Cruel And Confused

by digby

A ton of interesting information has surfaced this week about teabugger James O’Keefe, not the least of which is Max Blumenthal’s story about his white supremacist associations. Lindsay Beyerstein also revealed some fascinating stuff about O’Keefe and his relationship with his mentor Ben Wetmore.

But I have to say that this one by Dave Weigel about a pre-ACORN “investigation” just floors me:

Ben Wetmore, the 28-year-old conservative activist whom James O’Keefe called a “mentor,” has stayed out of the headlines since it was revealed that he housed O’Keefe and the other participants in the bungled sting of Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) office. When I reached Wetmore by phone yesterday, he politely declined to talk about the situation until it settled down.

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.

Here’s what I don’t get: is there some law that says people can’t get married for the benefits? I think it’s pretty common actually — in fact, that was one of the main reasons why my longtime partner in cohabitation and I finally decided to tie the knot. Granted we’re a heterosexual couple, but I don’t recall anyone asking us if we really, truly loved each other for ourselves before they’d issue a license.

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.

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