Wall Street protests

The New York Times continues to treat toublemakers at Occupy Wall Street as a fringe minority, but the Tea Party was "responsible for the behavior of people" at their rallies.

Sunday’s Metro section led with an above-the-fold look at the state of Occupy Wall Street as winter approaches from reporters Cara Buckley and Colin Moynihan, “A Protest Reaches a Crossroads.” They briefly noted the violence and criminal behavior at Zuccotti Park while providing plenty of room for excuse-making on the part of OWS, something reporter Kate Zernike most assuredly did not do for the Tea Party in her 2010 book on the movement, “Boiling Mad." Instead, Zernike suggested the entire movement should hold itself responsible for unsubstantiated allegations of racial slurs at a rally.

Multimillionaire Occupy Wall Street supporter Michael Moore told protesters in San Francisco last month that the movement has its roots in Army Private Bradley Manning passing top secret classified information to Wikileaks.

So enthusiastic was the crowd on hand that they voted to rename the area they were occupying Bradley Manning Plaza (video follows with transcript and commentary):

ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, on Sunday’s This Week, hit House Speaker John Boehner repeatedly from the left to raise taxes, a hostile, political agenda-driven approach she failed to apply a month earlier to the House’s top Democrat, Nancy Pelosi.

Amanpour demanded of Boehner: “Do you not feel that by opposing” a tax hike on millionaires to pay for Obama’s jobs bill “you’re basically out of step with the American people on this issue?” She followed by yearning: “Do you agree at all that there should be any kind of tax increases?” (video compilation below)

The European Union might completely fall apart any day now as the countries in that region implode under their massive debt.

Despite this, CNN's Fareed Zakaria offered another America-hating love letter to the struggling continent Sunday actually claiming, "The American dream seems to be thriving in Europe not at home" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

According to an unbylined Associated Press report out of Atlanta tonight, when police move in to arrest members of a crowd which won't move when ordered to move, they "swarm." Nice insect comparison, eh? And in case readers didn't get the negative connotation the first time, the AP report used the word again in its final paragraph.

Here are several paragraphs from the report, including an unchallenged reference to Martin Luther King's "Poor People's Campaign" by the "Rev." Jesse Jackson (bolds are mine):

As he accumulates his "Occupy Rap Sheet" over at BigJournalism.com, John Nolte has made some excellent points about the nature of the press's coverage which should not be missed. His incident count is up to 151. It will certainly grow based on more recent events which haven't yet made it to his compilation (this is just a sample): A $10 million arson arrest in Fort Collins, Colorado (really; HT The Other McCain); pushing a 78 year-old woman down a flight of stairs (she required a hospital visit); and a lack of basic safety so pervasive at Zuccotti park, the headquarters of the "movement, that "protesters put up (a) women-only tent to prevent sexual assaults."

Nolte's count is clearly an understatement of all that is actually happening. He also notes that the nature of the press's coverage serves to understate the disorder- and violence-based inclinations of the Occupiers (internal link is in original; bolds are mine):

Yesterday Times Watch asked how prominently the New York Times would play the undeniable violence, property damage, and arrests that took place during the Occupy Oakland protests on Wednesday night. The answer: On the front of the National section, page A15.  Reporter Maria Wollan got in some of the destructive details from the protests, but still tried to emphasize the “peaceful march” that proceeded the violent part and to separate the ordinary Occupy Oakland protesters from the "fringe group" responsible for violence.

In “Oakland Police Clash With Fringe Protesters" (itself a forgiving headline), reporter Maria Wollan treated the left-wing and anarchist rioters much more respectfully than she did a clever, peaceful conservative protest against affirmative action on the left-wing University of California at Berkeley, in a hostile September 27 article.

Did MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell ignore President Obama's previous calls for civility? The late-night host, in a five-minute Thursday night tirade, called for violence by specifically telling Occupy D.C. protesters to bring a "firestorm" to the National Restaurant Association (NRA) headquarters nearby, as well as to the NRA's corporate sponsors which include Starbucks and 7-11.

O'Donnell insisted that the organization release presidential candidate Herman Cain's accuser from her confidentiality agreement and let her bring the allegations against Cain to the public. If by Friday they still refused to do so, "then a firestorm should be visited upon the 1200 17th Street Northwest and the members of the National Restaurant Association," ranted O'Donnell. [Video available shortly. Click here for audio.]

Schlockumentary filmmaker Michael Moore said Thursday that the violence occurring at various Occupy events including Oakland is likely being incited by Department of Homeland Security officials or cops.

Such was disgracefully uttered on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show (videos follow with transcript, vulgarity warning in Oakland riot footage):

NPR's Philip Reeves slanted towards the Occupy Wall Street on Wednesday's All Things Considered as he played up the "huge outcry" over St. Paul Cathedral in London's dispute with the left-leaning movement, which has an encampment outside its doors. Reeves spotlighted a local official who "called St. Paul's a 'national laughing stock,'" and omitted sound bites from the opponents of the movement.

Host Guy Raz noted in his introduction to the correspondent's report how St. Paul's was a "national treasure" associated with Churchill's funeral and the wedding of Charles and Diana, and continued that it was now "the backdrop for another kind of drama: a protest camp modeled on the Occupy Wall Street movement. NPR's Philip Reeves says it's causing upheaval in the heart of British society."

The New York Times’s coverage of the left-anarchist Occupy movement has been very favorable, pushing the group’s vague aims of “fighting economic inequality” while downplaying the anti-Semitism, violence, vandalism, and general squalor of the leftist campouts. Now that undeniable violence has broken out at an Occupy Oakland protest that blocked the city port and halted commerce, how will the Times respond?

