NY Times Sends Arts Critic to "Cover" Wall Street Occupation

The Grey Lady has stuck her long nose up in the air and given a mighty sniff, finally deigning to publish a story on the ongoing "OccupyWallStreet" demonstrations in its dead tree edition.  After more than a hundred people were arrested on suspicion of being pedestrians Saturday, the Times take is that the whole mass protest is nothing but an amateur hour performance by airheads.

Readers were outraged at the tone of the article, which carried the subhead: "Demonstrators on Wall Street this week seemed to lack hard knowledge about the system they were fighting."  The reporter, one Ginia Bellafante, chose to make the lead paragraph all about a topless dancer who's been waiting all her life to cavort on Broadway.  Further down, she writes:

The group’s lack of cohesion and its apparent wish to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgably is unsettling in the face of the challenges so many of its generation face — finding work, repaying student loans, figuring out ways to finish college when money has run out. But what were the chances that its members were going to receive the attention they so richly deserve carrying signs like “Even if the World Were to End Tomorrow I’d Still Plant a Tree Today”?

Reader reactions were universally scathing.  Barbara of Mexico/New Mexico writes: "Considering this is taking place in the heart of the financial district, and that other major media is covering it well & seriously ( Al Jazeera, for one, is doing an excellent job), it is quite sad and very revealing the New York 'paper of record" chooses to treat this movement with such superficiality".

The tone of the piece is easier to understand in light of the fact that Bellafante is not a political reporter or even a metro beat reporter.  She is a Times arts section critic, who in the past has written about HBO miniseries and other TV fare.  She now does something called the Big City column. That's right: The Times couldn't be bothered to send a political or news reporter to cover the populist dissent.  They sent somebody to write it up as an entertainment piece, a whimsical look at the passing parade of weirdness in the Big Apple. 

Bellafante took the most heat recently for her negative review of the HBO series "Game of Thrones" -- spawning a revolt in the blogosphere from fantasy fans, accusing her of (surprise!) literary snobbery.  Here is how she explains her philosophy: "Writing criticism is completely personal and often impressionistic. I write from a perspective that is my own, not one that seeks to represent a big tent of varying opinion."

Assigning Bellafante to cover Manhattan's version of the Arab Spring speaks volumes about the Times editors, and their choice to treat it as some sort of  amusement for the elites. They can spend millions subsidizing safely-distanced reports by Tommy Freedom and Nicky Kristof on the Egyptian revolution, and  government crackdowns in Syria and Bahrain --  but I guess they couldn't come up with cab fare for them to ride the few blocks from Times Square to Zuccotti Park to watch our own indignados getting pepper-sprayed.  For real coverage, check out the links in my previous posts, or just troll the Internets. Here, for example, is some real reporting from New York 1, the local 24 hour news channel. The truth is out there, in plain sight and out of the control of the editorial boards of the American corporate media.



Just Another Day of Street Theater or Maybe a Lost Episode of "Law & Order"

 

The Dope on the Primary Challenge

The people have spoken. The winner and undisputed champion on the White House's new citizen petition webpage is the legalization of marijuana.  And not only are the activist stoners demanding their weed, they're insisting on being told the rationale for the O Administration's disdain for it, and them.  In other words, give us the science, dudes!  Where do you get off throwing people in jail for this?   We don't buy into your DEA propaganda!

In order for any petition to merit a glance from a White House minion, it must have garnered at least 5,000 signatures in 30 days. The plea for pot got 20,000 signatures in less than two. So, whoever said pot users are nothing but apolitical, apathetic slackers who retreat into their own hazy worlds has smoke coming out of an orifice where the sun don't shine.

Anyway. Speaking of signatures --  a consortium of people who may or may not have also signed the pot petition are looking for not one -- but six primary challengers to President Obama!  Nothing like covering more than all the bases just to be on the safe side. The effort is being led by Dr. Cornel "Obama is Wall Street's Black Mascot" West and Ralph Nader, who is not running, just asking.

