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This child has problems
SEK over at LGM has probably the best assessment of the James O'Keefe fiasco (the latest one, that is). It's also the scariest.
I noticed yesterday when this story broke that O'Keefe has definitely developed a theme in his "stunts" that involves dehumanizing and ruining the careers of women. He specifically targeted one of only a few female senators to wiretap; the ACORN fraud mostly filmed female (and black) employees all while dressing his associate up as a prostitute; now his latest scheme was, at best, best, to conspire to sexually harass a female reporter. The worser theories raise the question of why O'Keefe isn't in jail right now.
Speaking of Fox News, to follow up on SEK's observations, I suppose it's little to no surprise that they haven't taken an interest in this story at all. Funny, that.
Update: Speaking of "why isn't he in jail," that brings up an important question: really, why isn't he in jail? This doesn't have to do with the sex stuff at all; it has to do with the fact that according to the CNN story and O'Keefe's own accounts, he initiated this "sting" by calling Boudreau from Baltimore and recording the conversation without her consent. Recording phone conversations without the permission of all parties is illegal in Maryland, and O'Keefe is already on parole for... umm... illegally trying to record peoples' phone conversations.
Delicious, delicious narrative
Article title: "Pelosi ethics pledge falters."
Paragraph twenty-two... I'll repeat that. Paragraph twenty-two: "While no member of Congress has been criminally charged or found to have violated House rules, outside ethics watchdog groups have criticized the lawmakers' conduct. "
Look, don't get me wrong here and think I'm excusing unethical behavior. Congresscritters who broke the law should go to jail and certainly not be in office. But it's ridiculous how much the media loves the "Democrats are corrupt" narrative, or in this case the "Democrats have not accomplished the ethical standards of Jesus Christ, ergo Nancy Pelosi is the most failed Speaker of the House ever" narrative. If anything, it's pretty stupid in retrospect for Pelosi, or for that matter any Speaker, to pre-emptively take responsibility for over two hundred people who all took jobs based on the lure of the self-promotional power it instills.
Meanwhile, probably worth reminding folks for the seventy thousandth time or so that Republicans in Louisiana are about to re-elect, by an insane margin, someone who isn't even accused of ethical violations. He flat-out broke the law and got caught doing it.
"Car Talk"
For a few weeks now, the president's been making the analogy that the country is a car and it's all about who the driver is. Then conservatives started making their own analogy. Then analogies compound upon themselves. Meanwhile, we don't have a "metaphorical" 14 percent unemployment rate.
Politics would be better right now if Obama stopped saying that "Republicans want the keys back after we're in a ditch" and said something more fluid, such as "Republicans are greedy, stubborn asshats who don't care that you're starving to death because it's beneficial for them for you to suffer." I also suppose instead of metaphors, Republicans could likewise just say "Democrats are spineless cowards who don't deserve the majority they were handed based on now-broken promises to improve peoples' lives," but, well, that's my job.
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America's next top WTF?
Having never watched it, I've nevertheless heard the occasional story over the years about stupid and/or controversial stuff that happens on Tyra Banks' reality show, but... seriously?
I know television has been scraping the bottom of the barrel for a while now, but I didn't realize we hit the level of "disfigure yourself to win a game show."