A report on Occupy Oakland by Maria Wollan in Thursday’s paper, “Oakland’s Port Shuts Down as Protesters March on Waterfront,” only hinted at the simmering violence.

NBC anchor Brian Williams, in the argot of the moment, certainly belongs to The One Percent. He lives in the glass-encased Bloomberg Tower in mid-town Manhattan, 34 stories above the tony restaurant Le Cirque at 58th Street and Lexington Avenue. For years he has lived up in the luxury apartment heavens with Beyonce and GE chieftains past and present (both Jack Welch and Jeffrey Immelt). He’s earned it.

Yet night after night on the news, Williams and the other one percent multi-millionaire anchors dutifully chronicle every new publicity line from the people who "occupy" parks (often public parks) to claim to represent the "99 percent." It’s liberal guilt in motion. The anchors lovingly cite old Sixties leftist slogans like "The whole world is watching," which is nonsense if you look at their ratings but they sure do wish the whole world would watch. To the liberal media, these protests are a story of populist heroes bravely standing against what Teddy Roosevelt called "the malefactors of great wealth."

In an interview with Daily Show host Jon Stewart on the premiere of NBC's latest news magazine Rock Center on Monday, host Brian Williams fretted over Stewart's mocking of the Occupy Wall Street protests: "A lot of people were surprised....You were tough on them. You've been tough on them. You've been exacting and taking them to task for all the mayhem, for the drum circles."

Stewart joked: "We poke gentle fun at the rhythm percussion. That's all we do." Williams countered: "You don't think your stance on them has been tougher than most people would expect?" Stewart reassured him: "No. I don't think it's been – it's been tougher. How can it be? I have – I have great empathy....They want jobs. They want dignity."

CNN used an "In Depth" segment on Tuesday to emphasize the diversity among protesters at Occupy Seattle, featuring a rapper, a group of "Raging Grannies," drummers and more. The report during the 12 p.m. hour was one of multiple segments that ran on Tuesday afternoon giving viewers a close-up look at the Wall Street protests.

The sympathetic look at the protesters can be contrasted with CNN's initial coverage of the Tea Parties in 2009, when reporter Susan Roesgen slammed the Chicago Tea Party as "anti-government" and "anti-CNN" and anchor Anderson Cooper smeared the protesters with an obscene label.  [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

Former New York Times economics reporter turned editorial board member Eduardo Porter is the latest Times staffer to declare that the leftists of Occupy Wall Street have it figured out: “Wall Street Protesters Hit the Bull’s-Eye.” Porter wrote: "Their complaint that the privileged few in the top 1 percent are getting a disproportionate share of the nation's prosperity, however, is spot on."

Although he sort of admitted last Thursday that he's part of America's richest one percent, schlockumentary filmmaker Michael Moore clearly wants to hide this inconvenient truth whenever possible.

This was perfectly illustrated Monday when he refused to answer questions about his wealth at an Occupy Portland rally (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Liberal Columbia University professor Dorian Warren compared the Occupy Wall Street protests to the NBA lockout on CNN Monday, saying that the players are using their "voice" and "bargaining power" to air their grievances with the owners like the protesters are doing with the banks.

"Record profits last year in the NBA, yet the owners are saying they don't have enough money to share with the players," Warren said of the lockout. "And so, the players are, unlike most American workers, staying strong in their union to say, no, we actually have a voice here and we have bargaining power and we're not going to let you get away with that." [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

CBS's Early Show on Monday found yet another excuse to report on Occupy Wall Street, spotlighting the diehard protesters who stayed in Zuccotti Park during a winter storm. While correspondent Debbye Turner Bell noted the $3.4 million spent on police overtime in New York City and the complaints from businesses near the demonstrators' campsite, she didn't play one sound bite from the opposition.

Turner Bell first highlighted the "freezing temperatures and record-breaking October snow" over the past weekend in the Northeast and added, "And that does raise the question of how committed are these Occupy Wall Street protesters? But there's another question: can local city governments afford to pay the price tag that goes along with expressing this basic American right?"

CNN's Don Lemon hosted radical leftist and former Communist Party member Angela Davis on Sunday night's Newsroom for what he called a "blast from the past." Davis hit President Obama from the left and praised the Wall Street protests as a continuation of the movement that swept "a black president who identified with a black radical tradition" into office.

CNN labeled Davis as a "political activist" but did not report that she was a prominent Communist Party member and twice its vice presidential candidate in the 1980s. As a professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz, she was urged by the state's then-Governor Ronald Reagan not to be allowed to teach at the state's universities because of her Communist Party membership. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

While the media champion the Occupy Wall Street movement as if it's the American version of the Arab Spring, they're predictably missing a crucial distinction.

As the Motley Fool reported Friday, those sleeping in tents and skipping showers in cities around the country are actually part of the world's richest one percent:

Perhaps you've seen it, the video of former Marine Corps sergeant Shamar Thomas accusing New York City police of brutality against Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Since the footage was posted Oct. 16 on YouTube, left-wing media have embraced Thomas as their one of their own, showering him with attention while avoiding potentially awkward questions about his background, such as Thomas's claim that his mother fought in Iraq and his father was deployed to Afghanistan. (video and audio clips after page break)

The hyperventilation of media members concerning income inequality in America reaches a new high with each passing day.

Case in point, on Inside Washington Friday, PBS's Mark Shields, with a straight face no less, said this disparity is a "national security issue" (video follows with transcript and commentary):