Empty Suit

AIG was one of the most infamous and disastrous casualties of the economic collapse of 2008. The whole place was a swamp of toxic asset sludge so incompetently managed that it eventually had to be bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of $70 billion.

So how is the insurance leviathan's former CEO thanking all of us for saving his fat-cat ass and rewarding his company's irresponsibility?

By suing the government for stepping in.

Think Progress: Former AIG CEO Sues Claiming Taxpayers Need To Pony Up $25 Billion More/11.25.11

Seriously -- fucking guillotine this asshole. I'll pull the lever.

With that in mind, here's one from the archive.

"Get Rich and Die Tryin'" (Originally Published 3.16.9)

***OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT: "Wide World of Justice" Presented by ESPN, Spike TV, and the Bloomberg Financial Network***

(The following is the property of the above networks and may not be reproduced or rebroadcast in any way without the express written consent of the owners.)

Intro Music: Ministry's Thieves

Frank: Good evening, everybody -- and welcome to another exciting edition of "Wide World of Justice," presented by ESPN, Spike and of course, the Bloomberg Financial Network. I'm Frank Flotsam.

Todd: And I'm Todd Jetsam, thanks so much for being here -- and what a show we have for you tonight.

Frank: You got that right, Todd. Tonight, the we bring a little street justice to a man who we think has really earned it -- because Lord knows he didn't earn the 165-million dollars in bonus money, funded by you the taxpayer, that he just handed out to his executives at AIG.

Todd: Of course we're talking about tonight's guest of honor -- AIG Chairman Edward Liddy.

Frank: And here he comes now!

(Chorus of boos can be heard from the crowd; screams, shouts, and obscenities)

Todd: Oh, they don't like him very much, Frank.

Frank: No they don't, Todd.

Todd: Now Mr. Liddy is being led through the crowd here in front of the New York Stock Exchange -- he's in a steel cage that's been placed on top of a wooden cart being pulled by a specially selected group of Wall Street Journal op-ed columnists. It's a good thing he's in that cage too, because it looks like the crowd doesn't want to wait for the show to begin -- they want blood right now!

Frank: Unfortunately, since the Journal people aren't protected, they're pretty much fair game and, am I seeing this correctly? Yes, speaking of which, it looks like the angry mob has already dragged away Stephen Moore, the senior economics writer for the Wall Street Journal, and if I'm not mistaken... wait... yes, that's his head we're seeing being tossed around like a beach ball.

Todd: Right you are, Frank. I recognize those stupid little glasses. Not a very dignified way for a Wall Street Journal reporter to go out.

Frank: Guess that's one "deadline" he had no trouble meeting (laughs)!

Todd: (Laughs) You better believe it. Okay, now it looks like we're just about ready to begin here -- and not a moment too soon. The crowd here is going absolutely crazy. They're throwing... what is that? Frank, what is that they're throwing at the cage containing Edward Liddy?

Frank: Oh my God -- they're throwing their tax returns at him!

Todd: Well, I'd say they're ready to give him the ultimate "retirement party," eh Frank?

Frank: Yessiree, Todd. Okay, the cage has been opened and Liddy is now being escorted up the steps of the Stock Exchange and to the platform. He's being led by police, and of course by the cast of The Real Housewives of Orange County -- who themselves will be put to death by honey-and-fire-ants a little later today at the after-party for this event. What do you think, Todd -- you think the ants will eat through collagen and silicone?

Todd: (Laughs) Well, we'll see, my friend.

Frank: Indeed we will!

Todd: Alright, Liddy has now been walked to the middle of the platform. The crowd still going wild here. He's been chained to a large wooden pole in the center of the platform, and now the executioner -- or as we call him, ironically, the "executor" -- is making sure Liddy's bonds are nice and tight.

Frank: Edward Liddy and strong bonds? Now that's funny. But if I can say, Todd -- Liddy looks absolutely terrified.

Todd: Yes, not the kind of Wall Street welcome he's used to.

Frank: The microphone is now being brought in so that Edward Liddy can speak a few final words before we give him the old 401 K.O. He seems to be struggling against the chains. Alright, let's listen in.

(The crowd noise dies, there's the sound of feedback, then silence for a moment.)

