Occupy This.

The "Occupy this and that" protest gatherings are capturing some of the news cycle these days. I am not sure I understand why. In the early days of the Occupy Wall Street gatherings there seemed to be a collection of younger dissenters who had no coherent message or objectives - but seemed to just think being there was message enough (reminds me of a Peter Sellers movie).

Then the union thugs (is that insensitive?) arrived seeking more confrontation but still without an admitted agenda. Then the protests seem to spring up around the country like flowers in the spring. Nancy Polosi seemed to think they were spontaneous - not my impression at all.

Now, after several weeks, the news reports are saying that the groups are seeking a message. Well, maybe its about time - or maybe the political opportunists are finally going to co-opt the gatherings to suit their own agenda.

I support the First Amendment - although I do not approve of subordinating private property rights. The New York gatherings did not take place on public property. Perhaps these groups will find their voice - perhaps not. But the comparison of these protestors to the TEA party members is absurd and defamatory in my view. We have a major election coming up and I could use an objective and attentive news media that brings intelligent and analytical reporting of what is really going on to their readers, viewers or listeners. Not so much, so far.

I enjoy the articles of Larry Thornberry of Tampa, writing for the American Spectator. Larry is a friend and has long given me permission to present his articles in my blogs. Larry is spot on, as usual, in this week’s post "Rebels without a Clue", a portion of which is quoted below. He speaks of some of the participants seen on the news from New York and his observations at an Occupy Tampa event recently.

Some with the show, in New York and elsewhere, are just left-over hippies who missed the last chopper out of the sixties and will show up at any demonstration about anything out of nostalgia and for something to do. To the tie-dyed, peace and love, or at least nattering on about peace and love, never go out of style, even for those now on blood pressure meds and with prostates the size of tangerines.

Others are just cutting classes at colleges their parents have written really large checks to, protesting being ever so much more fun than listening to dull lectures or writing term papers. (Actually learning something can be such a drag.) Observers of a certain age can’t help but be reminded of cartoonist Al Capp’s sixties burlesque of the then rampant youth movement with his group: Students Wildly Indignant About Nearly Everything, or S.W.I.N.E. Who knew then that the movement would be permanent?

Not all the demonstrators are lazy "students" or superannuated flower children. Some are union members with agendas. Others, less benign, are various kinds of Marxist burnouts looking for a little political theater. There are the usual enviro-nutters and even some self-styled anarchists. A few, though you really have to seek these out to find them, are reasonable adults who see things going poorly for themselves and the country and think holding up signs advertising their fears, frustrations, and resentments will make things better.

I located a few of these Saturday morning when I visited Lykes Gaslight Square in downtown Tampa. But most of the hundred and change idling in the one square-block park were clearly registered at some local college, where they’re majoring in screwing off. T-shirts carried the names of local colleges or unions or environmental groups, as well as various left-wing sentiments and vague, harrumphing banalities: "greed kills," "We are the 99 percent" (of what, they don’t say), "Wake up, stand up," etc.

What the shirts didn’t treat, the amateurishly made signs picked up: "greed has taken over," "justice delayed is justice denied" (duh), "save Mother Earth from Father Greed," "the government should be afraid of the people" (though surely not this lot -- anyone afraid of this bunch should sleep with a night light), "mainstream media irrelevant" (at least they got something right), "love, not foreclose on, thy neighbor," "I want a declaration of interdependence," "stop corporate obesity," and on in this tiresome vein.

The word that cropped up most often was greed, which this lot has just discovered. They seem to identify 2011 as the beginning of greed, in the manner a previous generation of hippies traced the beginning of sex to 1963.

You may read Larry’s article in its entirety <Here>

My Source: http://spectator.org/archives/2011/10/17/rebels-without-a-clue