{"id":273186,"date":"2010-02-03T20:00:26","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T01:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=75728"},"modified":"2010-02-03T20:00:26","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T01:00:26","slug":"about-james-o%e2%80%99keefe-and-that-robert-taft-club-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/273186","title":{"rendered":"About James O\u2019Keefe and That Robert Taft Club Event"},"content":{"rendered":"

Max Blumenthal’s story<\/a> about “James O’Keefe’s race problem” leads with an account of an August 30, 2006 after-work event<\/a> hosted by the Robert Taft Club in Arlington, Va., where John Derbyshire and Kevin Martin joined Jared Taylor<\/a> — the editor of the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance — to discuss “race and conservatism.” Earlier today, I posted my own account<\/a> of that event and some context about the culture of see-what-we-can-get-away-with political correctness among young conservatives.<\/p>\n

Apparently, the One People’s Project is citing me as a corroborating source on the event — but there are aspects of their story I can’t confirm. While their photo of O’Keefe is definitely from the event, I took it on the photographer’s word that O’Keefe was pictured<\/a> “as he maintained a literature table near the panelists.” I can personally confirm that he was there, but not that he was manning the table — nor that O’Keefe “planned” the event (as Blumenthal put it) with Marcus Epstein, who was president of the Robert Taft Club.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Here’s how I came across the story: On Jan. 27, the photographer (who goes by the name Isis) from the One People’s Project called to ask me if I had any photos of the event. She remembered seeing me there — it was one of several RTC events I attended, including one where Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) spoke. I explained that I didn’t, but compared my version of the event with hers. She told me that she had photos of the event, but the full photos had been taken by the FBI in a raid. All she had on hand were cropped headshots of people who were at the event.<\/p>\n

She emailed me the photo of O’Keefe<\/a>, and I immediately recognized him from the event. And she told me that, unfortunately, the cropping had removed the table he was sitting at, which included copies of American Renaissance magazine. I remembered the table — curious, I’d grabbed a copy of the magazine, which was, of course, incredibly racist — and took her word that the photo showed O’Keefe sitting there. In the photo, after all, we can see a man walking out the door and O’Keefe’s head is much lower than his. But could I personally confirm that O’Keefe was manning the table at an event I attended four years and several phones\/cameras ago? Well, no. I suggested that the story didn’t really have legs if O’Keefe wasn’t selling literature or hadn’t planned the event, as, well, people like me had shown up. It was a debate, after all, with two people — one of them African-American — ganging up on the truly ridiculous Taylor.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to today and the Blumenthal article. Blumenthal writes that One People’s Project founder Daryle Jenkins was the source for the “manning the table” claim. But I can’t confirm that, because I don’t remember who was at the table at any particular time. All I know is that O’Keefe was there and he was working for LI at the time.<\/p>\n

If OPP is able to retrieve its original photo and clear this up, it should do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Max Blumenthal’s story about “James O’Keefe’s race problem” leads with an account of an August 30, 2006 after-work event hosted by the Robert Taft Club in Arlington, Va., where John Derbyshire and Kevin Martin joined Jared Taylor — the editor of the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance — to discuss “race and conservatism.” Earlier today, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4313"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}