Bloggasm

Earlier today, Salon’s Max Blumenthal published a piece making seemingly disturbing accusations against James O’Keefe, the ACORN-punking self-described “investigative journalist” who was arrested recently for alleged phone tampering in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office. The story made a number of allegations ranging from his involvement in an event where “O’Keefe was manning the literature table at [a] gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism,” to supposed instances in which the young conservative expressed dismay at having to share living space with black people in college.

I’ve taken particular interest in the O’Keefe story because he sent me a few emails before he became famous for his ACORN video; he had somehow heard that I specialize in digital PR and wanted to know if I could help him spread some videos he had made. After the exchanges I promptly forgot about him until later when his name was splashed all over the news.

Following his arrest and subsequent release I sent O’Keefe a few instant messages on G-chat, hoping to get some quotes from him about the incident, but received no response. But today I tweeted a link and headline to the Salon article, and several hours later received this email from O’Keefe:

you do realize onepeoplesproject is a fringe, radical group raided by the fbi, right?
that article is libelous guilt by associationm will be retracted and its pathetic someone like you linked to it

(Before I go on I should note the irony that O’Keefe pointed out the fact that One People’s Project was raided by the FBI when he, himself, was arrested by the FBI and has seemingly tried to claim that the agency’s charges are groundless.)

I immediately responded to O’Keefe that I would be glad to run a response to the Salon piece on Bloggasm. He responded with a link and the words “Looks like entire story was bogus and based on false sources, with the source admitting as such.” The link he gave led to a David Weigel piece in the Washington Independent in which Weigel doesn’t necessarily deny claims in the Salon article, just says that he couldn’t corroborate whether O’Keefe was sitting at a table handing out racist literature.

I responded to O’Keefe’s email, saying, “just to clarify: you weren’t at the table?”

He followed up with a link to a Big Government article in which he actually does deny sitting at a table; the piece also says that O’Keefe was at the event to watch a debate between panelists with radically different views, and that he wasn’t there to represent any particular viewpoint.

It should be noted that Blumenthal reached out to O’Keefe’s attorney with no response. Also, there are several other claims in the piece aside from O’Keefe’s attendance of the event. However, now that O’Keefe has officially responded to at least some of the accusations, I think it would certainly be fair for Salon to update the article, not only linking to O’Keefe’s response but also quoting the most pertinent parts.

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