Liddy: No! We had to do it! We were required by law to pay out the 165-million in bonuses to our executives! WE HAD TO RETAIN TALENT!

(The mob begins shouting at him.)

Frank: (Laughing) Sorry, pal -- I just don't think that's gonna fly with these taxpayers.

Todd: A hundred-and-seventy billion dollars for AIG in a citizen-funded bailout -- and remember, this is a company that lost 61-billion dollars last quarter, and he's trying to make the case that there's talent that needs to be held onto? And it's going to cost 165 million of our hard-earned cash?

Frank: You know what we say to that, right Todd?

Frank and Todd: FUCK HIM! (Laughter)

Todd: Obviously, the executor not swayed by Liddy's pleas for understanding and leniency, to say nothing of more money from Congress.

Frank: Nope -- the executor now grabbing his ax with both hands. It looks like we could be just seconds away from the end, here. This one could be over fairly quickly.

Todd: But wait! No, he's dropped the ax and is reaching for... what is that? IT'S A 2X4 COVERED IN BARBED WIRE! Oh, he's going to make this one last. And now he's -- yes, he's LIGHTING IT ON FIRE!

Frank: Look at the look of fear in Liddy's eyes. The crowd is just loving every minute of this. It makes sense when you think about it, I mean, when they leave here it's not like they're going anywhere since they're jobless and their homes have been foreclosed on.

Todd: Makes for a very angry audience, Frank. They're chanting "justice" now, over and over. Listen to that.

Frank: And the executor is raising the flaming 2X4 and...OH, he brings it down hard on Liddy's head. That is not a pretty sight. For you parents with small children watching in the store window of Best Buy because you don't have homes, I really hope you covered the eyes of the little ones. This is not for the faint of heart.

Todd: And Liddy has now slumped against the pole, but he's still bound remember. He doesn't seem to be dead -- just stunned.

Frank: Yeah, about as stunned as America was when it found it that it'd have to foot the bill for this guy's incompetence and excesses (laughs).

Todd: And the executor has now stepped aside and is letting the rabid throng attack Liddy. My God, they're crawling onto the platform and are giving him paper cuts with their pink slips. Oh the humanity -- he's screaming in agony. Someone's poured what looks like battery acid on him. Yes, his flesh is melting away.

Frank: And -- wait. Is that an alligator?

Todd: It's a madhouse! A madhouse!

Frank: We'd better "bail out" before the bitter end finally comes, folks. But we want to thank you for watching tonight.

Todd: Please join us next week when our "guest of honor" will be none other than CNBC's Rick Santelli!

Frank: Until then, from the both of us here live at the burned and bloodied front of the New York Stock Exchange, this is "Wide World of Justice." Have a great night!

Todd: Good night, everybody! (Barely Audible: Holy shit, was that his leg?)

Outro Music: Notorious BIG's Mo' Money, Mo' Problems.

Picture of the Week

Chances are by now you've seen this picture in one form or another. No, it's not Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of Kent State student Jeffrey Miller after he'd just been shot through the mouth by the Ohio National Guard, but it does promise to become an iconic image of the Occupy uprisings on America's college campuses in its depiction of disturbingly casual violence by authorities against kids who are doing nothing more than exercising their right to protest peacefully.

As I've said before, I tend to allow the police quite a bit of leeway in most situations, certainly ones involving crowd control -- that benefit of the doubt stemming from my own history as the son of an ex-cop -- but my first reaction when I watched the clip of Police Lt. John Pike pepper spraying the faces of unarmed students sitting down on the UC Davis campus shocked me. I think I actually said out loud, "Why isn't anyone tackling that asshole?" Of course I know the answer to this question, and of course it's good that no one actually did try to stop the police through physical force as the result would've been disastrous.

It's not about that, though. My instinctive, visceral reaction was that an injustice was being committed and that somebody needed to do something to immediately put a stop to it. I don't care that the guy behind the unconscionable cruelty was wearing a badge and riot gear and had been allowed to intervene at the request of UC Davis's own chancellor; he was still wrong and had he been anyone else but a cop, every single person there would've been completely within their right to kick the crap out of him.

