Hypocrisy, O'Keefe is thy middle name:

Conservative activist James O’Keefe, who has gained notoriety for his hidden-camera stings of NPR executives, ACORN employees, teacher unions, and CNN reporters, gave a speech to a New Jersey Tea Party group today. The Asbury Park Press reports that O’Keefe had only one condition: that his speech not be videotaped in any way. A representative for the Tea Party group told a photojournalist from the Press that she didn’t agree with O’Keefe’s order, but explained that “This is a guy that’s in trouble with the law, he’s got lawsuits up the gazoo for trying to help you with your freedom.”

ThinkProgress' George Zornick quotes O'Keefe's speech, wherein he says:

"It all goes back to one fundamental principle — and that is to make (the media and public officials) live up to their own book of rules. If you want to call out a hypocrite, the best way to do that is look at how he lives his life."

Quoth the guy who tried to lure a CNN reporter onto his Loooove Boat.

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You can tell that all these reporters for right-wing propaganda organs like the Media Research Center spend waaaay too much time watching Fox News and their army of would-be ambush journalists. Because they often try to imitate their betters only to discover that it can seriously backfire on them.

Especially when the intended victim is a seriously smart person like Barney Frank.

This happened yesterday to a young reporter for CNS (an MRC outlet), as Terry Krepel at Media Matters reports:

Apparently feeling confident (and sufficiently homophobic), CNS decided to target Rep. Barney Frank with a question about the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – specifically, whether he thought gay and straight soldiers should shower together. This was based on a statement calling for a ban on separate showers from the Pentagon’s report on the impact of repealing DADT that CNS had previously singled out.

Frank saw this coming from a mile away. As CNS reporter Nicholas Ballasy slowly got out the words “shower with homosexuals,” Frank let out an exaggerated gasp and responded, “What do you think happens in gyms all over America?” After calling it a “silly issue,” Frank added, “What do you think goes wrong with people showering with homosexuals? Do you think it’s the spray makes it catching? ... We don’t get ourselves dry-cleaned.”

Frank then turned the tables on his interviewer by quizzing Ballasy: “I know you’re looking for some way to kind of discredit the policy. Do you think that gyms should have separate showers for gay and straight people? I’m asking you the question because that’s the logic of what you’re telling me. You seem to think that there’s something extraordinary about gay men showering together. Do you think gyms should have separate showers for gay people and straight people?” Ballasy wouldn’t answer, insisting that he was “just quoting the recommendation.” Frank responded: “Don’t be disingenuous. You’re quoting those you think may cause us some problems. You’re entitled to do that, but you shouldn’t hide behind your views.” Frank again asked the question of Ballasy, who again wouldn’t answer, trying to change the subject: “So that’s the question you would pose to people who have an issue with that part of the report, the recommendation?” Frank made his point one more time, and that’s where the CNS ends the video.

As is often the case with Barney Frank, it is a delightfully thorough humiliation.

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Well, will ironies never cease:

A woman answered the door this afternoon at the Wyckoff home of Fox 5 news reporter Charles Leaf — where authorities say he sexually abused a 4-year-old girl — but the woman declined to speak to reporters.

A second woman arrived at the house later, going inside without speaking to reporters.

The award-winning Leaf, who is married with two children, was charged with aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child, Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said. The house, a renovated Cape Cod with a three-car garage and dormers near the roof, is in a modest neighborhood in Wyckoff.

The child is an acquaintance, according to authorities. Leaf is being held in the Bergen County Jail on $250,000 bail and will be arraigned on Nov. 4 in Wyckoff Municipal Court.

Leaf, an ex-Marine, joined the station in 2006 and is the station’s investigative and general-assignment reporter who has covered national stories, including the Bernard Madoff scandal and the proposed development of a mosque near the World Trade Center site, according to his résumé on myfoxny.com.

A spokesperson for the station said Fox 5 was aware of the situation and was reviewing it.

The last time we saw Charles Leaf, he was busy chasing hapless accountants with a camera while ostensibly pursuing the financiers of the "Ground Zero mosque," all in the name of another Fox News just-coincidentally-Islamophobia-baiting "investigation".

As we observed at the time:

It's bad enough that they sicced their camera crews on a bunch of unsuspecting bankers, accountants and real-estate developers who are, unsurprisingly, not willing to have their lives destroyed by a scandal-mongering bunch of fake journalists on a witch hunt. But the pernicious part of this kind of reportage is the way that it implies guilt -- for some unnamed misdeed -- simply in the refusal to go on-camera.

We have long said that this style of pseudo-journalism is a violation of a whole raft of basic ethic standards for real journalists. The Fox crews disgracefully badger people outside their homes, and choose targets not merely for some official misdeed but, in some cases, merely for writing or saying something the reporter didn't like.

And this kind of reportage is even more clearly unethical, because it victimizes a bunch of ordinary citizens whose only misdeed is being associated in business dealings with an unpopular project. That's deeply disturbing.

Just remember: Whenever a Fox crew gets near you, simply repeat the magical words, "Andrea Mackris". They'll go away, as do all plagues eventually.

Somehow, I can't see Charles Leaf saying those words. Nor do I see him having to.

But then, Bill O'Reilly got all worked up the other night over his favorite new race-baiting bit -- "the New Black Panthers" case -- which he then connected to Meg Whitman's fired maid (don't ask me, you have to see the video to understand).

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One of Fox News' affiliates, WNYW, sent out a reporter named Charles Leaf to conduct an "investigation" of the "money trail" in the patented Fox Ambush Squad style, and yesterday the results ran a couple of times on Fox itself: First Megyn Kelly carried it on her morning "news" show, then Laura Ingraham featured it on The O'Reilly Factor, including an interview with Leaf, who tried to pretend that what he was doing was real journalism.

