'Dumb Stunt' Gains As Term For What O'Keefe Did At Landrieu's Office

The judicial system will ultimately decide how serious it all was, of course. But the meme of the day today about the arrest of ACORN nemesis Jame O'Keefe and three others for allegedly trying to interfere with the phones at a New Orleans office of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu seems to be that it was all a prank aimed at embarrassing the senator and her staff -- not an attempt to actually mess with the phones.

NBC News' Pete Williams is getting some buzz for his report that "a law enforcement official says the four men arrested ... were not trying to intercept or wiretap the calls."

Instead, the official tells Williams:

O'Keefe and the others had heard reports that people in Louisiana hadn't been able to get their calls to Landrieu's office answered recently during the health care debate in the Senate. So, Williams writes, they may have wanted to see "how the local staffers would react if the phones went out. Would the staff just laugh it off, or would they express great concern that local folks couldn't get through?"

The opinion page of the local Times-Picayune this morning picks up on the "stunt" thread.

"For everyone out there who sees echoes of Watergate in four conservative activists' attempt to tamper with Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu's New Orleans office phones, it's time to take a deep breath," writes columnist Stephanie Grace. "Unless we learn otherwise, this could really be just a dumb criminal story mashed up with a dumb political stunt story -- one that's being propelled by a healthy amount of liberal Schadenfreude."

O'Keefe himself, by the way, has tweeted that the Williams report means a "Govt official concedes no attempt to wiretap."

O'Keefe, as we've said before, is famous (or "infamous", depending on your politics) for the undercover videos he produced last year that showed employees of the community organizing group ACORN agreeing, among other things, to help a "pimp" and "prostitute" find a way to buy a house.