The slate of dream candidates, who would theoretically run against Obama as a bloc, would represent areas where the president has broken a campaign promise, or veered to the corporate, right-wing dark side.  (why only six?)  They would include labor leaders, academicians, members of the NGO community, experts in poverty, consumer protection, human rights and health care. (Since Obama also broke his campaign promise to stop the useless War on Drugs, I hope they are including the person who started the Legalize Pot petition too).

 "We need to put strong democratic pressure on President Obama in the name of poor and working people” said West. “His administration has tilted too much toward Wall Street, we need policies that empower Main Street.”

The letter, according to the website Common Dreams, "points to numerous decisions that have drawn criticism from Obama’s own Democratic Party, including his decision to bail out Wall Street’s most profitable firms while failing to push for effective prosecution of the criminal behavior that triggered the recession, escalating the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan while simultaneously engaging in a unilateral war in Libya, his decision to extend the Bush era tax cuts, and his acquiescence to Republican extortion during the recent debt ceiling negotiations."

The letter and its signatories can be found here. The identities of the actual recipients are being withheld to protect their privacy.  I wonder if they include anybody from the Sunlight Foundation or other groups advocating for transparency? (another Obama Fail).  I guess we'll never know.

But back to the White House "We the People" petition drive.  I just checked, and the pot petition is now up to 26,819! (and counting).  Here are some other hot button issues, along with recent vote counts, important to the peeps:

* Ban non-therapeutic routine infant circumcision (165).

* Immediately disclose the government's knowledge of and communication with extraterrestrial beings (972).

* Support a ban on horse slaughter (292).

* Try Casey Anthony in federal court for lying to FBI investigators (1,719).

* Repeal the Patriot Act (4,042).

* Stop the Patriot Act (4.334).

* Ban Redundant Petitions (1). 

* Provide medical marijuana to angry space aliens posing as Republicans. (0). 






Yellow Dogs

By Jay -- Ottawa

“Yellow Dog Democrat” defined: an unflinching party loyalist who votes for the Democratic ticket even when the party elevates as its candidate a scoundrel, a dead man or, for that matter, a mangy four-legged cur.  The term goes back to the nineteenth century.  The term is applicable today in the twenty-first century.  I speak of Democrats who will not budge, who will not think out of the box, no matter what.

The term is key to help me understand why many an otherwise sensible commenter, in this blog and elsewhere, continues to stick with Obama, despite his consistent betrayal of the best principles that stand for – or used to stand for -- the Democratic Party.  Yellow Dog Democrats are rarely enthusiastic about Obama.  How could they be in light of his abject failures and acknowledged willingness to turn his back on truth itself?   And yet they back him. 

Humanist ideals like compassion, or philosophical principles like the lesser of two evils argument, are usually advanced in defense of the sure thing Yellow Dog vote for Obama in 2012; but I’m not convinced about their being motivated by high principle.  Fear of Republican candidates and justices is often mentioned.  I think it’s just life-long habit, inertia, timidity and, most importantly, a failure to see the equal sign between the labels “Democrat” and “Republican.”  Note how the Yellow Dog Democrats regularly criticize just about everything and everybody affiliated with the Republican Party.  They have sidebars in their blogs mocking Republican gaffes and misdeeds.  They are trying to erase that equal sign.  Republicans bad, Democrats not so bad.  See the difference?  Is the Democratic Party of Obama, Pelosi and Reid much better?  Couldn’t right wingers post entertaining sidebars about Democratic hypocrisy?  Well, maybe the Democrats are a wee bit better.  But statistically significant, as they say?  I don’t think so.  At times the Democratic leadership under Obama has been out in front of the Republicans in pleasing the elites.  If Republicans gave away honorary degrees, Obama would gotten one for each of the past three years he's been in office. 

Since Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party has been in the ring against the Republican Party like a boxer who intends to throw the fight.  Republicans and Democrats take big money from the same corporate and financial giants.  Neither side touches the Pentagon’s bloated budgets for endless, pointless wars.  The Patriot Act, tax breaks for the rich: extended.  The aggressive Republicans and the spineless Democrats have been moving shoulder to shoulder down the same road to the same goal: national collapse.  If principle had motivated Obama and the Democrats since January 2009, the nation and the world would be in much better shape today.  The Democrats got a mandate in 2009, which they didn’t want.  They shadow boxed with the other party.  The Republican party should be on the ropes today.  Instead, the world is on the ropes.  The elites at ringside smile and puff their cigars. 

