Why isn't Michael Moore defending James O'Keefe?

James O'Keefe, famous for exposing some employees of Acorn as not so much interested in helping people as helping clients beat the system with fraud, was arrested recently. He explains what happened in his own words:

I learned from a number of sources that many of Senator Landrieu’s constituents were having trouble getting through to her office to tell her that they didn’t want her taking millions of federal dollars in exchange for her vote on the healthcare bill. When asked about this, Senator Landrieu’s explanation was that, “Our lines have been jammed for weeks.” I decided to investigate why a representative of the people would be out of touch with her constituents for “weeks” because her phones were broken. In investigating this matter, we decided to visit Senator Landrieu’s district office – the people’s office – to ask the staff if their phones were working.

It's not clear exactly what laws he was charged with breaking, but that hasn't stopped some members of the main stream media from making some outlandish accusations. O'Keefe and friends pretended to be phone repairmen, which they weren't. And one has to wonder if our fine senators and legislators have placed a law on the books saying it's illegal to lie to a politician. Now that would be an irony to beat all.

But you know, Mr. O'keefe didn't do things that much differently than Michael Moore did in "Roger and Me." (I haven't seen Moore's more recent ones and can't speak to those, but I suspect there was a fair amount of trickery involved in those, too.) So if there's honor among surreptitious film makers, Moore should be out there defending O'Keefe.

Let's take a more recent example from film makers Andy and Mike. The Yes Men Fix the World is their movie with the tag line: "Sometimes it takes a lie to tell the truth." And this is a direct quote from their website:

One day Andy, purporting to be a Dow Chemical spokesperson, gets on the biggest TV news program in the world and announces that Dow will finally clean up the site of the largest industrial accident in history, the Bhopal catastrophe. The result: as people worldwide celebrate, Dow's stock value loses two billion dollars. People want Dow to do the right thing, but the market decides that it can't.

So they tell a lie, the stock price tanks, owners of the stock lost money, and the boys yuck it up because their vigilante journalism satisfied their sense of justice.

But here's the kicker -- the teacher's guide. Certainly any civic minded teacher will want to help train students to commit their own shenanigans against those evil corporations. Just don't mess with a Democratic Senator. That would be wrong.

Comments

[Les]

“Our lines have been jammed for weeks.” means the phones were broken? From the statement by itself, I'd think the phones were constantly busy with callers. The statement out of context doesn't really give much indication of the conversation though, does it?

And posing as telephone repairmen to gain access to the telephone equipment closet? What would they do if they got access? Seems the only thing they could do would be to try to disable it. It's not likely they would have gained any insight about its operability the past weeks.

Is it really that profitable for so-called investigative reporters to pull these stupid stunts?

With the information I have, I'd tend to side with those filing charges.

"a law on the books saying it's illegal to lie to a politician" Now that's funny.

[Geo]

I guess we'll have to wait for a trial, Les. I still don't know what they were charged with unless it's something they were thinking about doing. Is "conspiracy to wiretap" a crime?