More signs of OWS Astro-Turf
And big media collusion. Dana Loesch has the story.
Big Journalism has learned that the Occupy Washington DC movement is working with well-known media members to craft its demands and messaging while these media members report on the movement. Someone has made the emails from the Occupy D.C. email distro public and searchable. The names in the list are a veritable who’s who in media.
Journolist 2.0 includes well known names such as MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, Rolling Stone’s Matt Tiabbi who both are actively participating; involvement from other listers such as Bill Moyers and Glenn Greenwald plus well-known radicals like Noam Chomsky, remains unclear. The list also includes a number of Occupy organizers, such as one of the Occupy Wall Street main organizers Kevin Zeese.
There is a lot of behind the scenes manipulation going on with this movement on the left as the Obama water carriers swing into coordinated action. Read the whole article and check out the examples.
The Obama campaign and Obama himself is trying very carefully to help craft the message so he can at least tentatively embrace the movement, characterize it as a populist movement and try to use it to give his re-election chances some momentum. Yesterday Obama made the comparison between the OWS movement and the civil rights movement of the ‘60s. Having been around for that, I’ve got to say I’m just not seeing it.
To this point, OWS is a ragbag confederation of the usual A.N.S.W.E.R groups and the movement still hasn’t issued any coherent statement of its purpose except to harass the rich and attempt to lay the blame for – well you name it—at their feet. As you’ll see, OWS now has “professional” help to help them put something together.
Obviously there is a lot of anger out there – we’ve known that for years, actually, as we’ve watched wave election after wave election take place and have witnessed the rise of the Tea Party.
But most of that anger and discontent was aimed at government. And that has put this Administration on the defensive. Where it could once claim outsider credentials, it is the government establishment now. Obama knows that if the focus of discontent stays on government, his re-election chances are not good.
However, this movement offers a perfect opportunity to shift focus and blame.
It comes as no surprise then that media water carriers and spin doctors along with the administration see this as an opportunity to expand on the class warfare meme and shift blame and focus away from government.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO