlaid and merged a bunch of stuff. What I remember is that it was absolutely clear from the recordings that Lewinsky had no idea she was being taped. I even have a vague recollection that Tripp admitted at some point early on that she had taped the calls without Lewinsky’s knowledge (this would have been before Tripp found out that that was illegal under MD law). I also remember that there was speculation around the workplace that the judge had punted the case because he was really not enthusiastic about interjecting himself into the impeachment circus (whether Clinton had at that point given the GOP their only legal charge against him I’m not sure, but the media were masturbating over it from early on). One thing I’m absolutely sure of, though – that was the the thing that first made me seriously question my support of the Republican Party. I thought Nixon was an aberration; I didn’t come to understand that Nixon was what the GOP wanted to be until the GOP’s Clinton gang-bang.
Anne Laurie
@soonergrunt: Thanks, most sincerely, for the backup on this.
@D. Mason:
__
Riiiight. I see a woman who’s sufficiently unnerved about the evolving “plans” of her co-worker to risk her career, and being ostracized by her political circle, to warn another woman who’s a professional competitor not to cooperate. You see an ambitious office drone tattling on her co-worker’s perhaps not-well-thought-out “prank” in order to “help bolster her prospects of moving up in said structure”. This may be a fundamental disconnect between us, since I’m not finding your argument convincing.
kay
@soonergrunt:
I agree. It feels really malicious and serious. There is no set of circumstances where that encounter ended humorously. The whole thing makes me cringe. There’s real cruelty inside these people.
Oh, and remember.
O’Keefe is on probation. Yup. He’s 25 years old, not a “kid”, and he’s currently on probation.
He’s not getting it. Someone needs to explain to him that the next arrest isn’t going to go well. His fans on the Right did him no favors.
Mrs. Polly
Perhaps it would be helpful to divide what is indisputable from what is strong suspicion and what is sometimes overreaching speculation.
Indisputable: he illegally taped her, planned to illegally tape her in person, and planned to sexually humiliate her, whether through “seducing” her {wild self-delusion!) or just frightening her. His own inability to see that she would never get on that boat with him, or that if she had, and screamed continuously, it would have made him look nothing but terrible, shows a disconnect to how other people work, to say the least.
Here is where we can, since we’re not in court, start speculating on what the results might be in the same way police might “like” a guy for a crime but be unable to do somthing about it. (And sorry, I’m reading a book by a friend of mine about the Cold Case Squad. So if I sound like an over-authoritative blowhard, please forgive me)
I think “izzy Santa saved Boudreau’s life” is a little much. The circumstances and accessories point to a possibly ugly outcome, though many a criminal didn’t mean for it to happen.
Mrs. Polly
There’s a semicolon after “though” in that last sentence~~editing on a mobile! Apollygees!
stormhit
Nice guys isn’t capitalized.
That ceased to be a witty or useful term in like 2005. But at least you didn’t use the trademark symbol. That’s even more tiring.
SciVo
@Original Lee: I would recommend that plus a bodyguard and a sniper, just in case. Psychos without normal human empathy are just too damn unpredictable.
Bender
What it shows is how unserious you can be, what a misguided tool you can be, what an incompetent you can be… and still find such massive malfeasance at ACORN that they had shut the whole corrupt enterprise down (though it appears other corrupt-ocrat storefronts like Texas Votes have taken ACORN’s place in the Fraudulent Democrat Vote Manufacturing sector).
I mean, remember — he was a white dude dressing like a pimp.
Whoever thought he was Bob Woodward is very easily impressed.
D. Mason
@Anne Laurie:
Oh, to be sure, there is a fundamental disconnect between us, but this isn’t it. I see a tasteless situation, likely to break some wiretapping laws in a sexual context and you see certain rape … or worse (cue ominous soap opera music).
From a right winger like O’keefe, the obvious and slimy character assassination is not evil or salacious enough for you. He’s on the other team of course so he must have been planning something far more sinister than the obvious. Even though all signs point to a pathetic attempt at professional humiliation, everything surrounding the incident points to that except the one piece of information you homed in on because it gives you the vapors. Yes, Santa was acting a little over the top but who knows why? Maybe her and O’Keefe were lovers and she found out he was planning to do more than “punk” the reporter on the boat, consensually of course, if given the chance. That, would unquestionably cause a hysterical reaction from some people. There are a myriad of possibilities that do not involve rape and the facts (aren’t “progressives” supposed to be into facts?) points to one in particular yet you reject that obvious conclusion for one more appealing to your own twisted narrative. That is the disconnect between us.
DavidTC
Why some hypothetical ‘rape’ has gotten a lot of attention, I wonder why no one’s paying attention to the fact he was certainly planning to kidnap her?
http://archives.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1009/29/rlst.03.html
BOUDREAU: There was — in the document, there was a script of what his lines would have been and what they thought that I might say. And part of the script was I would break down and start crying and ask to just please let me off the boat. And so it was pretty intense to me as a reporter to read that about yourself and to know that there such a detailed plan.
I’m not entirely sure how the crime ‘kidnapping’ deals with transportation. I mean, you can hardly accuse an airplane pilot of kidnapping you if you decide to leave halfway through the flight.
If she didn’t know the boat was going to move, aka, if she was supposed to get on board and then, while he was talking to her, someone else start up the boat fast enough and drive away where she couldn’t get off, that is kidnapping, period.
However, while it might not be legally kidnapping, it certainly is morally kidnapping to maneuver someone into a place where they can’t leave and will want to.
‘And part of the script was I would break down and start crying and ask to just please let me off the boat.’
It’s morally kidnapping, regardless if he managed to find a loophole making it legal. What’s more, his assumption was that she’d then bargain with sex favors in return for release.
If she’s been kidnapped, and has sex with him for her release, that’s rape regardless of ‘consent’.