What he did was brutal, unprovoked and entirely unnecessary. He's a lousy cop who didn't know how to handle what seemed for all intents and purposes to amount to a relatively cut-and-dry confrontation with a bunch of kids who weren't in any way a threat to him. He and his fellow officers very likely fell back on a ridiculously faulty belief -- that because pepper spray, tear gas and the like are designated non-lethal weapons that it's perfectly alright to use them wantonly and that they should be the first choice rather than a last resort in dealing with protesters who refuse to do what you tell them to but who aren't threatening you. It's lazy policing, pure and simple, and the person who thinks that way doesn't deserve to be a cop.

One more thing: In an effort to both broaden the scope of this incident for maximum mileage and drag one of their favorite targets into the crosshairs, some of the usual suspects on the left are blaming President Obama for the nationwide crackdown by police on the Occupy protests, as if local authorities all plug into the federal Matrix to get their daily marching orders. This is a useful liberal "police state" fantasy, but it's nonsense. The reality is that the "militarization" of many American police departments has nothing to do with the Obama administration -- or any other -- homeland security, or even the drug war, per se. It has to do with the cops being outgunned on the streets by the criminals. For years, the police carried revolvers or semi-autos while the ones committing crimes -- some of whom were actually involved in the protection of the drug trade -- packed AKs and Mossbergs. If you've ever wondered why, say, the LAPD became the impersonal blue machine it's now regarded as, it's because of what it was up against. Granted, guys like Daryl Gates took the idea of an impenetrable and insurmountable police department way too far, but that military aesthetic began in the country's urban centers and spread outward from there. The idea of the friendly police officer on the street corner is long-since a thing of the past; a bad-ass police "force" is nothing new under the sun.

The problem is that this is what you get: military crowd control tactics used against a bunch of kids sitting down on a street in the middle of a college campus quad. What happened at UC Davis was unforgivable and hopefully someone will pay dearly for it and that action will send a message to those put in the position of dealing with non-violent protesters. And it speaks volumes that these particular protesters remained peaceful when, to be honest, they had every right not to.



Update: Think the video above is powerful stuff? Watch this, as UC Davis students lined up by the hundreds and silently confronted Chancellor Linda Katehi as she left the school last night -- basically turning it into a perp-walk-of-shame.

Picture of the Day

Headline of the Week

Think Progress: Reporters For Right-Wing Publication "Daily Caller" Beaten By NYPD, Helped By Protesters/11.17.11

Now how did you read that?

Down the Fox Hole

Every few months or so somebody out there in the world of online journalism decides to subject him or herself to the painful social experiment of watching a full day of Fox News. The result is always both an entertaining read and a service to the rest of us who are unwilling to step up and take the bullet.

The latest poor sucker who drew the short straw is Salon's Alex Pareene. If you're curious as to how Fox is covering Occupy Wall Street -- here's a hint: the protesters are living in squalor -- then have a look.

Salon: I Watched Two Days of Fox News Coverage of Occupy Wall Street/11.16.11

By the way, earlier this year I took the Fox News plunge. This was the result:

"Into the Void" (Originally Published, 2.2.11)

I've read about and watched clips of Fox News quite a bit over the past several months, certainly enough to have a working knowledge of what the network is doing at any given time -- what tack it's taking on a particular story. But I freely admit that I gave up actually watching Fox News about a year ago, when I came to the conclusion that there was enough in my life that terrified the living shit out of me on a daily basis and the post-apocalyptic hellscape the network and its stable of angry/psychotic/overwhelmed-with-concern anchors, reporters and contributors crammed down the public's throat 24/7 just made me too anxious. I'm not breaking any new ground when I say that since the election of Barack Obama, Fox News has been a lifetime addiction to Cymbalta waiting to happen for each and every one of its hapless, frazzled viewers.

But yesterday, I did something that in hindsight feels like an act of unimaginable courage -- or maybe unfathomable stupidity: I listened to Fox News on Sirius XM for three straight hours, as I was driving from Central Florida down to Miami. Now I know that given the format I was availing myself of I was missing out on the epilepsy-inducing flash-graphics, the lower-third banners asking questions like, "Barack Obama: Anti-Christ or Simply Hates America?" and of course the smug winks and nudges of the anchors to their captivated audience of petrified elderly white Christian middle-Americans, a slightly subtler version of the one-eyebrow-raised mug to the camera that Mike Myers's "Dieter" character from Sprockets used to be famous for on Saturday Night Live.

