Free advice for Andrew Breitbart: Stop talking about James O'Keefe, and by extension, your busted ACORN video hoax from last year. It inevitably just leads to more muddled mistakes.

Yet, sadly, Breitbart can't help himself. So now, in the wake of O'Keefe latest “conservative journalism” embarrassment, and in the wake of O'Keefe's comically skewed explanation for the debacle, Breitbart decided to vouch for his video protégé's veracity. (Big mistake!)

From Yahoo's Michael Calderone [emphasis added]:

Breitbart, who wrote Friday that the activist “owes his supporters an explanation,” told The Upshot today that he's only had a “cursory glance” at O'Keefe's explanation but expects it to be truthful. "James O'Keefe has never lied to me," Breitbart said.

Oh brother.

Is Breitbart playing some sort of semantics game in a desperate effort to prop up O'Keefe's bruised reputation? Because, as became painfully obvious last winter, O'Keefe clearly misled Breitbart (and everyone else) about a central piece of the ACORN gotcha; a piece that ended up unraveling online, and which called into question the whole ACORN caper -- the pimp!

But the pimp angle was a hoax. O'Keefe never wore that cartoonish outfit inside ACORN offices and he never “posed” as a pimp either. Pressed for weeks to explain the gaping hole in the ACORN story, and asked to explain why he pushed a patently false tale in the press, Breitbart finally conceded the pimp angle was bogus. But that it wasn't his fault (really!) because O'Keefe was the one who dressed up as a pimp in the video intro and it was O'Keefe whose deceptively edited videos misled Breitbart. (i.e. Breitbart didn't even know what was on the ACORN tapes.)

According to Breitbart's somewhat tortured explanation, he was essentially duped by O'Keefe into thinking the videographer strolled into ACORN offices last year dressed as a Halloween pimp. And when the press started reporting falsely --and regularly-- that O'Keefe was a pimp inside ACORN offices, did O'Keefe (or Breitbart) step forward to clear up the confusion? And when the pimp hoax began to unravel last winter, did O'Keefe (or Breitbart) quickly concede the facts?

They did not. Instead, they tried to cling to their pimp fantasy.

Now, fast-forward to the latest embarrassment and there's Breitbart vouching for his colleague's veracity: “James O'Keefe has never lied to me.”

Except for, y'know, that little story about an ACORN pimp.