It has been instructive watching the evolution of elite opinion in response to the Occupy Wall Street protest movement. Initially the main stream media’s response was one of no response: ignore it and it will go away. When that didn’t happen, and minimum standards of news reporting required some sort of coverage, the tack that was taken was to mock and deride this expression of grassroots outrage. The epitome of this response can be seen in this article by New York Times former Arts Beat reporter, Ginia Bellafante http://www.nytimes.com/...
But that was just the beginning.
Other news outlets either repeated the metaphor of confused carnival hippies or sought journalistic fig leaves to justify their continued non-coverage. NPR’s Executive Editor for News, Dick Meyer, had this to say about why they were not covering a news story that would seem to fall under the rubric of “All Things Considered” :
"The recent protests on Wall Street did not involve large numbers of people, prominent people, a great disruption or an especially clear objective."
NPR and the Times soon changed their tone and expanded their coverage, after the infamous pepper-spray video went viral. (Food for thought: why do media elites always decry violent protest, but completely ignore peaceful protests?)
Soon, also, Fox News was inviting Tea Partiers on their network to denounce peaceful citizens pursuing their First Amendment rights. Eric Cantor and Mitt Romney helpfully joined in to warn us about the danger in pitting Americans against one another. And of course, there was plain-spoken Herman Cain telling the protesters to go get a job and stop being jealous of those who had made it big. Clearly attention was being paid.
But now there is a new and very ugly spin being hatched by one of the conservative movement’s, “big thinkers.” In an op-ed in yesterday’s (10/11/11) New York Times, columnist, David Brooks, tried to draw lines between the protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement and one of the ugliest prejudices of our times: anti-Semitism. No, he did not use that word, but look at the words he did use in explaining the origin of the Occupy Wall Street movement:
This uprising was sparked by the magazine Adbusters, previously best known for the 2004 essay, “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?”-an investigative report that identified some of the most influential Jews in America and their nefarious grip on policy. If there is a core theme to the Occupy Wall Street movement, it is that the virtuous 99 percent of society is being cheated by the richest and greediest 1 percent.
Now this is arrant nonsense. Whatever the connection between Adbusters and the original protesters, it is simplistic to the point of being fallacious to say that thousands of Americans are being moved to protest their current economic status at the behest of a political journal of which most of them have probably never heard. Brooks never thinks that their anger might stem from a hard look at their own economic circumstances, at the national tragedy of our politics, and at the disgrace of our financial sector. Of course he goes on to make other offensive claims about the 99 Percenters, who, he says “think very highly of themselves” (unlike himself of course).There is much more along this line and it is all ably refuted by Matt Asch in L Magazine: http://www.thelmagazine.com/...)
But I want to concentrate on the passage quoted above. Look at the provocative language Brooks employs. Not only is the movement an “uprising.” It was “sparked” into existence by a magazine that Brooks asserts is known only for an article detailing the “nefarious grip” of American Jews. By this not very subtle sleight-of-hand, Brooks slips the odious charge of anti-Semitism into his argument against the protesters. You see, Adbusters is anti-Semitic, and since Adbusters is the source of the protest, the protesters must themselves be anti-Semites, or at least they must be naively serving the interests of anti-Semites. Brooks goes on in his column to repeat this “nefarious grip” metaphor several times, each time suggesting that to protest against the depredations of Wall Street is for the protesters to somehow buy into the repellent belief that Wall Street is just a synonym for something else.
But of course Brooks doesn’t have the courage to state explicitly that this is what he is suggesting. He relies on his not-so-subtle smears. His tenuous argument is belied by the fact that so many of his fellow citizens are marching in this movement. All of whom (Jewish and non-Jewish) would be surprised to learn that they were the tools of anti-Semitism in speaking out against the great imbalance that has shaken our country.
This is the next level of discourse; this is the next tack in discrediting the Occupy Wall Street movement. It comes in the genteel pages of the New York Times and it is proffered by a “wise man” of the right. At least for now.