Trust me when I tell you, though, that Fox News is as batshit crazy on radio as it is on TV; the effect of letting its alternate-reality worldview wash over you is exactly the same. It's honestly like listening to a broadcast from another dimension, one where up is down, inside is out and black is white (well, black is still black -- and inscrutably dangerous, but you get the point). Immerse yourself in it for a little while and it's easy to see how the people who live and die by this crap become, in short order, almost impossible to have an intelligent conversation with. It's not simply that Fox has a slant to its coverage or distorts the occasional fact slightly to suit its end; the network is almost across the board horseshit and you feel like you're getting crazier and more frenzied just exposing yourself to it. Like you're Alex strapped in a chair submitting to the Ludovico treatment. And after a very short amount of time it just becomes numbing.

I know that this isn't much of a shock to anyone -- and really that's the point. More on that in a minute, but first just a quick rundown of what three-hours of Fox was like:

Egypt: At no point during the time that I listened did the network do a live report from anywhere in Egypt. Not Cairo, not Alexandria, nothing. What Fox did do, however, was go live to Jerusalem -- twice. The first report was from a correspondent who warned that Israel was concerned about the uprising going on to its west and that the whole democracy thing had proven to be an iffy proposition when it came to Arab nations -- namely because they tend to be self-absorbed and willing to overthrow despots who make their citizens' lives a living hell but don't much bother Israel in favor of pro-Arab groups who hate Israel's guts. The second report was from -- wait for it -- Fox News contributor and potential Republican presidential candidate in 2012 Mike Huckabee, who happened to be in Jerusalem to tour the city with Pennsylvania's Keneseth sect. His traveling companion, by the way: Jon Voight. And no, I'm not making that up. Like the Fox correspondent, Huckabee expressed concern about the revolution in Egypt and hit the Fox News Islamophobia Panic Button by referencing the supposedly shadowy "Muslim Brotherhood" and the danger it poses as it engages in various Machiavellian machinations behind the scenes in an effort to turn Egypt into a caliphate.

By the way, the Muslim Brotherhood was mentioned nine times in the three hours I listened, and former IAEA chief and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Mohamed ElBaradei was cast as a Senator Palpatine-like figure who seemed vaguely anti-American and couldn't exactly be trusted to make the best interests of the United States a priority should he be elected to lead Egypt.

Oh, and Huckabee went on to mispronounce Riyadh -- calling it "Riyadhi" -- twice.

Healthcare: Every mention of the renewed battle over the healthcare reform law began with some slight variation on the phrase, "President Obama's controversial and unpopular healthcare reform law is dealt a serious blow by a federal judge, who says it's unconstitutional." Not one but two people brought on-air to debate the issue claimed that the law had been almost uniformly rejected by the American public and the state governments, and that that lack of support crossed party lines -- as in, "Even those on the left think this bill should be scrapped." The almost giddy talk of the ruling in Florida by one septuagenarian judge who had been appointed by Reagan culminated with yapping poodle Megyn Kelly expressing outright shock that the White House's defense of the bill involved "attacking the judge" by calling him an "activist." The level of shameless hypocrisy was so staggering at that point that I finally threw in the towel and changed channels. In the end, I only made it through sixteen minutes of Megyn Kelly.

The Royal "Some": Fox has been lambasted ad nauseam for this in the past, but you really have to watch or listen for a little while to truly appreciate how often the network does it: make a highly critical or outright inflammatory statement and provide hilariously nebulous attribution for it. In other words, "Some people say Barack Obama keeps midgets as pets," or, "Critics claim that putting a mosque near Ground Zero is spitting in the face of the 9/11 victims." Yeah -- you know who those "some people" and those "critics" are? The people at Fox News Channel.

Founding Fathers: Referenced or invoked four times in three hours. Think about how many times you personally bring up the founding fathers in conversation (provided you're not a 63-year-old self-proclaimed tea partier living in Ocala, Florida). The Founding Fathers. Four times in three hours. In the year 2011. If that doesn't make you think you're losing your fucking mind, nothing will.

