I'm always intrigued about the lies told by others. Often it is about something so insignificant to not be worth the risk of doing so.
But such lies speak volumes about a person's character.
James O'Keefe, the interloper now famous for his "sting" investigations of ACORN and NPR, was in Portland this past Friday. He was the guest of AFP Maine, the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a "free market" advocacy group founded by David Koch. O'Keefe gave a presentation of his work to about 60 people, a presentation which mostly consisted of him complaining about how the main stream media accuses him of selective editing to better smear his subject.
The presentation included the prank below. I call it a prank because that's exactly what it is - a group of college students trying to sucker an administrator at Rutgers University. It is an outlandish scheme: that Lucky Charms out to be removed from the cafeterias at Rutgers because the leprechaun depicted on the box is racist, and not an accurate representation of those of Irish descent. It's actually pretty funny to watch, and my guess is that it gained some renown on campus:
Did you catch that claim that O'Keefe makes at the end of the clip?
Rutgers banned Lucky Charms.
I did some searches on the internet looking for any reference to this, since one would think that - given O'Keefe's notoriety - they would be easy to find. My searches came up empty.
So I contacted Rutgers University to find out if indeed Lucky Charms had been removed from cafeterias there in response to O'Keefe's demands.
Greg Trevor, Senior Director of Media Relations at the school, was kind enough to send me a short statement:
The university did not remove the cereal “Lucky Charms” from dining halls.
What has to wonder what is to be gained by this behavior from O'Keefe. He was speaking to a very receptive audience of about 60 people, and as noted above, was taking the news media to task for attacking him with lies.
And yet here he is - on tape - telling these trusting people about something that never happened. Rutgers University never banned Lucky Charms from its cafeterias.
The news media has every reason to view with skepticism anything produced by James O'Keefe. His supporters should too.
The irony in all this is that the man who was the voice of Lucky the Leprechaun for 29 years, Arthur Anderson, was not Irish.