What's peculiar about this report is that it zeroes in on a few minor functionaries in the financial chain behind the construction of the mosque -- loan guarantors and the like. Leaf invades their homes, follows them into foyers, and tries to run after them in parking lots. All this, ostensibly, to follow the "money trail" behind the mosque.

Of course, they somehow neglected to try talking to one of the imam's more generous backers -- Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. Maybe that's because Talal is the No. 2 shareholder in Fox News.

Indeed, as none other than Rupert Murdoch's New York Post reported last May, the Kingdom Foundation, al-Waleed's personal charity, has donated a total of $305,000 to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, a leadership and networking project sponsored jointly by two of Rauf's organizations, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative. Al-Waleed owns a 7 percent, $2.3 billion stake in News Corporation. Likewise, News Corporation owns a 9 percent, $70 million stake — purchased in February — in Rotana, Al-Waleed's Saudi media conglomerate. Put another way: Rupert Murdoch and Fox News are in business, to the tune of billions of dollars, with one of the "Terror Mosque Imam's" principal patrons.

It's bad enough that they sicced their camera crews on a bunch of unsuspecting bankers, accountants and real-estate developers who are, unsurprisingly, not willing to have their lives destroyed by a scandal-mongering bunch of fake journalists on a witch hunt. But the pernicious part of this kind of reportage is the way that it implies guilt -- for some unnamed misdeed -- simply in the refusal to go on-camera.

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We already knew that Griff Jenkins' attempt to ambush ACORN officials earlier this week on behalf of Glenn Beck didn't exactly produce any scintillating video moments -- except when Adam Green pinned his ears to the wall for pretending to be a legitimate journalist. (As though any legitimate journalist would bring a prop intended to humiliate his interview subjects.)

So Jenkins went on Beck's show last night and presented what little decent video he had. As you can see, no one was interested in helping his little stunt along, and most of the people who actually talked to him did little to advance the narrative he wanted to create.

Verdict: Fail. Epic Fail.

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The Ambush Virus is spreading at Fox News. Earlier this week, producer Griff Jenkins ambushed history professor Alan Brinkley over the wording of a few lines in one of his textbooks:

Jenkins claimed that the network invited Brinkley onto the program, but Fox News has been known to lie about inviting its perceived enemies on air. ThinkProgress contacted Brinkley and it turns out Fox extended an invitation to him only after stalking and ambushing him:

A Fox News crew was waiting for me when I left my home yesterday, followed me for two blocks with questions and accusations, and then left. Later that day, I was asked to come onto the show, which I declined to do. I did e-mail the person who invited me with responses to the two mistaken charges they made when I was being followed by the camera crew.

After being stalked and ambushed, Brinkley did release a statement to Fox refuting Jenkins’ claims — and forcing Jenkins to halfheartedly admit he had been wrong about one of his charges.

The key part of Brinkley's statement reads:

One is that I claimed that only one person was tried and convicted in the war on terror. That’s not correct. I said that of the large group of Muslims rounded up immediately after 9/11, only one of them was tried and convicted. Other defendants were, of course, tried and convicted at later dates.

The problem, as The Bwog noted, is that Jenkins was waving about numbers from this year, while Brinkley's book was published in 2006 -- when, in fact, the statement that Jenkins finds so offensive was in fact accurate.

So the basis of Jenkins' charge against Brinkley was essentially bogus; if he had a beef with anyone, it might have been with the editors at the book's publishing house, who evidently have not been diligent enough in updating details of the book for its subsequent printings. Moreover, it's clear that Jenkins is misreading Brinkley, who carefully specified that he was talking about the people arrested immediately after 9/11, while Jenkins' figures refer to all the terrorism suspects rounded up since the terror attacks.

Now, having been shown for the screwup that he is, you'd think Jenkins would go into hiding and take his vicious little videotape with him. But there he was again this morning on Fox and Friends, proudly running the tape again, and declaiming:

Now guys, shortly after this encounter, the good provost did issue a statement. However, it was responding to something I didn't accuse him of. And he pointed out in one of his books, somewhere else in another chapter, he did mention 3,000 Americans were dead. Fact is, that there's bias in these books, and he misleads the reader.

The worst part of all this, as we noted when Bill O'Reilly sends out his minions on similar attack missions, is that this is a gross abrogation of basic ethical standards for journalists -- who typically resort to such stalking and ambushes for actual criminal actors or public-office miscreants -- not people whose words the journalist finds offensive.

Fox is using its ambush crews not to attack people they genuinely believe have broken the law or harmed the public's welfare, but merely people with whom they disagree.

That's a very, very dangerous development.

The Rude Pundit has some appropriately rude thoughts in response to Jenkins.

Oh Noes, Billo!

In response to our Stop Supporting The O’Reilly Harassment Machine campaign, UPS told us yesterday that it was investigating whether to continue supporting O’Reilly’s show. “We are sensitive to the type of television programming where our messages and presence are associated and continually review choices to affect future decisions,” spokeswoman Susan Rosenberg told us.

Today UPS announced it will stop advertising on O’Reilly’s show. Here is the statement UPS emailed out just moments ago:

Thank you for sending an e-mail expressing concern about UPS advertising during the Bill O’Reilly show on FOX News. We do consider such comments as we review ad placement decisions which involve a variety of news, entertainment and sports programming. At this time, we have no plans to continue advertising during this show.

Can I get a Woot! for UPS? You just know this is going to make Billo nuts.