And this really just scratches the surface of the overriding sense of wild-eyed paranoia that permeates every second of every single thing Fox News does these days. It's so removed from reality -- not simply the left or even centrist viewpoint but reality -- that it feels like jacking directly into the mind of some guy standing on a street corner talking to a telephone pole. And the effect is so jarring that when I finally got where I was going and logged onto Facebook, I was half-expecting to see a shitload of status updates that read something like, "Did you hear what they just said on Fox???"

But then I realized that I was back in the real world -- where Fox News Channel's nonstop surrealism had just become an accustomed-to dull drone.

Going Post-al

Andrea Peyser is a bitter, humorless old cunt. Now before anybody jumps down my throat you should know that it takes a lot for me to use that particular word. It's not every day I call someone "humorless."

See what I did there?

The truth is that Peyser, the New York Post's resident pissy attack dog, has made a name for herself spewing prudish anti-sex, anti-lewdness and general anti-fun venom in all directions for years now. She's the comically tyrannical elementary school teacher -- the one who eventually gets her come-uppance from the boys and girls she's tortured -- in every kid empowerment movie come to life. So it makes sense that yesterday in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan she decided to ambush some poor father who dared to bring his child to the Occupy Wall Street protest. Peyser was on hand to see for herself the "loons" she'd go on to write about today in her column on the "cleansing" of the filth out of Zuccotti and it goes without saying that she got into a shouting match with some of the protesters -- most of it revolving around her decision to of course lecture the father on what a crappy parent he was for bringing a kid to a rally.

It included Peyser losing her shit and shouting, "Fuck you!" at one guy, then doubling back to chastise him for calling her old.

Steven Thrasher at the Village Voice managed to get some of it on video and it's entertaining stuff -- and Gawker has a great shot of Peyser, looking, well, old and miserable (see above) as she sits on the cold concrete no doubt waiting for that real rain that will someday come and wash all the scum off the streets.

Against the Wall

So chances are by now you've heard that the NYPD went in under cover of darkness last night and forcibly removed the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. It was part of a coordinated move by law enforcement against the various protesters nationwide.

My default position is to side with the police in a lot of the incidents involving them; it probably stems from the fact that my father is an ex-cop. For the most part, even the police taking part in the crackdown on the Occupy protests are decent people forced into a tough situation by their jobs. No, they're not out to bust heads or punch hippies; they're for the most part just doing the job they were unfortunately ordered to do. That's not to say that there aren't some sadistic assholes who enjoy getting rough, but I truly believe that doesn't aptly describe most cops throughout the country.

But back to those giving the orders. That's the real problem. And when I woke up this morning and saw what had happened, the very first thing I thought of was a segment of Matt Taibbi's latest piece for Rolling Stone on Occupy Wall Street. This sums up almost perfectly my issue with what the police are doing in regard to the protests. It's not even so much that they're making life difficult for those peaceably rallying against the current condition of the global economy and the government -- it's that they're not making life the least bit difficult for those who actually collapsed the global economy and bought the government in the first place.

"I originally was very uncomfortable with the way the protesters were focusing on the NYPD as symbols of the system. After all, I thought, these are just working-class guys from the Bronx and Staten Island who have never seen the inside of a Wall Street investment firm, much less had anything to do with the corruption of our financial system.

But I was wrong. The police in their own way are symbols of the problem. All over the country, thousands of armed cops have been deployed to stand around and surveil and even assault the polite crowds of Occupy protesters. This deployment of law-enforcement resources already dwarfs the amount of money and manpower that the government 'committed' to fighting crime and corruption during the financial crisis. One OWS protester steps in the wrong place, and she immediately has police roping her off like wayward cattle. But in the skyscrapers above the protests, anything goes.

This is a profound statement about who law enforcement works for in this country. What happened on Wall Street over the past decade was an unparalleled crime wave. Yet at most, maybe 1,500 federal agents were policing that beat – and that little group of financial cops barely made any cases at all. Yet when thousands of ordinary people hit the streets with the express purpose of obeying the law and demonstrating their patriotism through peaceful protest, the police response is immediate and massive. There have already been hundreds of arrests, which is hundreds more than we ever saw during the years when Wall Street bankers were stealing billions of dollars from retirees and mutual-fund holders and carpenters unions through the mass sales of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities.

