- Reaction score
- 35
- Points
- 560
WSJ on the "Occupy Wall Street" movement:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203633104576623042789155716.html#U502989597974DJB
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203633104576623042789155716.html#U502989597974DJB
Capitalist Tool Meet Jesse LaGreca, Disney's Audio-Animatronic revolutionary.
By JAMES TARANTO
"I'm the only working-class person you're going to see on Sunday news, political news," declared Jesse LaGreca on "This Week With Christiane Amanpour" yesterday. "Maybe ever." Truly America does not have a rigid class structure, for this self-proclaimed working-class tribune "is a blogger for the liberal website Daily Kos," as Amanpour said in introducing him. "And he's been a fixture at the Wall Street protests."
If Norma Rae had a blog, she'd be this guy.
Whether or not LaGreca is working-class at all, his assertion that that gives him singular status on Sunday news shows is plainly bunk. He appeared along with a panel consisting of Donna Brazile, Matthew Dowd, Peggy Noonan and George Will. (In case you missed it, ABCNews.com has the video.) Noonan, with whom we work, tells us that she and two of the other three panelists had what would be considered working-class upbringings. (The exception is Will, son of an epistemologist.)
At one point, Noonan posed a question: "What is your plan? You going to spend the next six months blocking the Brooklyn Bridge? Or are you going to harness a movement into political action?"
LaGreca's response: "What I find amusing is that now people are looking to us to solve the political problems, and they should. But I'm not going to support one party or the other. I'm not going to tell you who to vote for. But I will encourage you to be a voter. I think we have succeeded tremendously in pushing the narrative."
And we all know what backbreaking work it is to push narratives! In the bad old days before trade unions and labor regulations, children would earn just pennies as they toiled for 14 or 16 hours a day, shoving heavy narratives through dirty, dangerous vignette-shops.
But seriously, consider that statement in light of this passage from a recent Noonan column:
The president seems preoccupied with "shaping a story for the American people." He says: "The irony is, the reason I was in this office is because I told a story to the American people." But, he confesses, "that narrative thread we just lost" in his first years.
Then he asks, "What's the particular requirement of the president that no one else can do?" He answers: "What the president can do, that nobody else can do, is tell a story to the American people" about where we are as a nation and should be.
Tell a story to the American people? That's your job? Not adopting good policies? Not defending the nation? Storytelling?
The interview reflects the weird inability of so many in political leadership now to acknowledge the role in life of . . . reality.
Noonan goes on to observe that "overthinking the obvious and focusing on the artifice and myth of politics is a problem for all political professionals, including Republicans. . . . But this is mostly a problem for the Democratic Party at the national level, and has been since the 1980s. It reflects a disdain for the American people--they need their little stories."
James Taranto on Jesse LaGreca, capitalist tool.
Behold Jesse LaGreca, who boasts of his working-class street cred while speaking the elitist jargon of the professor-cum-president's failing administration. And he does so on ABC, owned by the Walt Disney Co. He's an Audio-Animatronic revolutionary.
All that said, there is some truth to his statement that "we have succeeded tremendously in pushing the narrative." But the truth of it makes his posturing all the more ridiculous.
"Occupy Wall Street" began as a left-wing protest, something about as exceptional as a pigeon in New York. It didn't become a "narrative" until the narrators made it into one. Who are those narrators? They work for companies like Disney, CBS Corp., Comcast Corp. and General Electric Co. (co-owners of NBC), Time Warner, News Corp. (our employer), the New York Times Co., the Washington Post Co., the Tribune Co., Thomson Reuters Corp. and Bloomberg LP.
These corporations make their profits (or attempt to) by pushing narratives--by selling stories. Sometimes their narratives are as preposterous as Jesse LaGreca's. An example is yesterday's New York Times editorial that begins: "As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions."
The disdainful reference to "the chattering classes" is just priceless. To which class, pray tell, do New York Times editorialists belong? Though come to think of it, at least the anonymous hack who wrote that editorial got paid for his effort. That makes his claim to working-class status stronger than LaGreca's.
Krugman's Army
"It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America's direction," observes former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, who, as we noted Friday, has graciously accepted "the job of helping to translate" incoherent and hateful nonsense "into more fleshed-out proposals" for what one organizer has labeled "Krugman's Army."
Krugman observes that "there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009." That's certainly true, but what's weird is that Krugman seems proud. The Tea Party, for example, saw nothing like the bizarre scene at Occupy Atlanta, in which a Krugman platoon refuses to let Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights hero, speak.
It's something to watch. A gaunt, bearded middle-aged man conducts the meeting, with audience members repeating everything he says even though, unlike his counterparts in New York, he is speaking through a bull horn. When he announces that Lewis would like to address the assembly, some members are enthusiastic, but others object that it isn't on the agenda and it wouldn't be fair to let Lewis cut in line.
"I personally would like to acknowledge the invaluable work that Congressman John Lewis has dedicated his life to," says a younger gaunt, bearded man, as the audience repeats his every word in unison and people around him flutter their hands in approval. "However," the young man continues, "the point of this general assembly is to kick-start a democratic process in which no singular human being is inherently more valuable than any other human being." A confused Lewis nods sadly.
For want of a "consensus," the young gaunt man prevails. Lewis is not allowed to speak, and he droops away.
Watching the video, we got the sense that Krugman's Army could easily experience a shattering of its discipline. If these people were stripped of the order imposed by the society they are rebelling against--if they were on a deserted island rather than in a public park in an affluent city with a strong police presence--surely it would not take long to degenerate into "Lord of the Flies." Krugman would be Piggy.
London's Daily Mail has a photo of something else no one has ever seen at a Tea Party: a man in New York defecating on a police car. Krugman's Army marches on its stomach too. And if the general's own paper is to be believed, the Mail photo isn't an isolated incident: "Mike Keane, who owns O'Hara's Restaurant and Pub, said that the theft of soap and toilet paper had soared and that one protester had used the bathroom but had failed to properly use the toilet," the New York Times reports.
Remember when Krugman was making up lies about conservatives employing "eliminationist rhetoric"? He now commands an army that is engaged in a campaign of actual elimination.