From the college campuses of Vietnam War naysayers to the star-spangled lawn chairs of the Tea Partiers, history has demonstrated one consistent adage — if you protest it, they will come.
Don’t be fooled, they will come in different shapes and sizes, making it hard to lump them in one category. Their appearance will vary. Whether they assume the form of shaggy hippie, plump suburbanite or over-the-top hipster, they seem to have one goal — to utterly ruin your social movement.
The guilty party I’m describing is none other than the overwhelming majority of protesters that attend any demonstration. Bringing demonstrations to critical mass while simultaneously burning down the ship, they constitute the confused, bored and passionate core of protests.
Most importantly, these are the very people the media is more likely to dangle cameras in front of, intent on capturing every “face-palm” moment you don’t want your movement associated with.
Unfortunately for Occupy Wall Street, the crusade has been injected with an extremely unhealthy dose of these “mindless protesters,” and the prognosis is not looking good unless the proper treatment is implemented.
Stimulated by the ideas of the Canadian anti-consumerist magazine, Adbusters, Occupy Wall Street has been gaining momentum since its initial New York demonstration on Sept. 17, and its ideas have now spread across the globe.
Leaderless in nature, Occupy Wall Street’s central values are a homogeneous mixture of variations on a theme — keep vested corporate interest out of American politics.
Despite the fact that no clear leaders have been elected, a single official demand has been offered up to American legislators: reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. This regulatory act separated the interests of investment banking and commercial banks, and more articulated Occupy Wall Street supporters cite the repeal of this act in 1999 as the source of America’s financial woes.
However, the lack of clear leadership has left Occupy Wall Street’s helm unoccupied, allowing any buffoon to become visible and seize the spotlight.
Of course, this has made the movement an easy target for the media, ensuring that coverage of Occupy Wall Street’s rallies makes better fodder for Jay Leno’s “The Tonight Show” than actual political discourse.
Overall, the media’s investigation of Occupy Wall Street could be considered paltry journalism at best. Cable giants such as Fox News and CNN have spent unholy amounts of time finding ignorant protesters and stumping them with questions on the economy — which is not a difficult task.
Consider CNN’s Erin Burnett’s comedic task of deciphering Occupy Wall Street’s purpose in her televised segment entitled “Seriously?!”
One wonders what Burnett expected to accomplish as she waded through bongo circles and people dressed as clowns and zombies to hear overused slogans such as “Capitalism doesn’t