By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. on 2.9.12 @ 6:08AM
This health hazard and social menace is what the Left regards as
America's next great political cause?
WASHINGTON -- As the tents were coming down at McPherson Square, the
dead rats and mice being retrieved, the urine and feces and filthy
bedding disposed of by District of Columbia employees dressed in
hazardous-materials suits like their contemporaries at Fukushima, I
thought of the left-wing press. You see, I read the left-wing press. Not
the urban throwaway rags, but I read the Nation, the Progressive, the
American Prospect, and more -- I read them all. They have been raving
for months about the exciting prospect of a great wave of reform coming
out of the Occupiers' Movement. It was here to stay, and for a while
silly old me took them seriously.
Not the "Masturbate for Peace" movement, which made its rude appearance
in Madison, Wisconsin, nor the "Urinate and Defecate Against World
Hunger" crowd, who occasionally made headlines in Manhattan. Rather, I
mean the-out-of-work Ph.D.s in Romance Languages or the mild mannered,
middle-class schoolteachers, who the left-wing press kept coming across
midst the delusional rabble. The left-wing journalists interviewed them.
To read their reports one would think that this Occupy Movement really
was sweeping America, rather than on its last legs and being shut down.
Their end was coming for very good reasons, I might add. The Occupy
Movement was a health hazard, occasionally a serious crime scene --
rape, robbery, and mayhem -- and in most places throughout the country
it was in contravention of simple laws against vagrancy.
Illustrious names from journalism's past -- even the New York Review of
Books -- were showing themselves to be utterly out of touch with the way
things are in America today with budgets so out of balance and economic
growth so slight. Even President Barack Obama and other eminentoes from
the Democratic Party sided with the Occupiers long after the Occupiers
had discredited themselves. Now for the most part the Occupiers are no
more. Yet the left-wing press raves on, and I suppose the mainstream
media is complicit. This movement was more degenerate than they
reported.
In the Progressive someone by the name of Naomi Klein attests, "I've
never seen anything like this in my life. Every day, new occupations
[sic] are growing, not just in this country. People are so excited to
have a new tent in which to meet, and the possibility of it expanding
limitlessly. Political courage is contagious." So, apparently, is
hysteria.
Some of it was very funny? Did former Senator George McGovern make an
appearance at Zuccotti Park? The New York Review of Books reports, "A
bedraggled man who had arrived that day from Hawaii announced his
candidacy for president and asked for the movement's blessing." I did
not know George was in Hawaii. Yet some of it demonstrated just how
dismissive of the truth the American left really is. There was this from
the Nation in January, "The Occupation encampments that enlivened
approximately 1,400 cities this fall provided a vivid template for the
99 percent's growing sense of unity. Here were thousands of people -- we
may never know the exact numbers -- from all walks of life, living
outdoors in the streets and parks…. The 99 percent, which might have
seemed to be a purely aspirational category just a few month ago, began
to will itself into existence." Ninety-nine percent? Does that include
me? Does it include the 40 percent of the country that usually polls
conservative, and the almost equally large percentage that polls
independent? Who is deluding whom, and remember the entire left-wing
press bought into this garbagespiel, most probably along with much of
the major media.
I have been saying for some time that Liberalism is dead. I shall even
be coming out with a book on the subject in a couple of months. That the
hitherto respectable magazines of the left would push such nonsense is
to be included in my diagnosis. There was a day when the Liberals would
argue according to some standards of objectivity. They would not push a
line that was absolute flapdoodle. Yet Liberalism is dead. The
Occupation hysteria adopted by every single journal on the left is but
another proof of it. Those who read the left-wing press ought to demand
their money back. They could have been killed at McPherson Square or
Zuccotti Park, or at least have been robbed or raped.
--
"They have “empathy tables” at the NYC OccuTard encampment. That’s
where you go to get a hug after a fellow OccuTard takes a dump on your
sleeping spot."
--
"If Barack Obama isn't careful, he will become the Jimmy Carter of the
21st century."