Yellow Dog Democrats write, but they don’t fight.  Yellow Dog Democrats take the crumbs and lick the hands of those who abuse them.  Where were the Yellow Dog Democrats in 2000 when the election was stolen, votes not counted, the losing candidate appointed to office by five Justices with a decision that didn’t parse?  Yellow Dog Democrats hardly even barked.  They should have been in the streets.  Where are the Yellow Dog Democrats today when the young, the old and the Middle Class are being thrown under the bus?  They bark, but they don’t bite.

Yellow Dog Democrats brag about the accomplishments of FDR and the New Deal.  But the Democratic Party of  FDR is extinct.  It is a light extinguished, fading into myth.  In fact, the Democratic Party of today, lead by Trojan Horse Obama, works diligently to overturn the New Deal, as well as to gut the Great Society programs of President Johnson. 

All three branches of government are bought.  Both major parties are bought.  These once great institutions and once great parties dance to the tune of the elites.  Both parties ignore the will of the people; just ask the pollsters.  And still, Yellow Dog Democrats, the party loyalists no matter what, swear allegiance to the likely party ticket of November 2012.  Shifting support to primary challenges or Third Parties, like the New Progressive Alliance, is labeled naïve, impractical, risky.  The Yellow Dog Democrats are right: Obama will become the Default President in 2012.  The best of the Empire will disappear; the worst of the Empire will endure -- and continue to be funded.

America is trapped in a two-party system subverting democracy.  And Yellow Dog Democrats are helping to seal the trap.

(Ed. note: For more fun and colorful facts about Yellow Dogs, Yellow Dawgs, Rabid Yellow Dawgs, Blue Dogs, check out this site: http://www.yellowdogdemocrat.com/variations.htm )

Occupy Wall Street Ending First Week

The Zuccotti Park campout protest against the tyranny of the banksters will be marking its one week anniversary tomorrow, and indications are the participation will be ratcheting up for the weekend. (weather permitting: the rain has sent people scattering). There is a ton of coverage all over the internet, so I won't be repetitive.  But I do want to share a few good links.


Melanie Butler of the NYC Indypendent writes a lively first-person account of the action, which some naysayers have criticized for not having a common purpose:

As people are leaving work we march on Wall Street, led by the bombastic musical stylings of the Rude Mechanical Orchestra.  I march with Eva-Lee, a seasoned CODEPINKer and member of the Granny Peace Bridgade.She is in awe of what young people are doing and says it’s unlike any other demonstration she’s experienced: "It's the process even more than the issues. I'm just blown away by how people are treating each other!"

The city's "paper of record", the New York Times has not covered the protests other than in one blog post, but the action is getting attention from the foreign press.  From BBC News comes a story of how the disparate band of park campers have boosted the fortunes of a local pizzeria.  And the Voice of Russia talks about the militarization of the Big Apple, post-9/11.  The New Zealand Herald concentrated on topless women flashing construction workers.  In perhaps the ultimate irony, Pravda railed against the total American media blackout of the event. ("Arab Spring, American Fall")

Keith Olbermann sent a news crew to the park on Wednesday, noting on his TV show that if one Tea Partier were across the street talking to himself, corporate media would be falling all over themselves and  leading with it on their nightly broadcasts.  A few celebrities have shown up to speak to the crowd, including that maven of blue collar progressives, Roseanne Barr.  Here she is, bullhorn and all.

And at Firedoglake, Kevin Gosztola has been running a liveblog and has further links to this ever-evolving series of events.

Notes from Camp Obama, Homeless Edition

 By Anonymous

“What’s that?”

“What?”

“Over there.”

“That? It’s the old Minuteman Missile Site.”

“The what?”

“Well, one of them.”

