Matt Taibbi: How I Stopped Worrying & Learned To Love The OWS Protests

[Hissyspit]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-i-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-love-the-ows-protests-20111110

- snip -

The protesters, chirped Supreme Reichskank Ann Coulter, needed three things: "showers, jobs and a point." Her colleague Charles Krauthammer went so far as to label the protesters hypocrites for having iPhones. OWS, he said, is "Starbucks-sipping, Levi's-clad, iPhone-clutching protesters corporate America even as they weep for Steve Jobs, corporate titan, billionaire eight times over." Apparently, because Goldman and Citibank are corporations, no protester can ever consume a corporate product – not jeans, not cellphones and definitely not coffee – if he also wants to complain about tax money going to pay off some billionaire banker's bets against his own crappy mortgages.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the political spectrum, there were scads of progressive pundits like me who wrung our hands with worry that OWS was playing right into the hands of assholes like Krauthammer. Don't give them any ammunition! we counseled. Stay on message! Be specific! We were all playing the Rorschach-test game with OWS, trying to squint at it and see what we wanted to see in the movement. Viewed through the prism of our desire to make near-term, within-the-system changes, it was hard to see how skirmishing with cops in New York would help foreclosed-upon middle-class families in Jacksonville and San Diego.

What both sides missed is that OWS is tired of all of this. They don't care what we think they're about, or should be about. They just want something different.

We're all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable that it chokes the life out of that built-in desire. Everything from our pop culture to our economy to our politics feels oppressive and unresponsive. We see 10 million commercials a day, and every day is the same life-killing chase for money, money and more money; the only thing that changes from minute to minute is that every tick of the clock brings with it another space-age vendor dreaming up some new way to try to sell you something or reach into your pocket. The relentless sameness of the two-party political system is beginning to feel like a Jacob's Ladder nightmare with no end; we're entering another turn on the four-year merry-go-round, and the thought of having to try to get excited about yet another minor quadrennial shift in the direction of one or the other pole of alienating corporate full-of-shitness is enough to make anyone want to smash his own hand flat with a hammer.

If you think of it this way, Occupy Wall Street takes on another meaning...

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[myrna minx]

1. Great article. K&R n/t

[Kber]

2. Thanks for posting!

It's a short article (for Matt Tiabbi) and completely worth the time to read the whole thing.

Again - thanks!

[snagglepuss]

3. to read later. bkmrd

[intheflow]

4. K&R

Absolutely brilliant piece.

[Fire Walk With Me]

5. "People want to go someplace for at least five minutes where no one is trying to bleed you or sell

you something."

:thumbsup:

[MisterP]

6. 1. hipsters mostly don't protest

2. mostly hipsters intensely mourned Steve Jobs
3. most hipsters did not intensely mourn Jobs, unless the average of items 1. and 2. is over 0.7071

[Missy Vixen]

7. Just for the following, I think I'd bear Taibbi's children*

>Supreme Reichskank Ann Coulter<

I understand it's wrong to giggle like a twelve-year-old at the above, but giggle I did.

Outstanding article.

K&R.

*homage to Lola Heatherton of SCTV

[Gabi Hayes]

11. exactly five minutes in.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2O7qm521eI

you made my day!

[Dont call me Shirley]

8. This article reminds me of John Lennon's song "Let It Be'

Just let life be without all the trickery, thievery, hate, war and abuse. Let ourselves just be the goodness that we are, that is real freedom.

[snagglepuss]

9. What an excellent read. Thanks for posting. Bkmrk.

:kick:

[bertman]

10. Every day someone else asks me "Why are you involved in Occupy and what do you want?"

Now I'm just going to smile and give them a copy of this brilliant commentary.

REC.

[Electric Monk]

12. k&r

[KayInMaine]

13. Fantastic article, Matt!

I think Matt should do an expose on how FireDogLake is co-opting the Occupy Movement by setting up a fund to have money sent directly to them instead of providing links directly to each of the Occupations they want to help out! No one is allowed to co-opt this Movement, so why is FireDogLake getting a pass on this issue?

[blackspade]

14. Big K&R for Matt!

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. By jove, Matt Taibbi GETS IT

FINALLY

[hulka38]

16. K&R

We want major changes. You know where to stick your incrementalism and excuse making.

[MindMover]

17. Smash your hand with a hammer, Or stick a shark stick in your eye....

Yes the relentless sameness of the two party political system is enough to make any cognitive thinking person retch up there breakfast....

[me b zola]

18. ...

:thumbsup:

[mrarundale]

19. but Charles Krauthammer is right

and the marketing people who designed the "protests" knew that. The only way to overcome "wall street" is to stop buying their stuff - everybody. No protests necessary. Until we are ready to do that the corporations and legalized gambling of wall street will continue to have power. Matt Taibbi DOES NOT get it, he never does. If he did he wouldn't have a job working for corporate media.
btw- I'm a hypocrite I use a 'puter and drive a car. Therefore I can't go and protest against the people who profit from those things.

