Video re-editor and smear artist James O’Keefe has been spotted in the Big Apple. Speculation is he’s trying to cook up another hit-job, this time on the Occupy Wall Street movement now terrifying the Job Destroyers who tanked the economy and the classholes apologists who protect them:

Today Occupy Wall Street had an extra-special visitor, although one apparently not sporting his usual camera, nor the traditional 1970s pimp costume. Yes, right-wing scandal-baitor and shameless videotape re-editor James O’Keefe showed up in Liberty Plaza.

O’Keefe is a great exemplar of the long-winded point I was trying to make the other day in this post: conservatives invest long term to farm new liars and scumbags.

He seemed to come from nowhere to conservative megastardom, buoyed by a video incriminating ACORN, a group which aides underprivileged voters. Subsequent investigation revealed the evidence had been fabricated, but by then a few spineless dems and lots of loud-mouth conservatives had taken ACORN out. But O’Keefe didn’t come out of nowhere. he was nurtured and grown like a plent. Back in his college days O’Keefe was able to develop his brand of duplicity thanks to a small investment by conservatives who created a mini-parallel media universe at Rutgers University. O’Keefe used a small grant from The Leadership Institute (LI) to found the Rutgers Centurion, a wingnut student paper. After graduating he went on to work for the LI, visiting other colleges and recruiting more students to follow in his sleazy footsteps.

Guys like O’Keefe are the venture cap investments for conservatives, very few pay-off but the one that does pay can hit the jackpot. O’Keefe is to his wingnut benefactors what Facebook was to the venture capitalists who backed it in the early days. Instead of paying off investors in dollars O’Keefe was the powerball lotto of PR for the extreme right. He’ll proably spend the rest of his life trying to relive his act of infamy. Maybe he’ll be successful, but odds are he’ll fade away into obscurity, or self-destruct reaching for more infame.

But that doesn’t matter to the right. O’Keefe paid off, and there are thousands of future James O’Keefe’s in the making, support and encouraged by conservative think-tanks and deep pockets. Few of them will turn ot to be worth the money, but it only takes one or two to advance the ball down the field.