OCCUPYING WALL STREET (BRIEFLY FOR NOW)

The media and those who succumb to its distortions continues to cast most of our reality in terms the right dictates, directly or indirectly.

The network and cable news I mostly watch—and even the NPR news I listen to on the radio—and the right claims is "liberal" or biased from the left (though for many years now there's only been the right and the center at work in official party politics) sometimes does show a bias toward a more centrist or even "liberal" perspective of a news story.

But ultimately they incorporate the right's perspective and give it more weight than it warrants (if 99 percent of scientists say global warming is real and humans causes are at least part of the reason and one percent denies that, how can they be seen as equal sides of the argument?) or don't include any alternative to the right except for something more or less right, but never left.

Anyway, this is true of the media's response to Occupy Wall Street. At first the response was that the occupiers had no message, were unclear about what they were protesting and/or demanding. Which, of course, was not true. A variety of ways of expressing their anger at what Wall Street represents and mostly is does not mean there was no message, just a varied way of declaring it.

But of course the news media has become so much about commenters and commenting and so little about actual reporting that their formats demand segments focused on one interpretation of an event and the supposed "two sides" to the argument about it.

When that early complaint from the media was simply proven false by the relentless reality of the demonstrations themselves, the media switched to a new false but equally rightwing influenced perception of the Occupy Wall Street movement, that it is not diverse enough, in terms of class and "race."

I know this is false just from my brief participation in the demonstrations and from friends who have taken part and continue to. Look at almost any video on the web of a day at Occupy Wall Street and you'll see not only more diversity than in probably any neighborhood in "America" but than in any demonstration you've ever seen before.

Are there more "white" people generally demonstrating and occupying the Liberty Plaza, maybe, though if you actually go by the ethnic and so-called "racial" breakdown of our country's population from my observations there is a higher percentage of diversity in the park than in the country (except perhaps for Hispanic participation, but then that can't be discerned simply from looking at the people participating).

At any rate, here's some footage from the day I took part, see if you can spot anyone who isn't totally "white" (whatever that means anyway) or looks like there might be any variety in their "class"—though 99% incorporates a lot of variation in financial status and background.

By the way, if you look to your right of the screen at 5:13 minutes in you might see an old white haired gent looking, I must admit, pretty "white" and "un-classy" (yeah, yours truly).


[You can pause it at 5:13 or 5:14 to catch me, and on YouTube it's bigger if that helps.]
[PS: I meant to thank Annabel Lee for sending me the alert and the link to this video.]