Why are the protesters there? Well, the answers ranged from extremely earnest college roommate-y, to powerful and cogent.
FOX NEWS REPORTER: What do you guys want?
PROTESTER #1: Bring attention to the pervasive influence that corporations have in the political process.
PROTESTER #2: What do we as Americans agree on? And what we do about it.
PROTESTER #3: We the people are here to take the power back.
JESSE LAGRECA: After 30 years of having our living standards decrease while the wealthiest 1% have had it better than ever, I think it's time for, I don't know, some participation in our democracy!
Hoo-hoo! Dayum!! That motherfucker brought game! (wild audience applause) You know what he said? "What's up, Tea Party? I see your tri-cornered hat, and I raise you a Union soldier kepi!"
....
ANN COULTER (10/3/2011): All of those quotes could've been said in 1789, France, before the French Revolution. Or the Russian Revolution. Or with only slight modification, when the Nazis were coming to power. ... This is always the beginning of totalitarianism.
"This group is a laughable gang of disorganized confused Nazis. This is an ill-disciplined highly-trained weed-smoking fascist organization."
But the protesters do have some surprising defenders.
SEAN HANNITY: You know, the average American taxpayer knows that at the end of the day, they're going to be on the hook for the trillions and trillions of dollars that we're using to bail out these companies, some of whom have been irresponsible, and they are expressing their frustration, which I think is quintessentially American.
(Jon and audience applauds) Bravo! Bravo Sean Hannity! Breaking ranks with your conservative friends.... (listens to earpiece) Oh, that's a clip from 2009 about the Tea Party? Uh, what does Sean Hannity think about these protesters' frustration?
SEAN HANNITY (10/3/2011): They hate corporations, they hate capitalism, and in the end, ultimately, they want statism over free markets. So they really don't like freedom.
Oh! All right. So rage against a duly-elected government is patriotic, quintessentially American. Whereas rage against multi-national shareholder accountable corporations is anti-American. Gotcha. OK.
I don't get it. Here's a group of Americans, disenchanted, railing against big government bailouts, angry because they played by the rules, worked hard, now they're in debt from student loans and they're unemployed. I mean, look, if this thing turns into throwing trash cans into Starbucks windows, nobody's going to be down with that. We all love Starbucks. But these protesters, how are they not like the Tea Party? All right, some of them, you know, smoke and have pants made out of pot. So call them the THC Party. Aren't these folks real citizens with real problems? Aren't they also speaking for America?
Video and transcript below the fold.
We begin right here in New York City. There was a march on Wall Street today sponsored by the group Occupy Wall Street, and oddly enough, Sunny D. "For extreme protesters!" The Occupy Wall Street movement has basically been a 4-week downtown Manhattan live-in, which has spread to cities all around the country, causing the media to move its coverage dial from blackout to circus.
It's too bad that those are the only two settings it has. Intrepid reporters from all the major networks, and CNN, went down to talk with the protesters. Of course, the reporters changed into their undercover 21 Jump Street outfits.
"What's up, bro-testers? Mind if we chillax with you in HD? 'Cuz the aspect ratio on the shot's gonna be badass!"
Why are the protesters there? Well, the answers ranged from extremely earnest college roommate-y, to powerful and cogent.
FOX NEWS REPORTER: What do you guys want?
PROTESTER #1: Bring attention to the pervasive influence that corporations have in the political process.
PROTESTER #2: What do we as Americans agree on? And what we do about it.
PROTESTER #3: We the people are here to take the power back.
JESSE LAGRECA: After 30 years of having our living standards decrease while the wealthiest 1% have had it better than ever, I think it's time for, I don't know, some participation in our democracy!
Hoo-hoo! Dayum!! That motherfucker brought game! (wild audience applause) You know what he said? "What's up, Tea Party? I see your tri-cornered hat, and I raise you a Union soldier kepi!"
So those are the protesters, or to put their words another way:
JESSE WATTERS (9/30/2011): I think if you put every single left-wing cause into a blender and hit "Power", this is the sludge you'd get.
10/4/2011:
CNBC GUY: I saw one guy with a guitar, and they asked him, you know...
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: It's very hippie.
KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE (9/30/2011): It's like Woodstock meets Burning Man, meets people with absolutely no purpose.
CHARLIE GASPARINO (10/3/2011): They are some of the most uninformed people, if you listen to them.
WOMAN ON CNN (10/3/2011): They're all over the map.
ERIC BOLLING (10/3/2011): "... demolition of capitalism. If we learn to share, we can all live in prosperity."
ANN COULTER (10/3/2011): All of those quotes could've been said in 1789, France, before the French Revolution. Or the Russian Revolution. Or with only slight modification, when the Nazis were coming to power. ... This is always the beginning of totalitarianism.
"This group is a laughable gang of disorganized confused Nazis. This is an ill-disciplined highly-trained weed-smoking fascist organization."
But the protesters do have some surprising defenders.
SEAN HANNITY: You know, the average American taxpayer knows that at the end of the day, they're going to be on the hook for the trillions and trillions of dollars that we're using to bail out these companies, some of whom have been irresponsible, and they are expressing their frustration, which I think is quintessentially American.
(Jon and audience applauds) Bravo! Bravo Sean Hannity! Breaking ranks with your conservative friends.... (listens to earpiece) Oh, that's a clip from 2009 about the Tea Party? Uh, what does Sean Hannity think about these protesters' frustration?
