The politics of misdirection
by Tom SullivanThere is a scene early in Die Hard With a Vengeance where Jeremy Irons' character, Simon, posing as a crazy revolutionary, gives the Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson characters a riddle over the phone:
As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives, Each wife had seven sacks, Each sack had seven cats, Each cat had seven kits: Kits, cats, sacks, and wives, How many were there going to St. Ives?
After fumbling for a moment trying to do multiplication in their heads, the two realize it's a trick question. There's only one guy. The rest is misdirection.
Misdirection is James O'Keefe's M.O. O'Keefe was in North Carolina yesterday to release another of his hidden-camera videos exposing voter fraud (or something). An actress posing as a Brazilian immigrant tells electioneers at early voting sites that while not a citizen, she is a registered voter with a driver's license. The under-trained volunteers (the ones he chose to show, anyway) tell her — incorrectly — that if she is registered, she should vote. O'Keefe claims they committed felony bad advice. Good luck prosecuting that.
Did they video a Democrat presenting himself to vote under the name of a dead person? No. Did they observe someone voting twice? No. Did they film a campaign staffer signing someone else's absentee ballot? No. Did they so much as videotape someone filling in their ballot with a number 3 pencil? Sorry.
As the Raleigh News & Observer reports, "O’Keefe didn’t get anyone with major campaigns to take the bait, nor does the video show any poll workers allowing noncitizens to vote." Not that the howling right will notice. They're not supposed to. Like Jeremy Irons' phony revolutionary, O'Keefe is the fraud. He found none. The rest is misdirection.
So which real polling places did this fake noncitizen with her phony story and her nonexistent NC driver's license walk into and use an imaginary voter registration to put her fake signature on a real voting register and cast illegal ballots, committing real felony voter fraud? Bueller?
The only people being fooled by O'Keefe are his audience. Willingly.
And I was so hoping "exposing fraud" this time would involve James O'Keefe dropping his pants in public ... in front of police officers.