Campus-Pranksters
clipped from: High Jinks to Handcuffs for Landrieu Provocateur
From left, James O’Keefe III, Stan Dai, Robert Flanagan and Joseph Basel.
James O’Keefe III, the guerrilla videographer, advised conservative students this month that they needed to start taking more risks.
Campus pranks have a long tradition, but Mr. O’Keefe and Mr. Wetmore were “among the early users of putting multimedia content online for the conservative cause,†said Ryan Nichols, a grass-roots conservative activist and former colleague of both men at the Leadership Institute. “In that sense, they were pioneering.â€
The group’s other main tactic, which Mr. O’Keefe has said was inspired by “Rules for Radicals,†Mr. Alinsky’s manifesto for left-wing organizing, was to caricature liberal political and social values by carrying them to outlandish extremes.
His first issue of The Centurion — with a mock New York Times front page with headlines like “Study Shows Mr. Bush Unfit for Presidency†— drew an immediate reaction, and a following.
Mr. Gioia recalled discussions of “Rules for Radicals†and visits to the paper by Mr. Wetmore, whose motto was “Don’t complain about the media — be the media.â€
clipped from: Among Mr. Basel’s stunts was one in which he put up posters all over his campus in Minnesota that said “End Racism & Sexism Now: Kill All White Males.†The posters prompted such an outcry that he was asked to speak at a campus forum, where, according to two students, he asked why everyone could not use racial epithets the way black rappers do. Many black students walked out.
In the end, Mr. O’Keefe’s Planned Parenthood campaign — in which some of the organization’s workers were recorded accepting donations from one of Mr. O’Keefe’s characters who said the money should go to abort only black fetuses — forced Planned Parenthood to apologize in multiple states, though officials also complained that some tapes were “heavily edited.â€