James O'Keefe's 1st video: Hilarious classic

Reflecting on the donnybrook over President Trump's use of the word "lynch" this week, I started reflecting on how many words of Irish origin have negative connotations.

There is, of course, "lynch," named after Charles Lynch, son of an Irish immigrant who took to hanging loyalists extra-judiciously during the Revolutionary War.

Then, too, there is "donnybrook" named after an Irish fair occasionally interrupted by hooligans whose shenanigans often got them carted off in paddy wagons.

As a Mick myself I was on the verge of demanding my own apology from the president when I recalled the very first undercover video made by James O'Keefe of Project Veritas.

Recorded when he was a student at Rutgers, O'Keefe's approach was a much better way to take aim at the "cancel culture" than, say, an indignant tweet.

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O'Keefe writes about this adventure in his book "Breakthrough," but I recommend watching the video itself. I still laugh every time I see it.

The idea came to O'Keefe after Rutgers demanded that an immigrant owner of a local "grease truck" no longer offer a sandwich called "The Fat Dyke."

LGBT sensitivities, he understood, were not the only ones protected by campus speech codes. So too was "Ancestry." Of Irish ancestry himself, O'Keefe felt he had as much right to be offended by stuff as the next guy.

On St. Patrick's Day, 2005, O'Keefe and three of his equally aggrieved friends had a sit-down with Rutgers dining hall administrator Carolyn Knight-Cole. O'Keefe's friend Greg launched the proceedings:

GREG: Well, we're with the Irish Heritage Society. I am the personal adviser to James, Natalie and Kian. Basically, they have had some unpleasant and uncomfortable experiences in the dining halls.

Throughout, as you'll notice, O'Keefe and pals mimicked the patois of the grievance industry, and no word captures the trivialization of persecution better than "uncomfortable."

JAMES: We wanted to bring a matter to your concern. We noticed that the dining halls here at Rutgers serve Lucky Charms, and we think that this promotes negative stereotypes of Irish Americans. And we don't think that's acceptable in an academic setting, especially one of higher learning. We brought a box for you to look at here, and there is what appears to an Irish American on the front cover.

KNIGHT-COLE: OK.

JAMES: And he is portrayed as a little, green-cladded gnome, a huckster, and we think that undermines the importance and severity of Saint Patrick's Day, especially during the month of March. So basically what we are trying to …

KNIGHT-COLE: Can you tell me that again. You feel that he is portrayed as …?

I don't know how the four faux activists kept a collective straight face throughout the meeting, but they did.

JAMES: I think he is portrayed as a green-cladded gnome, and as you can see, we're not short and green. We have our differences of height, and we think this is stereotypical of all Irish Americans.

Greg brought with him a printout of the university's "policy against defamation and harassment" and read it.

GREG: If I might interject quickly, the university's policy against verbal assault, defamation and harassment starts off by saying that intolerance and bigotry are antithetical to the values of the university and are unacceptable.

Greg then read through every one of the rules as if they made sense and concluded, "Basically these students and others who could not be here today are made to feel very uncomfortable whenever they go to the dining hall."

The hapless administrator fell for their blarney. O'Keefe and friends had her boxed in Alinsky-style. Either she blew off a "marginalized" campus minority or she banned Lucky Charms.

After conferring with other equally feckless administrators, Knight-Cole informed the bogus Irish Heritage Society that Lucky Charms would be removed from the dining halls.

"We recorded the Lucky Charms encounter and posted it on YouTube to great effect," writes O'Keefe. "This was my first real excursion into video journalism, and instantly I knew what I had to do."

As Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw put it, "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."