This is just getting embarrassing. No, not the freak show at Zuccotti Park. I'm talking about the "reporting" on it. Mawking drivel like this would normally be rejected by the editor of a high school paper, for crying out loud.
As dawn broke over Zuccotti Park, hundreds of tarps, tents and blankets fluttered in the chill wind.
A Bronx couple crawled out of their makeshift home and held each other in a long, warm embrace.
A few feet away, a massage therapist from Maine sat bundled up on a sleeping bag while her brother immersed himself in a book.
Moments later, a former caregiver from Brooklyn carefully maneuvered her way through the sleeping masses offering up dry, clean socks.
"How are your feet? Are they dry?" Cindy Young, 52, asked a young woman who had stirred from her slumber.
"Sweetie, help yourself."
The Occupy Wall Street encampment has taken over a lower Manhattan park for five weeks now and sparked copycat sit-ins around the globe and mass demonstrations in the streets.
Wait, what? Mass demonstrations? Uh, where were those?
Hundreds come to the encampment each day to share their views, offer help or simply gawk, and hundreds more continue to sleep there each night.
Life inside the plaza, at Broadway and Liberty St., has taken on an unorthodox routine of its own.
Committees have emerged to deal with sanitation, comfort and medical needs. There is a library, a kitchen and a spiritual area around what they call the Tree of Life. Trash is separated for recycling, discarded food goes in a compost, a daily drum circle pounds out beats.
"It's a little carnival-ish," said tourist Jerry Lazar, 57, from Santa Ana, Calif.
There is no wakeup call in this hyper-democratic community where everyone is encouraged to live and let be, but activity begins around 7 a.m.
Hyper-democratic? Is that what this is? I could have sworn it was a call for the end of capitalism. Does that reflect democracy, let alone a
hyper version of it? And come to think of it, these folks really do need a wakeup call, along with a reality check.
One recent morning, the first bellow of "mic check" came at 8.30 a.m., when the sanitation team ordered all tarps picked up for a mass clean up.
Few listened, but a handful of dedicated protesters started to scrub and sweep the ground.
The Occupy Wall Street New Yorkers often head home by day to change, shower or even work. They open their doors to others who have traveled long distances.
But as temperatures plummet, tempers have frayed and the Kumbayah unity has been tested.
Thefts have occurred. A physical fight almost broke out near the kitchen one afternoon, and the "security team" was called to break it up.
Some protesters have also reportedly taken to using bottles - or the street - to urinate at night.
Conveniently the "reporter" omitted
defecation.
The general assembly - a loose-knit governing body - has been marred in bickering and struggles to reach consensus on issues.
Still, each afternoon, dozens of round-table discussions spring up on an array of topics, from corporate greed to anti-Semitism.
What are they doing, figuring ways to be even more anti-Semitic than the hundreds of examples we're already seen?
<span>[Still, each afternoon, dozens of round-table discussions spring up on an array of topics, from corporate greed to <span>anti-Semitism</span>.]</span>
ReplyDeleteThere's a nice rhetorical trick. that line makes it sound as if the Occupiers are coming together to combatat anit-Semitism. They could't report it straight, so they had to trick the reader into thinking anti-anti-Semitism is one of OWS <span>noble causes</span>.
If you think the media whitewashing is annoying now, just wait. It'll be even more annoying twenty years from now when lefty historians use these fabricated accounts as justification for their hagiography of the Occupy "movement."
ReplyDeleteDid you follow the whole drums scandal? It was hilarious. The local residents were all ticked off at the racket of the constant drumming; they had a community meeting about it but, strangely, the offending drums were somehow vandalized/stolen/destroyed the night before the meeting. Then when the "drummers" (who you covered in one post) petitioned for a piece of the $450,000 pie to replace the drums, they were denied. What did they immediately yell? Racism, of course!
ReplyDeleteI was taught in English 101 that reporting was "supposed" to be expository. The kind of crap these so-called writers are belching out belongs in children's books.
ReplyDelete