James O’Keefe, who was arrested in New Orleans last week, is “famous” for his ACORN videos. But, O’Keefe is an equal opportunity bigot. Dave Weigel reports that, along with Ben Wetmore (with whom O’Keefe was staying in New Orleans), he produced, or tried to produce, some anti-gay “gotcha” videos:
Still, the Wetmore-O’Keefe friendship was, in gonzo journalism terms, a productive one. In 2008, after O’Keefe had left the Leadership Institute, the two men recorded hidden camera video of themselves going to three state offices in Massachusetts, applying for marriage licenses, openly admitting that they were straight men who wanted to get married to take advantage of the benefits.
O’KEEFE: We probably plan on doing this for about a year and then..
CLERK: And then, divorcing.
O’KEEFE: Right.
CLERK: Yeah.
WETMORE: Yeah.The closest thing O’Keefe and Wetmore got to an ACORN moment was a Worcester, Mass., clerk admitting that she wasn’t telling a supervisor about their meeting because she didn’t want to get in trouble. Because the gag didn’t go any further, the stunt got little media attention. Fourteen months later, it reveals just how close O’Keefe and Wetmore were.
Apparently, so close that they came up with the idea of getting fake married.
Of this stunt, Digby says:
I’m not sure what this was trying to prove, but there’s little doubt that these guys are jackasses of the highest order. They are just mean little pranksters seeking to entrap low level clerks into validating bigots’ worst imaginations. The fact that the MSM never did any real investigations of these little creeps before now and gave them credibility instead, is a sad comment on journalism.
A very sad comment indeed.
And, it’s funny (in that peculiar way) how the right-wingers obsess so much over gay-related issues. What straight guys come up with the idea of getting fake married?
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