James O'Keefe 1, MSM Schadenfreude, 0

Things were going so well for David Shuster at the start of the year. On January 26, James O’Keefe, chief ACORN-buster, and several of his friends had just been arrested for “breaking into” the office of Senator Mary Landrieu. The MSM sharks started circling. Blood was in the water. Cries of “Watergate, Jr.” reverberated throughout the vast MSM echo chamber, led by the king reverberator himself, David Shuster, in this whole overblown non-scandal.

For a refresher course in MSM diversion and moral equivalence, watch Shuster bend over backwards, Cirque-du-Soleil style, to defend ACORN while simultaneously all-but-convicting O’Keefe of felony burglary. Shuster claims in the Breitbart video that “O’Keefe wanted to shame Senator Mary Landrieu.” Yes, Dave. He wanted to. But she’d already beaten him to it.

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At the time of the real Watergate scandal, Shuster was just out of kindergarten. Perhaps this explains his first-grade level of skepticism of politicians. It makes one wonder: where did the man get his B.A. from– the Kumbaya School of Communications? Yesterday, O’Keefe pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in the Landrieu event. End of non-story.

The difference between James O’Keefe and Richard Nixon is not only one of magnitude but one of intent. Nixon was trying to cover up a crime. O’Keefe was trying to uncover potential government corruption–specifically, why was it impossible for Landrieu’s constituents to get through to their senator by telephone for days on end, at the very height of the public debate on Obamacare, when alleged sweetheart deals were being made to the Senator to secure her vote in favor of it?

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Nixon had allowed himself to be corrupted. He became a crime cover-upper. O’Keefe’s whole raison d’etre is to uncover crime, and while his methods may not fit the MSM’s sanctimonious standards, I’d rather have one devil like O’Keefe on my side than a whole choir of David Shusters.

The real question is why the MSM, typified by Shuster and MSNBC’s attempt to schadenfreude this story into a full-blown scandal, is so willing to look the other way at Democratic foul play–while condemning the work done by those to uncover it–the very work it should itself be doing–as criminal.

Still, in the end, schadenfreude always boomerangs on its practitioners. First Shuster had his Twitter rights curtailed for twitty tweeting. Then he got “suspended indefinitely” by MSNBC last month for sleeping with the enemy–he did an unauthorized pilot for CNN.

Yesterday, instead of cuffed, O’Keefe’s wrists just get slapped. Too bad for Shuster. And the year had been off to such a good start, too.