Blowback

The fallout from Coward James O'Keefe's latest stunt is starting to build.

 

I mean, it's hard to add to Glenn Beck's deconstruction...yes, Glenn Beck...of the 11 minute faux NPR sting that O'Keefe cobbled together out of two hours of tape. I'm surprised O'Keefe is still standing and not curled up in some corner, sucking his thumb.

 

Comes now Time Magazine:

In the video, NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller and a colleague met with two members of a fictional Muslim group dangling a $5 million donation. Prodded by the "donors," Schiller said liberals "might be more educated" than conservatives, described Republicans as "anti-intellectual" and said the GOP had been "hijacked" by the "racist" Tea Party.

Or did he? After the tape became national news, and after NPR hastily sacrificed its CEO to appease critics, a video editor at the Blaze—a website founded by Fox News host Glenn Beck—compared the edited sting video and the two-hour original, also posted online.

Schiller did say some bad things, the Blaze found. But the short video took them out of context, like a bad reality show, and made them sound worse. It transposed remarks from a different part of the meeting to make it seem as if Schiller were amused by the group's "goal" of spreading Shari'a law. It left examples of his complimenting Republicans on the cutting-room floor.

And that Tea Party quote? Schiller was, for at least part of it, describing the views of some Republican friends.

This article will appear in this week's Time, on newsstands tomorrow. This will be the first many Americans even hear of the tape, aside from some watercooler and barroom bullshit their Teabagger friends have railed at them.

This is not good news for O'Keefe, his bear...I mean, mentor...Andrew Breitbart, the Teabaggers, or the GOP in Congress who are trying to cut NPR funding.

Amen. They all deserve to be kicked down a metaphorical flight of stairs.

 

Or for FOX News, either. Eventually, as Barnum would say, you can't fool some of the people all of the time if you keep fooling them and they find out about it. Barnum's greatest skill was not in the illusion, but in the escape. He left town (sometimes on a rail) before people realized they had been had.

 

Good snake-oil salesmen do that. Take the money and run, because if they catch up with you, they'll tear you limb from limb. You can take a little from a lot of people and they won't be bothered to track you down, but take a lot, especially over time, from people, and they form posses.

 

Keep running, O'Keefe. Keep running.

Somehow I doubt he's that smart, though.