Comparing Occupy with the Tea Party

But how do you really feel Larry? [Link]

Both sides agree that the body politic is unhealthy. The Tea Party solution is the replace the defective parts and put the body on a diet. The OWS solution is to transplant its brain with a cabbage. Then set it on fire.

Where were the cries last year that everyone who was unhappy with the current economic situation should listen to the Tea Party, because they had a legitimate complaint? Funny, I don’t remember those. Right wing group says that problem X exists, insult them and mock those crazies. Left wing group says that problem X exists, then we should all respectfully agree that X is a serious problem and have a dialog about what to do about X, even though the left wing solution to X rewards the people that caused X, and then makes X ten times worse.

That’s the thing that irks me the most about OWS.  Comparing how they get treated in the media narrative against how competing movements are portrayed. The Tea Party are violent, racist extremists, with an extreme agenda, who want to lynch minorities, and if the government does what they want then we’ll go back to the dark ages, all the old folks will die, children will starve, and so they can all burn in hell, those racist bastards.  On the other hand, OWS demonstrates that the government needs to do more, and that people are suffering in these tough times, and that greed is bad m’kay, and that we should totally feel sorry for these poor people, and if only all those awful rich people would give up their stuff, then everybody could be happy together.

Sure, that’s simplified, but look at how either side is talked about on any story, any issue, in the vast majority of the media and see if it doesn’t fit those basic parameters. Obviously it isn’t limited to just Tea Party vs. OWS. I’m still amazed by the comments about Herman Cain’s “Predatory Black Sexuality” on MSNBC, which was about the stupidest, most actually racist thing I’ve heard in a long time… Besides, everybody that reads this blog when I post my hate mail knows that I’m the one stealing all the white women.

The narrative gets repeated and repeated and repeated until all the stupid people just swallow it unthinkingly. The other day I posted on Twitter, “Remember when the Tea Party had all those rapes? Yeah, me too. Thanks CNN.”  And I immediately got a reply that “No, but I remember when that Tea Party guy shot a congresswoman in the face!”  What? Seriously? Okay… Bear with me, you ill informed ass muppet… If you will recall a lunatic dissatisfied nut job that was so in his own world that he really didn’t fit in with any rational political philosophy and didn’t belong to any particular group (but loved him some Karl Marx) shot some people because the voices in his head told him too, this was IMMEDIATELY shouted from the rooftops as definitive PROOF that the Tea Party was as evil as the media said they are.  (And it was all Sarah Palin’s fault.)

Sure, afterwards it came out that the guy wasn’t affiliated with them in any way, shape, or form, but the narrative had been set, and here we are all this time later and morons are still parroting it. If you can’t find actual bad stuff, make some up. 

However, we’re supposed to dismiss the over three thousand arrests at various Occupy movements? I’m supposed to be furious at the Oakland PD, because a poor, picked on, former Marine was severely injured by their horrid police brutality? (sure, he’d been drummed out of the Marines for drug abuse, ran a website about how the military sucks, and I personally find that I experience far fewer severe head injuries when I chose not to engage in battle with riot cops, but whatever). 

We’re supposed to ignore that rapes and sexual assaults are rampant, and that the OWS people were trying to handle them without involving law enforcement? From the New York Post, “We don’t tell anyone. We handle it internally. I said too much already.” A few weeks ago when I posted that on Twitter I had several angry people demanding links, like I’d just made up these totally baseless allegations, because surely, if all these horrible things were so common, they would’ve heard about it on the regular news! My answer was to put Rape at Occupy Wall Street into Google and get ready for lots of reading.

I want you to imagine with me for a moment that one half of one percent of the same type of criminal activity that has occurred at an Occupy event were to have occurred at any Tea Party event. Now imagine the media coverage…