Let Them Eat Shit

The backlash against Erin Burnett for the painfully smug derision she heaped on the Occupy Wall Street protesters continues with my besty, Jason Linkins at the Huffington Post.

"This is something I've banged on about before -- the signature failing of the media, in the way they've deigned to cover the massive unemployment crisis in America, is that they treat the people who are actually unemployed as abstract concepts. The norm that the media constantly, redundantly enforces is that the unemployment crisis is an event that solely threatens the re-election hopes of politicians, to whom they crave access.

No one craves access to poor people! So they remain in the background, where they can be easily abused. You see this play out when those who are allowed to be newsmakers depict the unemployed as lazy, shiftless and living off government largesse. You need only spend ten minutes on Google to uncover enough material fact to obliterate this notion so utterly that you can objectively state these charges are wrong with a clear journalistic conscience. But you have to be nominally invested in ordinary human beings to do that. It's the desire to serve ordinary Americans with the truth that pushes you onto that task. Without it, the 'unemployed are lazy' lie becomes just one more interesting point of view...

Ordinary Americans have found themselves dropped in a world of stark terms and desperate choices, and those who are lucky to be treading water or doing well are nevertheless just as likely to know someone very dear to them who are in the jaws of this crisis. Faced with this reality, what do you imagine actual people might do to try to cut through the veil and stop getting treated as abstractions? Well, for starters, they might take to the streets. The media is awash in confusion, even now, about what the Occupy Wall Street 'agenda' is, and what the demonstrators are 'demanding.' I'd say their demands begin with 'acknowledge our existence,' and move on to 'make a nominal investment to covering what is happening in our lives.'"

Oh, and here's what that anti-capitalist, liberal rag Forbes had to say in a piece called "Erin Burnett is Vapid, Occupy Wall Street Matters":

"The Erin coup de grace is when she lays into the unemployed software developer and sets him straight on the notion that the Wall Street bank bailouts cost America money. Her crack staff ran the numbers and they determined that taxpayers have made $10 billion to date and should ultimately make $20 billion. 'This was the big issue?,' she asks grinningly. 'Well, we [her staff] solved it!'

You hear that, America? This economy is rocking! Go home.

Erin Burnett was way too dismissive and condescending of these protesters. Who proclaimed that only people who live in caves and don’t use bank machines can show up to protest on Wall Street?

I love capitalism. It’s better than any other alternative system in the world. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t many changes which can be made to fix it."

By the way, if you're interested in seeing for yourself just how -- you know, there's really no better way to say it -- cunty Burnette came off during her report on OWS, go here.

Seriously, CNN should make her jobless. But of course it won't. In fact, it's probably loving every second of the attention.