If I Had a Camera:
James O’Keefe, Insurgent Filmmaker

James O'Keefe

Editor’s Note: For the latest on James O’Keefe, see the Big Government website.

“Candid Camera pranks smoke out US liberals”
by John Harlow
TimesOnline, September 20, 2009

A conservative student armed with a video camera and a wicked sense of humour is humbling some of the most hallowed liberal institutions in the United States using a technique described as “Candid Camera for the internet age”.

In one of his video coups James O’Keefe, 25, telephoned the offices of Planned Parenthood in Columbus, Ohio, a pro-choice abortion group that is a target of the right, and asked to make a donation to pay for abortions for minorities.

He added: “There’s way too many black people in Ohio.” The official simply laughed and agreed to his terms.

When he called its Idaho branch, a helpful member of staff told him he “absolutely” could restrict his donation to abortions of black babies, raising no objection even after he explained that his goal was to shield his son from future competition from minorities for university entry.

The organisation later issued a statement that the tapes, posted on YouTube were “heavily edited” and “unsubstantiated”.

But O’Keefe’s greatest triumph came last week after he teamed up with Hannah Giles, 20, a fellow-conservative, and they posed as a pimp and a prostitute seeking help from Acorn, a community activist group that is loathed by Republicans because it registered millions of poor voters for last year’s presidential election.

A succession of well-meaning Acorn workers were filmed advising the pair on how to smuggle South American girls into the country, how to apply for a loan to buy a house that could be used as a brothel and how to claim that underage prostitutes were their dependants for tax purposes.

O’Keefe told officials at Acorn’s Baltimore office he would employ 13-year-old girls as prostitutes “and they didn’t care at all”, he said. “No one was holding this organisation accountable,” he explained last week. “No one in the media is putting pressure on them. We wanted to do a stunt and see what we could find.”

Even he was surprised at how easy it was to obtain advice on how to break the law. “I’m a skinny nerd, the least convincing pimp in the world,” he said.

With a budget of just £800 to pay his and Giles’s travel expenses, he succeeded in setting off a political storm. Heads rolled at Acorn, and the House of Representatives voted by 345 to 75 to cut off all federal aid.

O’Keefe, who calls himself a progressive radical, began his lampooning as a student at Rutgers where he satirised the college authorities’ approach to race by complaining, as an Irish-American, about the racist depiction of leprechauns on cereal boxes.

His videos, which include one persuading liberals to adopt jailed terrorists as pen pals, have been picked up by Jon Stewart’s usually left-leaning Daily Show and reached a national audience.

Liberal groups should be braced for more outrageous inquiries. Last week he warned that he had plenty more targets: “Frankly, I think I’m just getting started.”