[davidthegnome]

20. Is he?

"Her colleague Charles Krauthammer went so far as to label the protesters hypocrites for having iPhones. OWS, he said, is "Starbucks-sipping, Levi's-clad, iPhone-clutching protesters corporate America even as they weep for Steve Jobs, corporate titan, billionaire eight times over." Apparently, because Goldman and Citibank are corporations, no protester can ever consume a corporate product – not jeans, not cellphones and definitely not coffee – if he also wants to complain about tax money going to pay off some billionaire banker's bets against his own crappy mortgages."

Now I sure as hell couldn't afford an iphone right now - but if someones relatives or friends get them one for a birthday or Christmas, are they hypocrites for carrying and using them? It's a useful tool - but just a tool, not a means of corporate oppression.

As for the rest of your analysis... let's say that a man sold you a hammer for ten dollars. Now, the man who sold you this hammer did not tell you that the handle was made in China and known to have issues. You swing for a nail, the head falls off, lands on your foot and bruises you. Most of us probably wouldn't go out and sue for something like that, we'd be mildly embarrassed, maybe even laugh at the stupidity of it. Must have done something wrong... stupid hammer.

Now let us further say that this man who sold you that hammer, ten years later, is the head of a company that specializes in selling hammers similar to the one he sold you (if not as obviously defective). He employs a number of people in foreign Countries, paying them pennies to the dollar in comparison to what he would have to pay an American. The supplies come from over seas, the vast majority of the labor is not here in the US. Company oversight is poor, regulation is a joke. Perhaps he has some people here working as customer support professionals, or in various offices throughout the Country. Most likely he pays them somewhere from 8 to 10 dollars an hour to handle the endless stream of complaints from people who bought his crappy hammers.

Would you like this man or respect him? Would it be wrong to protest his obvious lack of professional ethics or the way he uses people?

Now take this fellow with his hammers and multiply the issue and the amount of income ten times over. That's what most people in OWS are protesting.

I use a computer and drive a car - but that would not (nor should it) stop me from protesting against those who make them if they are acting like the man who sold hammers, or, as the case is, acting far, far worse. Keep in mind - our tax dollars went to bail out the big boys and girls on wall street, in the banks, corporate titans. They were too big to fail, Wall Street could not be expected to suffer the consequences of their own greed and lack of oversight and hindsight. Instead, it is the American tax payer who must suffer the consequences. Your average punk like me, working nights and weekends as a dishwasher, barely earning enough to cover gas.

Damn right I'd march in protest, I'd even take my car (if only I could afford the gas) and a laptop (if I had one) with me.

[davidthegnome]

23. Further...

Let us not forget either, that those customer support professionals are also paying for the hammer makers bailout when his company goes broke due to poor financial management. Our dear old Charles would refer to the hammer maker as a "Job Creator", most republicans would.

These customer support professionals are absurdly grateful to be making 9 bucks an hour (or a similar wage) thinking to themselves that they are incredibly fortunate to have a job in this failing economy. Why is the economy failing? Why are we so short on jobs, especially jobs that offer real opportunities or benefits? You could ask Charles, you could even ask the hammer man. Their replies would consist of blaming welfare, those "lazy people" who survive on the government dollar, or use food stamps, or benefit in any way from the tax dollar that, they will remark, comes primarily from the wealthy who have to suffer supporting our sorry butts. Ignore the fact that those tax dollars supported hammer man when his company failed.

But damn those people who drive cars made by corporations, or use computers made by corporations. How dare they use those tools and then have the nerve to protest. Damn those people like Taibbi who work for the corporate media while being aware of reality. I tell you, Taibbi is one of the few friends the American public have - one of the few willing to speak the truth and damn the consequences - such as being blasted by such charming people as our dear Charles, or Ann Coulter.

When all you have are inferior tools made by the greedy, the ignorant and the stupid (for the most part - there are good manufacturers, but they are hard to find) you use what you have. I know of precious few people who can afford Starbucks Coffee in the morning, precious few who could afford their own iphone - of those few, most of them had to save up for a few months to buy their iphones, to make a down payment on a car that will, most likely, in a couple of months have an issue requiring hundreds of dollars to fix.

Taibbi does indeed get it. Charles, sadly, lacks the ability for original thought. Sadly, he also lacks the ability to tell reality from republican spewed venom.

[alcibiades_mystery]

21. Closest description in popular press to a Temporary Autonomous Zone I've seen

I think everyone should read Hakim Bey's The Temporary Autonomous Zone if they want to understand the force of these protests.

http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html#labelTAZ

[saras]

22. We want something that can't be corrupted

...and if everything we create gets corrupted, then we need to cut down the power of the corrupters, so that ordinary things are strong enough to resist corruption without unobtainium armor plating.

[shanti]

24. k&r

love matt taibbi!