It's not that the cops outside the protests are doing wrong, per se, by patrolling the parks and sidewalks. It's that they should be somewhere else. They should be heading up into those skyscrapers and going through the file cabinets to figure out who stole what, and from whom. They should be helping people get their money back. Instead, they're out on the street, helping the Blankfeins of the world avoid having to answer to the people they ripped off."

By the way, a judge has apparently already ordered that the Occupy Wall Street protesters -- minus their encampments -- be allowed back into Zuccotti Park. So in the end all last night's raid did was strengthen the movement and its resolve. It served no other purpose.

Adding: If you're not bothered by the treatment of the OWS protesters in Zuccotti Park, the way the raid went down -- not simply under cover of darkness but with reporters cordoned off and air-space over the park restricted to prevent news chopper coverage -- is not only questionable but fucking unconscionable.

Quote of the Day

"Do you really want the bar set this high? Do you really want to live in a society where just getting by requires a person to hold down two jobs? Is that your idea of the American Dream? ... Do you really want to spend the rest of your life working two jobs and 60 to 70 hours a week? Do you think you can? ... And what happens if you get sick? ... Look, you’re a tough kid. And you have a right to be proud of that. But not everybody is as tough as you, or as strong, or as young. Does pride in what you’ve accomplished mean that you have contempt for anybody who can’t keep up with you? ... And, believe it or not, there are people out there even tougher than you. Why don’t we let them set the bar, instead of you? Are you ready to work 80 hours a week? 100 hours? Can you hold down four jobs? Can you do it when you’re 40? When you’re 50? When you’re 60? Can you do it with arthritis? Can you do it with one arm? Can you do it when you’re being treated for prostate cancer? ... And is this really your idea of what life should be like in the greatest country on Earth?"

-- Max Udargo in the Daily Kos, responding to the ex-Marine who posted the above picture of himself on Erick Erickson's "We Are the 53%" Website

Udargo echoes the exact sentiment I expressed last week in talking about Herman Cain and the relentless praise he heaps on his parents' willingness to hold down three jobs while raising him. Not the fact that they did what they had to do, which is inarguably commendable, but seemingly the fact that they lived in a country where such a thing is not only possible but preferable -- as if it's some sort of honor to work your fingers to the bone just to scrape by.

To his credit, Udargo addresses this insanity -- and the guy in the picture who appears to be 100% behind it -- pretty brilliantly.

Quote of the Week

"I have trouble keeping lunch down when I read these jeremiads about how sad and mysterious it is that our institutions of government are failing. It’s not a mystery. One side wants them to fail. And there’s very little the other side can do about it, besides point it out, which the president has started doing — and now he’s the one being divisive! They’ve turned the world inside out."

-- Michael Tomasky in the Daily Beast

Steve Benen's addendum to Tomasky's piece is also required reading.

And these assholes have the nerve to wonder why people are taking to the streets -- and what's more, to demonize and denigrate them for doing so.

Guillotines.

Seriously -- fucking guillotines.

Assistant Quote of the Day

"Cantor has demonstrated a remarkable ability to combine complete ignorance of practically every major issue with the unctuous personality of a third-string maitre d’ at a fourth-string steakhouse."

-- Charles Pierce in a hilariously brilliant must-read post for Esquire

For his part, Taibbi is going to town on the fact that the usual far-right blowhards like Rush Limbaugh are losing their shit over both how troublesome the Occupy Wall Street movement has been to contain and destroy -- and how it's now forcing even the Eric Cantors of the world to kiss its collective ass. Limbaugh and his ilk are doing everything in their power to demonize this movement -- and the reality is that it's not working one bit.

Rolling Stone: Taibblog: Why Rush Limbaugh Is Freaking Out About Occupy Wall Street/10.18.11

October 15th, 2011

Times Square


London


Amsterdam


Brussels


Hong Kong


Madrid


Stockholm

Occupational Hazards

God I wish there was a mainstream news publication in America that had the full-on balls to do what Canada's Globe and Mail occasionally does with its photo captions.

Imagine us being willing to truly skewer the famous the way this series of snapshots does.

The Globe and Mail: Celebrity Photos of the Week: Occupy Wall Street Edition/10.13.11

Assistant Quote of the Day

"If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over... And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it’s a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say 'No. We will not pay for your crisis.'"