SEAN HANNITY (10/3/2011): They hate corporations, they hate capitalism, and in the end, ultimately, they want statism over free markets. So they really don't like freedom.
Oh! All right. So rage against a duly-elected government is patriotic, quintessentially American. Whereas rage against multi-national shareholder accountable corporations is anti-American. Gotcha. OK.
I don't get it. Here's a group of Americans, disenchanted, railing against big government bailouts, angry because they played by the rules, worked hard, now they're in debt from student loans and they're unemployed. I mean, look, if this thing turns into throwing trash cans into Starbucks windows, nobody's going to be down with that. We all love Starbucks. But these protesters, how are they not like the Tea Party? All right, some of them, you know, smoke and have pants made out of pot. So call them the THC Party. Aren't these folks real citizens with real problems? Aren't they also speaking for America?
MARK MECKLER, TEA PARTY PATRIOTS (10/4/2011): These folks aren't speaking for America.
LARRY KUDLOW (10/3/2011): ... just your basic green, anti-capitalist, anti-bank, anti-Wall Street, anti-American demonstration ...
MARK MECKLER (10/4/2011): That's not Tea Party behavior, that's not America-loving behavior.
"They probably don't even masturbate to the Constitution. That's what I think."
All right, I'll bite. Why are the Occupy Wall Street folks unworthy of Tea Party respect and ideals?
MARK MECKLER (10/4/2011): They're not law-abiding citizens, they're camping in a park where camping isn't allowed, they're breaking the laws on the Brooklyn Bridge. That's not Tea Party behavior.
Everything you described there, I believe, is a misdemeanor. The actual Tea Party was a fucking felony. Do you know how much trouble....? I mean, do you know what the Tea Party actually was?? You know how much trouble you'd get in if you broke into a ship, stole the cargo from the ship's owners, and just threw it overboard? Not to mention the EPA fines and the damage it would do to your Indian costume? The Tea Party namesake... you're named after the most celebrated act of theft and vandalism of private property in our nation's history! And you can't stomach a little park camping??
But if there is one criticism that nearly everyone, even their supporters, seem to share, it was this.
ALEX WITT (10/2/2011): When you look at the message, though, what is it these protesters are trying to get across here? Because it doesn't necessarily seem a very cohesive one.
TANYA RIVERO (10/3/2011): Seems like they're going to have to crystallize their message.
STEVE DOCCY (10/3/2011): The message is muddled.
What the...? Did you just call the protesters Muggles? I watch a lot of movies. But this guy brings up a good point. We cannot expect a bunch of disenfranchised park dwellers to come up with a coherent solution to our nation's economic woes. We have a political ruling class to do that.
BILL HEMMER (4/27/2011): Congress took many answers on what caused the economic meltdown.
JACK CAFFERTY (4/4/2011): A bipartisan group of Senators known as the Gang of Six is working on a proposal to cut the deficit.
SCOTT PELLEY (9/13/2011): ... the Congressional Super Committee created to cut the deficit ...
BALD GUY ON FOX BUSINESS (12/30/2010): ... the Simpson-Bowles plan ...
TODD HARRIS (7/19/2011): ... Senator Coburn's plan ...
JOE SCARBOROUGH (9/20/2011): Doesn't this sound like a great idea? Simpson-Bowles sound like a great idea?
JIM CRAMER (9/19/2011): ... the Bowles-Simpson dead on arrival ...
JUDY WOODRUFF (1/27/2011): The ten of you spent months working on this, though, and now you have this significant dissent.
SEN. TED KAUFMAN, D-DE (4/28/2010): I think what we should do is break these banks up.
REP. BARNEY FRANK, D-MA (7/15/2011): To break up every institution right now ... could have been destabilizing.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, R-SC, & HOWARD DEAN (8/7/2011): (back-and-forth crosstalk and yelling over each other)
I think I got it, I think I got it, yeah.
For God's sakes, people! Now I see why you're mad at them for being muddled and incoherent. That's your fucking job. Oh wait, we did pass Dodd-Frank, the greatest Wall Street reform since the Great Depression.
GERRI WILLIS (7/5/2011): In just over two weeks, the Dodd-Frank law will be a year old, and we're not really any closer to fully implementing it.
MATT TAIBBI (7/24/2011): The stuff that would have addressed the fraud, too big to fail, derivatives, almost all of those measures were either rejected outright or watered down to near meaningless.
GERRI WILLIS (7/5/2011): Out of an estimated 400 regulations to be written, just 38 are complete.
And those 38 were the easy ones! No spitting. Don't take your dick out before 5.
You know what? If the people who were supposed to fix our financial system had actually done it, the people who have no idea how to solve these problems wouldn't be getting shit for not offering solutions. And while we all fight, the real victims, as always, continue to suffer.
10/3/2011:
STEVE DOOCY: I was up in Boston this weekend, and they had Occupy Boston, there were a thousand people at Dewey Square.
BRIAN KILMEADE: Were you protesting?
STEVE DOOCY: I was just driving by. I was trying to get to supper, and a thousand people were between me and a steak dinner!
Steve Doocy, reacting to the revolution: "Let me eat steak!" We'll be right back.
on Cain's ridiculously stupid homophobic stance on homosexuality being a "choice".