Monday, February 08, 2010

James O’Keefe -- white supremacist?

Maybe not... » James O’Keefe vs. Max Blumenthal: How the Left Distorts, Invents and Lies

It started with a blog post at something called One People’s Project, in which someone named Daryle Jenkins claimed:
...There was also a photographer there, and lo and behold this picture has surfaced of a now familiar face attending the forum - James O’Keefe.

O’Keefe was manning a table at a forum of suit-and-tie Nazis.

A DC area photographer snapped a photo of O’Keefe as he maintained a literature table near the panelists.
The photograph that One People’s Project shows as its proof (above) is cropped and just shows O’Keefe from the shoulders up. It doesn’t show that he is sitting at all, let alone at a table, let alone “manning” the table at the event apparently hosted by the Robert Taft Club.

Max Blumenthal — son of Clinton apparatchik “Sid Vicious” Blumenthal — at Salon.com picked up on the story and extrapolated even more:
According to One People’s Project founder Daryle Jenkins, O’Keefe was manning the literature table at the gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism.
Within an hour or so the Village Voice got really creative on its media blog and added a little more to the mix:
James O’Keefe, the videographer famous for taking down ACORN (and infamous for trying to take down Senator Landrieu), organized a speaking forum for white supremacists, and was even photographed manning the event’s merchandise table.
That’s right, we’ve gone from O’Keefe attending the event to O’Keefe manning a literature table to O’Keefe organizing the entire event!
....
So we spoke with James O’Keefe today. This is what he tells us:
  1. He was not “manning a table” at the event
  2. He was not involved with the organization or operations of the event.
  3. He attended the event with many of his Leadership Institute co-workers since it was right across the street from their building in Arlington, Va., and it was organized by other LI associates.
  4. The organizer who is being called a “White Supremacist” is half Jewish and half Korean.
  5. One of the panelist was an African-American named Kevin Martin.
  6. The event was forced to move to a Georgetown University building in Arlington, not at a cross-burning.
We know all this because we called Mr. O’Keefe and asked him. Which is more than other media outlets have done.

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