Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/29/samthana-bee-parodies-project.html
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Damn. Squirm inducing.
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Project Veritas really demonstrates the importance of a good screening process for potential employees.
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OMG, jump ahead to six minutes!
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But seriously, if James O’Keefe did happen upon some good help, how would he know?
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Poor young woman sure doesn’t seem like a conniving “operative.” She seems like a noob who’s in way over her head. She assumed the WaPo would be credulous and amateurish?
EDIT: Wow, Samantha Bee just isn’t funny. It’s almost just a reenactment of an already painful, awkward interview.
If there was ever proof of just how pedestrian O’Keefe’s tactics are, this is it.
I assume he thought the Post would just fall for her story and print it verbatim, or else he could get them on tape “guaranteeing” her it would destroy Moore, but that was it-- he thought up the idea and didn’t bother to hash out any details like her background or how she could prove her claims or what would happen if it blew up in his face.
“Umm, so like, I have proof the Loch Ness Monster exists.”
“So what’s your proof?”
“Well, like, I saw it one time, and I got a photo of it but then I lost it.”
"OK, but can you explain this fundraising page where you took donations for making a hoax movie about Nessie?’
“Oh yeah, I never did that, it fell through, so it like doesn’t count or anything. . . .”
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Really, satire is dead, or at least not in a good shape, if even Samantha Bee can’t manage to be as funny as the real life events she parodies.
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Could be this wasn’t ripe yet for parody. Maybe needed to be left on the vine until more things develop.
From the WaPo story:
Again, Phillips had arrived early and was waiting for McCrummen, her purse resting on the table. When McCrummen put her purse near Phillips’s purse to block a possible camera, Phillips moved hers.
Of course in reality it wouldn’t have been remotely professional and certainly wouldn’t have led to a quality story, but it’s amusing to contemplate just how long that purse-moving game could have endured. “Why do you keep moving your purse?” “No reason; why do you keep moving your purse?” “I’m allowed to move my purse.” “Well, so am I.” “Can you stop moving your purse?” “I like moving my purse.” Comedy gold.
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I’ve seen this same phenomenon in many of my own family members. Limbaugh and others telling them how impossibly clever and insightful they are for 3+ hours a day seems to lull them into a sort of Dunning-Krugeresque trance, where binary thought processes and tunnel vision crowd out anything resembling nuance or pragmatism as it relates to politics. I’ve seen it spill over into their personal and professional lives as well, usually to bad ends.
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That’s what happens when you start to believe your own side’s propaganda. She probably was convinced that the “liberal media” are lying mouth pieces who would print anything to hurt the other side.
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While watching the video and reading the WaPo article, I imagined O’Keefe taking notes with each mention of a suspicious detail.
“Okay, next time make sure to delete real social media history and create fake social media history…Okay, plant fake employees at any business referenced in agent’s history…Okay, use fake email accounts that don’t undermine fake story…”
These things just seem so obvious. He’s not clever enough to do his own underhanded job. I’ve seen false document websites for video games and movies that put more effort into convincing customers of their authenticity than PV did.
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I also note he claimed the Post filming him was them stealing his methods, as if he invented the entire idea of hidden cameras.
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But I haven’t agreed to go on the record at all, so…
These people have some interesting ideas on what they do for a living.
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I found it pretty funny. When she acted all delighted at being “Project Vertas-ed” it was like acting out the part you would do, in retrospect, if you’d been in the situation and thought quickly and didn’t have to worry about getting fired.
One has to wonder how much of this is rank incompetence; how much is a failure to see candid assessment of their opponents’ strengths and weaknesses as a slightly important part of the plan; and how much is down to the peculiar position some people seem to take that injecting reason into a situation is inherently hurtful and disrespectful because it represents a failure to give due deference to that person’s feelings about the matter.
People who value feelings in this way tend not to recognize the fact(surprise, surprise); just manifest it in ways that are unmistakable if you cross them by being so rude as to suggest that how hard they feel about something is less relevant than how something is; but they seem relatively common.
What would that be for Veritas, though? “Do you want to work here? Well, in that case, you can’t.”
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It was great for about two minutes and then Boing Boing spontaneously reloaded
