It seems New York Times columnist Paul Krugman thinks the Occupy Wall Street protesters have been better behaved than Tea Party attendees.
Read the following paragraph from Monday's "Panic of the Plutocrats" and you be the judge:
Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.
Maybe Krugman has missed images like these:
As most folks are aware, there are worse pictures as Britain's Daily Mail reported Saturday including a protester defecating on a police car.
I challenge Krugman or anyone else in the media to produce pictures of Tea Partiers behaving this way.
Also of note, the Christian Science Monitor reported in April 2010:
Do tea party activists get preferential treatment from law enforcement officials? They have been able to carry guns to anti-Obama rallies, critics note, suggesting that there is a double standard.
Parade permitting rules vary widely from town to town and city to city, with the Supreme Court giving law enforcement broad authority to uphold public safety.
To be sure, permitting rules and police preparedness are often developed based on past behavior at various kinds of protests. Many go back to the 1960s and 1970s when violent rallies erupted over the Vietnam War. Such protests sprung up again during the presidency of George W. Bush, when protesters clashed with police in New York City and elsewhere during large-scale demonstrations against the Middle East wars. With tea party rallies so far proving more orderly, police have given them more latitude.
So, because Tea Party events up to that point had been orderly, police gave attendees more leeway.
A year and a half after this article was written, the Left have proven once again to be a disorderly, law-violating mob when it protests, but not according to Krugman.
