Should merry (ultra right) pranksters go to jail?

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="282" caption="Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife"][/caption]

Remember James O'Keefe, III, the ultra-right "merry prankster" who dressed as a "pimp" and brought along a friend to be his "ho" and went into an Acorn office and asked for help starting a brothel? Ah, the most fun I've ever had writing on True/Slant was calling O'Keefe's piece "fantasy" not "news."  Calling him the "Borat of the Right," I pointed out that Mr. O'Keefe's video of Acorn employees supposedly supporting prostitution rings was no more "true" than a Sacha Baron Cohen piece. Sadly, most of the media and nearly all our national politicians saw Mr. O'Keefe's highly-edited clip of Acorn employees trying to respond to his "pimp and ho" routine as an actual indictment of the organization. The website Big Government, who gave Mr. O'Keefe support and a national platform for his "reporting," linked my piece so that I received a lot of hate mail and more than a few death threats.  Less amusing  were the people who called my employer and insisted I be fired. Now Mr. O'Keefe is in deep doo doo and I find myself both wanting to defend his right to be a pain in the ass that is power AND thinking he needs to learn the difference between a prank and journalism. It seems that O'Keefe and a merry band of pranksters went to New Orleans and dressed up like telephone repairman to get "gottcha" footage of Senator Mary Landrieu's staff.

Mr. O’Keefe, 25, ...and three other men... were arrested and charged with a federal felony, accused of seeking to tamper with the office telephone system of Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana. Two of them were impersonating repairmen in the senator’s New Orleans office and were caught after being asked for identification. Mr. O’Keefe said Friday that the four men had been trying to determine whether Ms. Landrieu was avoiding constituent complaints about the Senate health care bill after her phone system was jammed in December. (Her office said no calls had been intentionally avoided.) On reflection, he said in a statement, “I could have used a different approach to this investigation.”

It's funny, right?  I mean, you're suspicious that a Senator is lying about "phone problems" and so you dress up as phone repairmen and ask the staff what problems they're having with the phones.  If you're lucky, you catch them saying "we're not having problems."  Hilarious. But it's not journalism, is it?  It's protest and activism and possibly even a joke and this is where O'Keefe steps over the line of "funny" and "right on" into "stupid" and "send him to jail." There is very little that I would be willing to die for, but our right to protest power while getting a laugh is worth dying for.  We have an obligation to point out the abuse of power.  We have a sacred duty as citizens to do so in the most entertaining manner possible. I myself have staged drag queen bake sales for peace or dressed up like an ultra conservative housewife who believes all our rights should be based on our marital status, including our right to vote. But I have never pretended as if this is "true" or "journalism."  It's protest.  That's the point.  It's clearly absurd.  Even the people who are the butt of my jokes--like Family Research Council representatives responding to my "Heterosexuals for Mandatory Marriage Manifesto"-- know that it's a joke and that the joke's on them. O'Keefe's protests cross the line between staged absurdity and absurd entrapment.  They are less a question of First Amendment rights and more "Boy, do you know there is such a thing as ETHICS, even with your enemies?" So although I support O'Keefe's right to stage as many absurd protests as possible, to throw metaphorical and even actual pies in the faces of his enemies, I must draw the line at presenting these protests as journalism.  I must also draw the line at breaking and entering under false pretenses. There is nothing wrong with standing up in public space and screaming "look the Emperor has no clothes."  There is something sleazy about sneaking into the Emperor's closet with a hidden camera. So although I hope O'Keefe and his merry band of ultra-right pranksters get off with a slap on the wrist, I also hope they learn that there is a difference between protest and journalism, staged absurdity and truthful reporting. And that they learn the lesson that even our worst enemies deserve to be let in on the joke, especially because the joke is on them.

Comments

[gracenearing]

Here is something I wish would be clarified in the context of ths story: the phrase jammed phone lines. I always have taken that expression to mean that due to unusually heavy phone traffic, callers have trouble getting through. I have never taken jammed phone lines to mean some sort of technical dysfunction or malicious tampering.

So I assumed that when Landrieu's staffers said their phone lines were jammed, they meant that they were experiencing unusually heavy call volumes. I gather O'Keefe had a different interpretation.

[tomclaeys]

Laurie....I agree that it was not journalism but it is also a crime falsly represent yourself and enter a federal building for any purpose. If an independent had entered a GOP Senators office for the purpose of determining a too close relationship with a CEO, an affair or excessive campaign contributions, that person would not have made bail and would be accused of terrorism.

[andylevinson]

Laurie….I agree that it was not journalism but it is also a crime falsly represent yourself and enter a federal building for any purpose

I doubt that is a crime....

[davidlosangeles]

Pr. Essig,

tomclaeys is correct, the answer to your question is about whether Mr. O'Keefe should go to jail is "did he break the law". Whether he is a "real" journalist or not is entirely beside the point. If Dan Rather pretended to be a plumber to gain access to US Government facility, he would have been arrested and charged with the same crime.

