Diary of a Douche

[marmar]

James O'Keefe's Breakthrough: memoir of a merry prankster
The rightwing activist who made his name 'punking' progressive organisations is a lively raconteur, but not a self-knowing one

Ana Marie Cox
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 7 July 2013 09.00 EDT

The memoir of political prankster James O'Keefe – most famous for stinging Acorn and NPR – just passed Dan Brown's Inferno on the Amazon bestseller list. This feat may seem odd here in the dog days of summer: on its surface, O'Keefe's Breakthrough: Our Guerrilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy is not much of a beach read. I am probably saying more about Brown than O'Keefe in assuring you that Breakthrough is every bit the overheated techno-thriller as Inferno – ripe with conspiracies, pulse-pounding narrow escapes, mistaken identities, false accusations, an array of powerful forces bent on doing evil, and even a kind of Holy Grail (spoiler alert!): to break through into the mainstream media, to get the message out.

O'Keefe is as much a child of James Cameron and Quentin Tarantino as he is of Andrew Brietbart or Matt Drudge (though the latter two are the ones who've nurtured him most directly). Breakthrough is larded with as many references to popular films as it is with their tropes. He compares his media strategy to the black goo in "Prometheus" (he said it, not me); watching the fruits of one "sting" unfold, he feels "like that guy in the movie Limitless". He's a student of more obscure fare, as well – thinking of his desire to go undercover as a pimp to Acorn offices is, he imagines that:

"Philippe Petit, the Frenchman who in 1974 violated just about every rule of God and New York City by slinging a wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and walking across it, had a similar urge. He had his own dream, his own little posse, and his own sense of destiny. We both hoped to make the world a better place, he by entertaining it, me by exposing it. The difference, I suppose, was that the outcome would be a little more brutal if he fell off the wire than if Hannah (the woman playing his prostitute), say, fell off her platform shoes."

Yes, I suppose. But O'Keefe earns most of these pop culture comparisons with the aforementioned setpieces, such as a mad dash down Sixth Avenue to a Glenn Beck taping, "hard drive in hand, cords dangling, dodging cars and pedestrians both, my heart pounding, looking skyward now and then as the rain clouds gathered, and wondering if I'd live to be 26." .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/07/james-okeefe-breakthrough-memoir

[bluedigger]

1. That'll be one steaming heap.

[MisterP]

2. has anyone told M. Pettit about this--thing...?

[xocet]

3. James O'Keefe on C-SPAN's Washington Journal on July 3, 2013...

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/313718-4

[Octafish]

4. Flushbo said he was the 'special forces of GOP'

It's a lie, of course, as both are simple douche bags of propaganda.

[mysuzuki2]

5. Ill buy this book

The day I run out of toilet paper and Mr Whipple is on strike.