-- Naomi Klein, speaking at Occupy Wall Street last night

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.

Street Walker

Credit where credit is due: While certainly not missing the opportunity to ascend a couple of his favorite soapboxes, Glenn Greenwald's takedown of newly minted CNN starlet Erin Burnett in yesterday's Salon was pretty spot-on.

Here's the pertinent point about both Burnett and her partner-in-crime on the Wall Street beat, Alison Kosik:

"Needless to say, Burnett and Kosik consider themselves to be opinion-free, objective 'reporters.' Indeed, this is what Burnett said in the Vantiy Fair interview when asked if she sympathizes too much with the Wall Street plutocrats on whom she purports to report: 'My job isn’t to give an opinion but to try and explain what’s happening.' But just like Andrew Ross Sorkin and his protection of and subservience to his 'CEO-of-a-major-bank' friend, these people are oozing bias and opinion from every pore of their being. They are so devoted to and immersed in the insular oligarchical world of which they are desperate to be a part that they know and care about nothing else. Expecting them to provide objective, critical assessments of business elites is like expecting a heroin addict to rat out his dealer."

What he's griping about, correctly to some extent, is that Burnett, Kosik and those like them are naturally going to dismiss and denigrate the Occupy Wall Street movement in its entirety because they're inherently biased against it. They've been granted a backstage pass and it's therefore to be expected that they'll be the first ones on their knees blowing the band. What's more, they don't even realize how prejudiced and untrustworthy they are when it comes to reporting on the economy because all they breathe is rarefied air -- it's literally all they know.

The only problem with Greenwald's argument, of course, is that most journalists bring certain biases with them to their stories -- and not only is Greenwald himself not immune to this, he's one of the worst offenders. Case in point: He draws an immediate connection in the above piece between slanted Wall Street reporting and what he calls the servile stenography that national security correspondents engage in when they report on anyone who supposedly challenges the official word of government officials. He of course uses this line of thinking to explain why anyone working for a mainstream news outlet would have a problem with Julian Assange and Wikileaks. While Greenwald's right to say that access to power, any kind of power, can potentially corrupt your ability to be objective, he's wrong if he assumes that only a subservience to authority would cause someone to rail against Wikileaks. Believe me, I don't have access to a damn thing and I still don't like Julian Assange, nor do I entirely trust his creation or the unchecked influence both of them wield.

Still, the overall point Greenwald makes about the questionable trustworthiness of "insider" correspondents is worth giving credence to. If you can get past his predictably and condescendingly casting himself as journalistic integrity's last man standing, the piece is worth a read.

And by the way, Greenwald isn't the only one taking Erin Burnett apart piece by piece. The Baltimore Sun's absolute evisceration of her as "self-satisfied, smug, privileged and feeling not one whit of (the) pain" of those protesting on Wall Street or those they purport to be standing up for in this country is required reading.

Quote of the Day

"I didn't realize I hated these bankers even more than these hippies. But it took the hippies to bring it out in me. I can't help hoping they upset a few of the bastards."

-- Andrew Sullivan, summing my position up just about perfectly

"Oh God, Oh God, We're All Gonna Die"

Every once in a while it's a good idea to remind ourselves how much conspiracist batshittery Glenn Beck still flings out into the ether.

Just listen to this -- see if you can avoid being hypnotized by the slow, smoldering cadence of his voice as it oozes melodramatic seriousness and concern.

Remember, though, he's got this "verified," so have your cash and food ready for next week. Van Jones and the anarchists are coming for your hedge fund.

Assistant Quote of the Day

"Is this Occupy Wall Street thing a big deal? We’re trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all of this. Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?”

-- Anonymous bank CEO to New York Times financial reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin

This revealing line comes from a piece published in yesterday's Times, the first Sorkin has written on the Occupy Wall Street movement. I know this because Glenn Greenwald, predictably, is complaining about the tone of the piece, why it took Sorkin this long to get around to writing it, and the fact that his decision to take on the assignment seems to have come at the request of the very bank CEO referenced above.

I'd suggest taking a look at Sorkin's column and judging for yourself what you think of it, then check out Greenwald's pedantic dissection of it -- if for no other reason than to see Glenn Greenwald actually refer to someone as displaying "characteristically snotty, petty, pseudo-intellectual condescension" with what I assume is a straight face.

