Wall Street protests

Seattle-based New York Times reporter William Yardley made the front of the Monday Business section with a friendly interview with Kalle Lasn, the catalyst for the Occupy movement and the controversial editor of the Canadian “anticonsumerist” (how about left wing?) magazine Adbusters: “The Branding of the Occupy Movement.”

While crediting Lasn (pictured) for branding the Occupy Wall Street movement, Yardley went 19 paragraphs before mentioning Lasn’s inflammatory 2004 anti-Jewish attack on the Iraq War and neo-conservatives, “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?”

While USA Today editors shunted to page 5A a 15-paragraph article on how the Occupy movement has worn out its welcome in many major cities, today's front page featured a 47-paragraph puffy profile on how "'Occupiers' [are] not cut from the same cloth."

"Occupy's membership is a coat of many colors" that "includes the foreclosed, the uninsured and the homeless" as well as "college students with poor job prospects and college graduates with no way to pay off their student loans," noted USA Today's Rick Hampson.

Colin Powell on Sunday blamed the media as well as the Tea Party for the divisive political tone in Washington.

Not surprisingly, neither the class warfare stoked by President Obama and his Party nor the resulting Occupy Wall Street movement was mentioned during this seven minute interview with Christiane Amanpour on ABC's This Week (video follows with transcript and commentary):

“Bring the Family: Looking for Adventure with the Kids” reads the tag line over a weekly series of tips to Boston Globe readers suggesting what to do with them on weekends. In Saturday’s “g” section, the headline announced the “what,” a bizarre recommendation to expose them to a volatile, unsanitary and politically heated situation: “Occupying Boston with the kids.” The who: “Globe reporter Mark Shanahan and his daughter, Julia.”

Shanahan, who “covers the comings and goings of Boston’s celebrity class in the newspaper’s daily ‘Names’ column,” decided “it was time to visit Dewey Square so my 11-year-old daughter could see for herself what Occupy Boston is all about, to hear what the protesters are saying about ‘corporate greed’ and ‘income disparity,’ and maybe to get a few ideas for our next camping trip to Baxter State Park.”

You can now add the filming of gay pornography to the growing list of reprehensible things happening at Occupy encampments around the country.

The New York Observer reported Tuesday:

As Occupy-loving media continue to express outrage over protesters getting pepper-sprayed by campus police officers at the University of California at Davis last week, a surprising admission by one of the attendees was uncovered in an interview Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman did Monday.

One of the pepper-sprayed students told Goodman, "We had encircled them [campus police], and they were trying to leave, and they were trying to clear a path. And so, we sat down, linked arms, and said that if they wanted to clear the path, they would have to go through us" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell accurately observed Tuesday, America's media have pounced on the University of California at Davis incident where Occupy protesters were pepper-sprayed by campus police.

Doing his part Wednesday was liberal radio host Ed Schultz who on his Thanksgiving Eve program actually equated this incident to the Rodney King beating (video follows with transcript and commentary):

A much-trumpeted "innovation" from Occupy footstompers is the so-called "human mic" whereby people in a crowd parrot the words of a designated non-leader to amplify his or her message.

Examples of this creepy phenomenon abound, including this one helpfully provided by Occupy cultist Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC show last night (video clip after page break) --

At the Associated Press this afternoon, reporter Ben Nuckols opened his report on the completion of Occupy Wall Street's "Occupy the HIghway" march thusly: "Drenched, blistered and weary, a few dozen Occupy Wall Street protesters arrived Tuesday in the nation's capital after a two-week, 240-mile march from Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan."

Anyone reading Nuckols's opening statement would believe that at least 24 marchers completed the entire journey (I'd say 36, but the dictionary defines a "few" as "not many but more than one"). Actually, that's not the case, as readers who somehow endure the intervening insipidness learn when they get to the report's seventh and eighth paragraphs:

Update (6:00 p.m. Eastern): Charges will not be filed in this incident, NBCWashington.com is reporting, noting that the U.S. Attorney's office is not commenting on the matter.

