Pimp daddy O’Keefe tries to ride again
He seemed to come from nowhere to conservative megastardom, buoyed by a video incriminating ACORN, a group which aides underprivileged voters. Subsequent investigation revealed the evidence had been fabricated, but by then a few spineless dems and lots of loud-mouth conservatives had taken ACORN out. But O’Keefe didn’t come out of nowhere. he was nurtured and grown like a plent. Back in his college days O’Keefe was able to develop his brand of duplicity thanks to a small investment by conservatives who created a mini-parallel media universe at Rutgers University. O’Keefe used a small grant from The Leadership Institute (LI) to found the Rutgers Centurion, a wingnut student paper. After graduating he went on to work for the LI, visiting other colleges and recruiting more students to follow in his sleazy footsteps.
Guys like O’Keefe are the venture cap investments for conservatives, very few pay-off but the one that does pay can hit the jackpot. O’Keefe is to his wingnut benefactors what Facebook was to the venture capitalists who backed it in the early days. Instead of paying off investors in dollars O’Keefe was the powerball lotto of PR for the extreme right. He’ll proably spend the rest of his life trying to relive his act of infamy. Maybe he’ll be successful, but odds are he’ll fade away into obscurity, or self-destruct reaching for more infame.