In my travels, I’ve been surprised to stumble over so many relics of the Cold War, former missile sites being among them. These entrails of our empire are no less stunning than the Assyrian walls reconstructed for our delectation at the New York Metropolitan Museum. The terrifying detail of the human-headed winged lion that was lamassu was designed to reinforce the power of the Assyrian state upon the visiting delegate. The smooth surfaces around the old missile sites are even more awesome than lamassu in their blandness and uniformity – all the power lies in their stunning technology, and not in the fearful imagination of the visitor to Assyria. 

I’ve been thinking about the Cold War, having come of age in its late evening shadow. The ICBM was first developed decades before I was born, but the arms race was raging as I entered high school. 

Camp Obama (the homeless, hitchhiking version of it®) has afforded me the opportunity to encounter no small number of Cold War missile system veterans, and I’m struck by how their work on these systems affected them spiritually and psychologically. Sitting in the cabs of their trucks, or huddling over cups of coffee at the modern-day equivalent of the diner (Starbucks), they’ve told me in whispered voices their accounts of the most banal tasks at various missile sites, and I’m no less skeptical than I was in hearing out MacNamara’s late-life confessions. 

They're sly, these men: they know that I know that they know what they're trying to do with these stories. ("What's a feint? What's a left hook off the jab? What's an opening? What's doing one thing and saying another?" -Jose Torres in Oates' On Boxing.)

But their hands have liver spots. They’re growing frail. For whatever meaningless reason, no one will call them the greatest generation. (And the greatest generation of what, Tom Brokaw? Of all historical time? What makes the sacrifice of U.S. WWII veterans greater than the abject misery endured by those miserable but fearless women soldiers at Stalingrad?)

Frailty. The other sin after poverty. I’ve been thinking about how much I’ve relied on my physical endurance, without realizing that such endurance is nearly a pure product of the Cold War itself. Even though most of us never even made it to State, let alone Nationals, there wasn’t a practice or coaching session that wasn’t in overbuilt reaction to what our jr. high and high school coaches thought the Soviets would send to the Olympics. 

(Coach: "how many lanes are there on the track?" You: "There's only one lane, coach. The winning lane." I was not in the winning lane. But as I later learned, neither were those who were in the winning lane.)

I’ve often regretted this time wasted. We could have been reading Flaubert. But the missile sites, and the men’s stories, jolt me back to the weird reality, and unreality, of all that occurred during the Cold War. The veterans have been explaining the technology of the war that I slumbered through in high school, exhausted from training.

Whatever became of our star athletes? Our soldiers? What happened to THEIR soldiers? I usually think of the Cold War as the “small wars” that took place outside our country, in which some of my family fought. Only through Camp Obama (the homeless, hitchhiking version of it®) have I begun to realize that the war was here, too, in smaller, less noticeable ways.

The veteran who once manned the data station for one of the early east coast missile systems told me he was terrified all through the cold war. He’s an old man now, unafraid to express his fears. In fact, I suspect he’s afraid NOT to express his fears. If his fears were irrational (which they weren’t) then the war was for naught. All of it. But the Soviet threat was, sadly, real. 

Still, was there another way we could have met the threat? Besides all this metal and radiation? (The birds, they tell me, would drop out of the sky because of the radiation emitted by our acquisition data systems. Proud raptors fried mid-air at thousands of times the radiation of your microwave.) 

There must have been. MacNamara says that we only survived the Cuban Missile Crisis because a former ambassador to the Soviet Union dropped by a critical Kennedy administration meeting. This ambassador stated that he didn’t believe Kruschev had any interest in ending the world, and that all we needed to do was to create a face-saving way out for him. 

We did. 

It’s a miracle. 

We did. 

What other miracles are we capable of?

(Ed. Note:  The author, a professional writer, was evicted from her apartment this summer when the owners decided to rehab the building into condos for millionaires. She is among the increasing  middle class homeless population which doesn't fit the preconception of homeless people: alcoholics, drug addicts or the mentally ill. (See her comments under the Occupation of Wall Street post, below).   According to the National Law Center on Poverty and Homelessness, not only do many homeless people work --  very few of them rely on public assistance.  Not a few of them, like "Anonymous" belong to the transitionally homeless category  -- she has been "sleeping rough" for only a few months,  has a (dwindling) bank account, a cell phone,  continues to go on job interviews, and even has speaking engagements lined up.  Nobody in her immediate circle of professional colleagues or family members knows she is homeless.  I am only the third person she has told.  Knowing this woman, she will survive this.  Knowing this woman, I will no longer take for granted that the well-dressed people I meet necessarily have roofs over their heads).