The Associated Press is reporting this afternoon that a man at the Occupy D.C. camp was arrested on Monday evening and charged with sexual assault and theft. The squatters' camp in McPherson Square is national park land, so the man is in federal custody. At this point, however, the U.S. Park Police have not released the suspect's name.

"Occupy DC members say the accuser was living in McPherson Square," the AP reported. It remains to be seen what coverage if any the networks will devote to this arrest and/or to the National Park Service's failure to release the name of the suspect.

GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has been roundly excoriated in the media for the "toxic" suggestion that Occupy Wall Street protesters need to stop freeloading, take a bath, and get a job. Yet in a sympathetic Style section photo essay today entitled "The March: Occupy protesters trek 231 miles from New York to the White House," Washington Post editors highlighted as the march's poster boy one "Dylan Bozlee of Hilo, Hawaii."

Bozlee is a self-described anarchist and University of Hawaii dropout who, the Post notes, "said he'd rather travel across American than get a job." "Do I want to work? Only if I wanted a home, wife, kids and a dog. If not, I think you're ruining your life," Bozlee told the Post.

Much like his MSNBC colleague Mika Brzezinski, Martin Bashir was not pleased with Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich suggesting that Occupy Wall Street protesters should get a job right after they take a bath.

With bile almost dripping from his lips, Bashir raged Monday, "If anyone's dirty, it's Newt Gingrich, a man whose personal morality has been drawn from the sewer" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Give John Nolte a gold star. In a Friday post at BigJournalism.com entitled "Panicked AP Attempts to Memory-Hole Democrats’ #Occupy Endorsements," Nolte latched onto the beginnings of the establishment press's desperate attempt to distance President Obama and the Democratic Party from the rapidly devolving Occupy movement.

The disingenously headlined item Nolte caught, apparently from an earlier report ("Democrats see minefield in Occupy protests") appeared via Beth Fouhy on Thursday at the Associated Press, which yours truly has often taken to naming the Administration's Press. Later, as seen here, a revised version came in with this howler of a headline: "Wary Democrats keep distance from Occupy protests," while the calculated attempt to create separation in the article's text got even worse. First, excerpts from Nolte's post (bolds are mine; links were in original):

The three network morning shows, which have been mostly ignoring crimes at the Occupy Wall Street protests, hyped the "ugly" and "disturbing" "outrage" of students at the University of California, Davis campus being sprayed with pepper. Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos interviewed the school's chancellor and repeatedly berated her about resigning.

On NBC's Today, Ann Curry warned, "And also this morning, some disturbing video. Take a look at this, two police officers have been placed on administrative leave for using pepper spray on seated protesters at an Occupy demonstration on the campus of a California university." The Today show, as well as GMA made sure to push the protest as "peaceful," but only GMA pointed out that the students had encircled the police.

In a panel discussion on today's Now with Alex Wagner about what "moral authority," if any, that the Occupy Wall Street movement has, MSNBC contributor Melissa Harris-Perry sought to defuse fellow panelist Meghan McCain's complaint that Occupy Wall Street has hurt the very folks it claims to represent by killing jobs at businesses nearby Zuccotti Park.

"If a Tea Party rally had shut down a business that had to let go of 21 workers, there would probably be a different reaction from a lot of people in the media," McCain observed.

Harris-Perry initially dismissed McCain's comment by noting the "deeply polarized media system," where conservatives and liberals gravitate to different news sources based on ideology. But a few minutes later the Tulane professor groused that we as a society don't view budget-related layoffs of public sector workers through a moral prism (emphases mine):

GOP presidential candidate New Gingrich's complaint about free-loading Occupy Wall Street protesters needing to "get a job" and "take a bath" before doing so was denounced this morning by MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts as "toxic language."

"I know he's trying, that is Newt Gingrich, trying to appeal to conservatives, but could this kind of toxic language end up ultimately backfiring?" Roberts asked guest David Goodfriend, a Democratic strategist [video posted after page break]

Shades of "Special Comment"!  In a rant worthy of Keith Olbermann at the height of his Miss Precious Perfect histrionics, Mika Brezinski began today's Morning Joe by tearing into Newt Gingrich for his recent suggestion that Occupy protestors should "get a job, right after you take a bath."

