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ACORN Video Sting Guy Also "Targeted" Irish-Bashing Lucky Charms
By
John Del Signore
Published Sep 17, 2009
Modified Sep 17, 2009
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By
John Del Signore
Published Sep 17, 2009
Modified Sep 17, 2009
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low-income community advocacy group ACORN as an organization employing a few gullible do-gooders, conservative provocateur James O'Keefe had fun at Rutgers riling up the liberals. The 25-year-old "Borat of the right" first cut his teeth in the hidden camera game while enrolled as a philosophy student at the New Jersey university. Posing as an overly-sensitive Irishman disturbed by the presence of Lucky Charms in the cafeteria, O'Keefe met with an assistant director at Rutgers dining services. During the meeting, O'Keefe explains that the leprachaun on the cereal box is hurtful: "He's portrayed as a green-cladded (sic) gnome, and as you can see ... we're not all short. We have differences of height, and we think this is stereotypical of Irish-Americans."
A Rutgers spokesman says the cereal never left the menu, but O'Keefe tells the Star-Ledger he was amazed that his Lucky Charms grievance wasn't immediately laughed out of the room, and the stunt proved to be a turning point for his, um, career? Yes, it does seem that he now has a career. One of his mentors, right-wing activist Morton Blackwell, explains that O'Keefe always "wanted to go out and catch leftists breaking the law." So he went on to enlist a cohort to pose as a 13-year-old girl and visit Planned Parenthood in California, where she told a counselor she was pregnant and the father was 31. The counselor was required by law to report what would have been rape to the police, but the girl was only told how to get an abortion. Now that's gotcha "journalism"!
But the ACORN videos have been O'Keefe's big break. Which sinister liberal will the young gadfly destroy next? Stay tuned, for he promises/threatens: "I'm still in my bunker producing more videos." In the meantime, here's the Daily Show's riff on the ACORN scandal, below:
The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cThe Audacity of Hoswww.thedailyshow.com
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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