In the wonderland that is the Daily Kos, blogger Mark Sumner theorized that the Occupy Wall Street folks were never going to be favored by the media. That's because the Tea Party was the media. They are one and the same.
Sumner demanded that the lefty protesters arrive at no demands."Don't be what they want you to be. Don't be what I want you to be. Just be confounding, and uplifting, and maddening, and puzzling, and amazing, just keep scaring the ever lovin' crap out of them."
Here's how the foolishness unraveled:
You may wonder why the tea party was so readily picked up by the media, but it's not a secret. The tea party was the media. Is the media. It was created as a media stunt, nurtured as a publicity event for a network and its pundits, and shaped to be a reliable trumpet that only Rupert can blow. Not only did the meetings come at predictable intervals (same tea time, same tea channel), with announced agendas, it just so happened that there were dozens of pundits conveniently available on day one, ready to provide commentary and insight. Better still, most of these tea party spokesmen or grassroots leaders were familiar faces who had been on air before, and who were being put forward by the same conservative organizations who line up guests every week for ABC through NPR. They wore camera-friendly clothing, knew when to laugh with the host, and could recite their positions like they'd been doing it for years. Because they had.
Those who wanted to cover the tea party only had to follow the instructions. It was just as easy and mindless as zapping some microwave popcorn, except this popcorn came with a phone bank that would hector you if you failed to follow the steps to the letter. It was much, much easier for most media outlets to cover the nonpartisan and populist tea party than to ignore them. The tea party is not a political movement, it's a reality show with huge corporate sponsorship.
On the other hand, Occupy Wall Street is … what are you, anyway? You're there all the time, you don't have a checklist of pre-digested talking points, and you don't have recognizable leadership or A-list pundits to shape your message. You're a mess, that's what you are. Everywhere and every when, without mass-printed signs and canned literature. You're a big round blob of democracy that just won't fit neatly into the nice cube they have ready for you.