The War at Home

I've been putting this off for a while, mostly because I've had so much preoccupying me lately, but it's probably time I at least went on the record about the burgeoning protest movement that's captured the attention of the country and -- finally -- the country's media.

When "Occupy Wall Street" first started, it bugged the hell out of me. Anyone who's read this site long enough should immediately understand what my issues might be with a bunch of kids who seem pissed that they missed out on the 60s -- and to a lesser degree, that the summer Phish tour wrapped up -- storming Lower Manhattan to unleash a metric ton of inchoate, incoherent rage through drum circles and a whole lot of Guy Fawkes masks. For years now I've very publicly decried the old school model of left-wing protest for the simple reason that the rules have changed drastically and to pretend that they haven't will quickly render any form of push-back activism moot.

The fact is that while at one time in our nation's history individualism was seen as a serious threat to the status quo, now not only is it not dangerous, it's an almost comical anachronism. There is no individualism these days. Nothing truly audacious can stand in our culture, not when our culture has become so monstrously adept at assimilating all forms of rebellion until they become completely meaningless and utterly impotent. Prepackaged, homogenized non-conformity is as close as your local Hot Topic. Agitation is fashion. Defiance is a slogan. Insurrection is product placement. The revolution is not only televised, it can be DVRed and enjoyed at your convenience.

So, no, hundreds of people wearing different colorful outfits, each carrying a sign emblazoned with his or her personal agenda not only constitutes an ineffective mess, it provides endless fodder for the idiots at Fox News, who get to smirk patronizingly and present it as good news from the front, as Matt Taibbi once called it, for their audience of bitter old people.

The protest itself was important -- too important to be incompetently executed to the point that it could be easily dismissed by the masses.

But admittedly, something has happened over the past week or so: A single, fundamental message of Occupy Wall Street has begun to coalesce, and a series of disorganized grievances has slowly started to dovetail into one, coherent movement. What's more, the outrage voiced by a few has lit a match to the anger felt by millions -- and the resulting fire is now spreading rapidly, with similar protests flaring up across the country. Occupy Wall Street may have started as a muddled gathering of occasionally conflicting ideas, but it was the spark that was needed to potentially create a conflagration. And it's damn well about time.

I've always believed that in order for a protest of this kind to be effective, it would have to draw the support of -- and present as a public face -- more than simply the youth, since young people can always be shrugged off as misguided or simply in need of a job to better occupy their time (the latter criticism being wonderfully ironic given the very reason for the protest in the first place). Maybe that's why the photo below -- posted by Digby and circulated by Matt Osborne -- really struck a chord with me.

It's more than just a bunch of "deluded kids" now. It's the impossible-to-deny men and women who've found themselves crushed under the heel of an unaccountable and out-of-control corporate culture -- of those consistently on the winning end of the rigged, zero-sum game that success in America has gruesomely morphed into at the beginning of the 21st century. They're part of the vanishing middle-class -- and they're fucking sick of it. We're fucking sick of it.

I'm not a fan of the Rage Against the Machine brand of social upheaval, which is the reason I was wary about Occupy Wall Street at the beginning. But the band was right about one thing, and it may provide the perfect summary of what's erupted on the streets of New York City: It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?

Assistant Quote of the Day

"I get the anger driving the protest — boy howdy! — but I don’t see any specific appeal to folks on Main Street yet, and I don’t see Main Street Americans responding. Anonymous, which has pushed this campaign to 'occupy Wall Street,' has no clear set of goals, preferring to think the crowd will magically produce a set of demands by consensus. The 'theory of change' seems to be (1) protest (2) ????? (3) change!"

-- Matt Osborne on this weekend's interesting but ultimately silly "Occupy Wall Street" rally, promoted largely by Anonymous

Obviously, at this point almost any show of organized, non-violent resistance has the potential to do some good. The problem is that "Occupy Wall Street" wasn't organized nearly enough. And for the record, you want to make a real statement? Try descending on Wall Street when it's not a Saturday and there are some, you know, actual people there. The overall idea was right -- it's just the execution and the platform given to certain self-defeating lunatics that was all wrong.