Having said that, Mr. O'Keefe's previous efforts do not constitute journalism not (just) because he does not actually work for any journal (sensu lato) but because he was not actually reporting any news. In the Baltimore ACORN incident, he did not, as he claimed, present himself as a "pimp" but as the young woman's boyfriend who was trying to protect her from her violent pimp. This was edited out of the video but was retained in the on-line transcript. That was a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the nature of the conversation that occurred. That is not journalism.

[bopdrummer]

" The individuals responsible have been charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purposes of committing a felony." That's enough for me. Let the US Attorney in New Orleans sort out the rest.I don't see how their motives have any bearing on the actual offence. Do you thing Watergate was performance art?

[horus45]

He needs to go to jail to learn his lesson.

[Laurie Essig]

Hmm- was Watergate performance art? Good question.

[captaincaptialist]

You wouldnt know journalism if it jumped and handed you a application for free medical coverage, and Obama bucks. Okay im sorry let me make this fair, I will take my brain out so we can be equally matched....

[bobshanbrom]

I remember Pauline Kael once commented that the movie Zardoz was a fascist message in a liberated art form. Pretty well describes these latter-day Michael Moore-ish frat boys.
BTW, Laurie, you pretty-well nailed it with your contribution about post-colonial sentimentality in Haiti. You have a fine mind and a good gut: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35162046/ns/world_news-haiti_earthquake/

[bradfeaker]

T/S needs a new link besides 'Flag for Abuse' - they need one like 'Flag for Stupidity'.

[korg]

Should the merry (ultra right) pranksters go to jail? You bet, Laurie!
If these so-called pranksters were Acorn reps they'd be charged, held without bail and tried by your media.

[cmorr]

without reading the article, yes....

[Lewis Grossberger]

How do you feel about corporal punishment? Because I think what O'Keefe needs is a good spanking.

[Laurie Essig]

Overall, I enjoy a good spanking as much as the next gal. I would think O'Keefe might let us spank him as a political statement: spanking as sort of libertarian justice outside the interference of "big government"?

[phillyfree]

Since the Attorney General feels compelled to try Terrorist who committed the murder of innocent Americans the same as a shop lifter and refused to prosecute acorn workers who openly stole votes at the polls and did not give a second thought to the thugs in Philadelphia who were intimating voters at the polls with Clubs in hand then why the big deal about this minor prank.

[smapdi]

If O'Keefe or one of his associates was carrying a butt-set, one of those big phones with leads for connecting directly to the phone company's punch down block, then he probably should go to jail for wiretapping. The mere possession of a butt-set implies intent to wire tap, the same way that possessing DeCSS code implies intent to pirate DVDs.

[golikehellmachine]

What fucking nonsense. What stupid, ridiculous blather.

I don't actually care that they're right, left, center, up or down. Sneaking into a federal building under false pretenses, then asking to see areas of the building presumably under guard, while still under false pretense, is a federal crime, and rightly so. Because someone wanting to bomb a federal building could do the exact same thing.

I'm all for these jackasses "exposing" whatever they feel like, but this is nonsense, bullshit false equivocation presumably written to get a rise, which, "Congratulations!" it has.

[golikehellmachine]

Well, let me know when someone breaks into your office and tell me how you feel about it. Or, maybe someone comes in under wholly false pretenses and pretends to work on your broadband connection.

OH, YOU'RE RIGHT, IT'S HILARIOUS.

This entire post is intentionally contrarian, substance-free nonsense, written pretty exclusively to provoke a reaction, and it's fairly unbecoming of any writer. So, as I mentioned somewhere else, CONGRATULATIONS, you got pageviews. Maybe you can get a job writing for the Post or for Slate next.

[trippin]

Prank? It was reported that a co-conspirator outside in a vehicle had a listening device.

Yeah, I know, I know, wiretapping is de rigueur in fascist post 9/11 America, but I still think it should be against the law.

[Scott Bowen]

"Zardoz"?! You've made my day, and you get the award for Graceful Reference to Obscure 70's Sci-Fi Cinema.

[walterglass]

I didn't realize that the rule of law depended on highly uninformed semantic musings about the nature of journalism and pranks. How did our prison system get so over-crowded this way?

Oh, I forgot, the rule of law is for poor people and minorities. O'Keefe just deserves a slap on the wrist, because he knows better.

[bobshanbrom]

Thank you for the award. Actually, I didn't find Zardoz any more fascistic than Paul Schrader's "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters", or Mishima's own "The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea," for that matter.

[horus45]

What the hell is going on here?
Anyone who is not supportive of this guy gets their comments "Called Out"?

Typical of a conservative who cannot take criticism.

[phillyfree]

Called Out! for speaking my mind, Is Acorn on your payroll, or are you on Acorns?

[smapdi]

There was not a single case of vote fraud involving Acorn in the 2008 election. If Acorn was "openly stealing votes" it was only in your dreams. Voter registrations and voting are two different things.