Voice author Stephen Thrasher surmises O'Keefe was likely still coasting off Thiel's "Taxpayers Clearing House" money when he shot the ACORN videos this summer in NY, California and Washington, DC. Philadelphia ACORN workers noted O'Keefe also secretly recorded his undercover pimp act in their offices but were cut from his feature when they didn't fall for his hoax.
Originally it seemed O'Keefe and Giles proved that America is still a place where some hard work and a few breaks can catapult a few creative young filmmakers into the limelight, fighting injustice as they see it. They surely helped take ACORN down a few pegs by exposing select employees whose conduct ran afoul of the rulebook, failing to object when O'Keefe and Giles pretended they planned to import underage Latin sex slaves.
As we learn O'Keefe was actually a young operative given extensive support to focus on causes that benefit wealthy special interests, it shatters the "average guy on the street" illusion to prove once again that these operations are simply paying to make it seem like this was the product of a couple of hustling youngsters producing a fully independent film.
Perhaps the worst thing revealed in this report is the alleged lying by O'Keefe to cover his tracks after the fact. This shows his awareness of popular perception of the underhanded 'astroturf' movement, in which well-oiled conservative groups pay extra to create the illusion that the protests against Obama's policies are coming from average middle class citizens.
Instead, we see these efforts are funded and aided by the wealthiest of the anti-populist upper class looking to suppress voter turn out in poor and working class American communities, continuing the work of the Bush Administration during the DOJ firing scandal and the vote-caging outrage in which lists of voters from heavily Democratic districts were discovered being sent from Karl Rove's RNC office server to a White House web server in order to intentionally bounce eligible voters from election rolls.