Obambaid

So now with Obama's numbers in the toilet and a few Democratic stalwarts saying maybe a primary challenge might not be so crazy after all, and James Carville telling him to panic, the president hoisted himself up and went all populist this morning. It's a mere 14 months to Election Day, and it must be time to throw out not only some progressive crumbs, but whole slices of bread.


But did a military band really have to play "Stars and Stripes Forever" at this hybrid of a policy speech/campaign rally?  And what about that part where Obama says he will veto any cuts to Medicare and Medicaid UNLESS he gets his Buffett Tax on Millionaires too?  How about he will veto any cuts to Medicare, period? How about getting rid of the Homeland Security boondoggle? In other words, hold the TSA gropers hostage instead of the dying old ladies they torture!

The reviews of today's speech are mixed between those who feel it's too little, too late and a big fat fake, to those who are experiencing renewed hope that our beleaguered president has finally grown a spine, has drawn a line in the sand and thrown down the gauntlet and is fighting for the people.  I tend to go along with the former.  Obama should be leaving the deficit out of it. He should be leaving the social safety net out of it.  He should be calling for higher taxes in order to create jobs, period. Working people will bring down the deficit once they're allowed to work. I am glad the congressional progressive caucus is taking note of the presidential stealth attack on the New Deal.
It took me awhile to finally figure this quid pro quo out. At first you think he's vowing to protect Medicare and Medicaid. But what he's really setting up is a perverse inverted hostage situation. He may as well have snarled: "If you want your Death Panel, Republicans, gimme the money. Otherwise I won't stiff Grandma." Or, he is the kidnapper who calls the parents and promises he will keep the kids alive and well unless the parents pay the ransom.

He reminds me of Martin Sheen and two of his famous political roles. There's the heroic, humanistic and pragmatic president in "West Wing."  That's the one the White House wants us to see.  Then there's the sinister, bellicose, fake populist future president in Stephen King's "The Dead Zone".  At best, Obama is simply being disingenuous in offering up the poor and the sick and the old as payment in kind for the rich people paying more taxes. He knows nothing will pass, so he might as well squeeze in his austerity bona fides while he's at it. At worst, he is among the most corrupt presidents we have ever had. Killing us softly with his smile.

It gets worse. The New York Times reports that Budget Director Jacob Lew is bragging that far from this being a Class War, there is pain enough for everybody. Medicare deductibles will go up. Homebound elderly people receiving visiting nurse services will have to fork over a co-pay for each visit. Payments to teaching hospitals and rural hospitals will be reduced. This should make the wealthy feel so much better, knowing that disabled and impoverished widows will not be receiving all that self-indulgent treatment on the backs of Lloyd Blankfein and most of the millionaire politicians in Congress.  The budget, by the way, also lowers veterans' benefits, but in no way affects the health or retirement packages of the President and Congress. 

The mainstream media are, however, willing stenographers of the narrative du jour. MSNBC is jubilant, while Fox is pouting. Today, the triple play theme is: "The Republicans are Screaming Class Warfare!", "The President Finds His Mojo!", and "Chuck 'I Wanna Be Majority Leader' Schumer Says Happy Days Are Here Again." 

I had written a response to Paul Krugman's "The Bleeding Cure" column last night before Sousafest (it was not accepted for publication) about how the austerians are bleeding the economy dry. I laid part of the blame at the feet of the abysmal corporate media: 

Until the journalistic class gets over its obsession with “fair and balanced”, the medieval economic austerians will be granted equal time and continuing credence. The media feel compelled to compensate for their nonexistent “liberal bias” with reactionary drivel. The talk shows (you can't call them news) are filled with bipartisan deficit hawks more concerned with the debt than the jobs crisis. The corporate sponsors of these shows invariably include oil companies, drug companies, G.E. -- all with a vested interest in loopholes, free trade and continued control of the government. 