It wasn't merely Mika's words: "arrogant, disgusting, sickened."  So strongly ran Brzezinski's rage that more than once her voice quavered and she seemed on some sort of emotional brink.  Video after the jump.

You can't make this up: The ever-careful Essential Global News Network known as the Associated Press actually believed that a guy who has been on a DC sports show for several football seasons impersonating Christopher Walken was actually Christopher Walken.

After excerpting several paragraphs from AP's unbylined (naturally) mea culpa (saved here at host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes), I'll explain why this snafu really isn't particularly surprising:

The next time you hear liberals mourning that today's conservative movement has no William F. Buckleyesque figure to banish the right-wing wackos to the fever swamps, just remember what passes for left-wing political thought at the Daily Kos. Last year, the Kosmonaut known as "Troubadour" predicted things were going to go very badly after the midterm elections: "Win or lose this election season, Republicans appear to be headed on a one-way path to organized political violence."

This has apparently been proven by police suppression of the Occupy Wall Street protests, and next the liberals should watch out for the "the internet blacklist bill" and the "the internet kill switch" if Republicans take power in 2013. Full-blown GOP dictatorship is around the corner:

Yearning to join the wealthiest one percent of Americans? You may already have -- and not even know it.

Hard to believe such a thing is possible but MSNBC morning anchor Thomas Roberts ran a segment Wednesday about that one percent so reviled by Occupy squatters co-opting public property for their private use around the nation. (video clip after page break)

Feminist author Naomi Wolf insisted on today's Now with Alex Wagner that New Yorkers were not really all that inconvenienced by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

"Yesterday, commuters and small business owners couldn't get to work the Occupiers were blocking subway entrances, you [also] had the Brooklyn Bridge" pedestrian walkway crammed with Occupiers, conservative columnist S.E. Cupp complained in a panel segment on Occupy Wall Street's political objectives, if any.

"I didn't see any of that. There's no reporting about that, I follow the reporting very carefully," Wolf retorted (see video below page break).

Media silence greeted video of an Occupy Wall Street protester vowing to burn New York City to the ground and toss Molotov cocktails into a Macy's department store, yet there was "non-stop media coverage" of the alleged, but never proven, use of the N-word at one Tea Party rally, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted last night on Fox News Channel's Hannity.

"Look at the violence you're starting to see, the rapes, the assaults... I'm starting to hold the national news media responsible for this as well" as well as New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the Media Research Center founder added [video follows page break]:

As the lone conservative host on the nation's most liberal news network, Joe Scarborough is used to taking heat from folks on both sides of the political aisle.

Despite NewsBusters at times being one of his program's critics, the host of MSNBC's Morning Joe spent over an hour with us on the phone Thursday discussing his show, how the media have been covering recent events like the Republican presidential race, and finishing by offering an optimistic vision of America's future that is sorely needed at this dark time in our history (video follows with transcript):

This one's utterly predictable, but still needs to be noted.

As Edwin Mora at CNS News reported on Wednesday, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, after a Congressional Progressive Caucus-sponsored event at the Capitol, “when asked to comment ... about the deaths and crimes that have occurred around Occupy protests being held across the country, … said 'that’s life and it happens.'" What's also happened, or actually not happened, is that the Associated Press and the New York Times have failed to note what Waters said, as shown in the following search results on her first name at AP and on her full name (not in quotes) at the Times:

Substitute ABC anchor David Muir opened Thursday’s World News by hyping “masses of people taking to the streets here in New York City,” before reporter Dan Harris referenced “this massive protest march tonight” and “this big protest.”

Yet over on the CBS Evening News, Jim Axelrod noted how though “organizers promised tens of thousands demonstrators disrupting business as usual here in New York,” they didn’t show up: “Frankly, we’ve seen a fraction of that number -- closer to a thousand.”