http://www.nytimes.com/...
The New York Times has trained its snot-nose directly over the Wall Street protests and blown out a gusher of ridicule and contempt.
N.R. Kleinfield (Not sure what the N.R. stands for--use your imagination) and Cara Buckley are doing their damndest to ensure that anyone who picks up the New York Times this morning knows that what is going on in Lower Manhattan is a complete freakshow, not worth the cost of a Metrocard.
The front-page piece (next to a profile article of the profoundly relevant Rick Santorum), giddily titled "Wall Street Occupiers, Protesting Till Whenever" alerts us from the outset that the protests should correctly be seen as a circus as opposed to substantive expressions of outrage. A few participants are carefully singled out to make this point:
A man named Hero was here. So was Germ. There was the waitress from the dim sum restaurant in Evanston, Ill. And the liquor store worker. The Google consultant. The circus performer. The Brooklyn nanny.
Short: These are not serious people. These are not people whom we should take seriously. They have silly nicknames. They perform for us in circuses and wait on our tables.
The hodgepodge Lower Manhattan encampment known as Occupy Wall Street has no appointed leaders, no expiration date for its rabble-rousing stay and still-evolving goals and demands. Yet its two weeks of noisy occupation has lured a sturdily faithful and fervent constituency willing to express discontentment with what they feel is an inequitable financial system until, well, whenever.
Short: This is Burning Man relocated to Lower Manhattan. If you go, bring your camera.
They are a couple, both having taken an indefinite leave from school in Boston to travel across the country, very much on the cheap. Stopping in Providence, R.I., five days ago to sleep at a homeless shelter, they encountered a man who called himself Germ and said he was an activist. He was coming to the protest. They figured why not.
Short: This is a lark, a whim for most. These are not people whom we should take seriously.
The actress Susan Sarandon stopped by, as did the Princeton professor Cornel West and former Gov. David A. Paterson of New York. A widely reported episode last Saturday, when four protesters were pepper-sprayed by a police commander, elevated the visibility of the demonstrators.
Short: The Pepper spray was the best thing that could have happened to these folks. Oh, and Susan Sarandon "stopped by."
And just in case the idea of being sprayed with mace in the eyes for no reason might garner some sympathy from some NYTimes readers:
On Friday night, many marched to Police Headquarters to criticize what they described as the improper tactics that the police had used against their movement.
Yep, they marched right down there and "criticized." They delivered a critique. Because, by golly, the policeman may have done something improper.
It gets worse. The protestors were "shooed" away from Wall Street. One fellow was "squeezing" in some protest while in New York for a wedding. The physical attributes of the protesters are highlighted (as in the photograph at the top of the online link, above):
A 38-year-old bicycle messenger with a head shaved except for a long braid arrived early Friday by bus
You get the picture. 38. Bicycle messenger. Head shaved. By bus. This is not a person we should take seriously.
There are also a few therapists. Some out-of-work protesters are depressed. They need someone’s ear.
That sentence speaks for itself. You can just imagine the glee coursing through Cara and "N.R.'s' heads as they typed that one up.
Because these are not people to be taken seriously. Got that?
Charles Blow in his op-ed piece bemoans the fact that the protest
... feels like a festival of frustrations, a collective venting session with little edge or urgency, highlighting just how far away downtown Manhattan is from Damascus — the hyper-aggressiveness of the police not withstanding.
Maybe if your newspaper treated the protesters with the same respect, attentiveness and concern it reserved today for Morgan Stanley you might get a better sense of the "urgency."
But that doesn't seem to be the Times' game plan.