In the bubble of Washington, the conventional wisdom (an oxymoron if there ever was one) dictates that token stimulus spending must always be offset by a gleefully relentless gutting of what’s left of the New Deal. Notwithstanding that his jobs bill is a small step in the right direction, President Obama still finds it necessary to reassure the jittery investor class and “job creators” that every penny spent on jobs will be more than matched by his Grand Bargain of Severe Cuts to programs for the old, young, sick and poor. The headline in Sunday’s Times announced that the president “would ask” millionaires to pay just a tad more so their minimum wage employees won’t feel so bad and maybe re-elect him. Notice the abject, pleading, apologetic tone. Instead of “J’Accuse!” aimed at the banksters, we get “Pretty Please.” Instead of calling for shared prosperity, he harps on shared sacrifice. He just can’t ask good old Uncle Warren Buffett to pay just a tad more without insisting the rest of us share the pain. 

Not only are the people in charge bleeding the country, they’re letting the wounds they create fester, dooming the patient. The bandaids they are applying are simply hiding the results of rampant corruption instead of attacking the source: deregulation, and a permanent war machine -- and money, money, money subsuming our democracy.

Stickin' it To the People!

Economist Robert Reich is not impressed with the Buffett Plan either. In his latest blog post, he writes:

But this is Barack Obama, whose idea of negotiating is to give away half the house before he’s even asked the other side for the bathroom sink.

Apparently Obama will propose that people earning more than $1 million a year pay at least the same tax rate as middle-class earners. That’s aiming mighty low.

Glenn Greenwald is also leery of Obama's true motives, and answers the question why the president is suddenly embracing populism and lefty ideals after three years of showing his base utter contempt: (thanks to Marie Burns for the link),

Some Democrats are honest and cynical enough to acknowledge that Obama is doing all these things purely for political gain and -- because his re-election is their top priority -- to celebrate it even while acknowledging it will never become reality....   I at least appreciate the candor of those...  who acknowledge that this will not become reality and is not even designed to, but celebrate it because it will help Obama get re-elected by making the GOP (rather than him) look like the servants of Wall Street.  It's the ones pretending that this eleventh-hour election-time awakening is reflective of some sort of substantive significance that are hard to bear.

Wall Street "Occupation" Starting Today

Taking their cue from the sidewalk sleepover protest this summer known as "Bloombergville",  thousands of demonstrators are expected to converge in the financial district today for some free-floating street theater in what is being called the Occupation of Wall Street.  It's the latest in a whole series of protests against budget cuts and financial malfeasance -- but this time, the event is getting the attention of the mainstream media.

Do you suppose it's because the whole Arab Spring phenonemon now holds a certain trendy allure for the corporate journalists?  The first Wall Street "Day of Rage" last March sponsored by New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts only got mentioned in a few independent blogs and Al Jazeera, even though it attracted thousands of people.  This time, the anti-consumerism magazine "AdBusters" was doing the (loose) organizing and perhaps is savvier at publicity and use of social media to get the message out... via Twitter and Facebook.

All indications are that this day of leaderless, mellow musical rage will be similar to previous demonstrations, but some media (especially right wing media) are forecasting a Marxist bloodbath.  Mayor Michael Bloomberg was on the radio warning that the high youth unemployment rate could lead to riots in the streets -- though he didn't really specify his streets, on this particular day.

The culmination of today's events will be a 3 p.m. rally at Chase Square. According to the website OccupyWallSt, the NYPD is expecting total crowds of about 5000. Participants hope the protests last until December, or at least through Monday, when President Obama is due in town to speak to the U.N. (and raise some bundled Wall Street cash).*

This summer's peaceful encampment ended after a few weeks with the arrests of what were called "The Bloombergville 13" on charges of obstructing traffic.  In New York City, it is legal to sleep on the sidewalks as long as you only take up half the walkway so as not to trip up pedestrians. And despite what the poster above advises, tents are supposedly illegal within the city limits. If you come, bundle up.  The nights are getting nippy in the concrete and steel canyon.




Wall Street Day of Rage, March 2011 (it was peaceful)



* Update: Live feeds and tweets can be found here.http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution