Notice the deflection here – as though David Brock just screamed at a bunch of protesters and had to be dragged off by security. It’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to Breitbart.
Two thoughts: First, it’s easy to beat a drug test, especially if you’re doing something like cocaine or speed – the sort of drugs that might make someone lose their head at an OWS protest. Stimulants leave the bloodstream quickly, and with a little preparation you could easily beat the test. If it’s booze, of course, this is all a moot point.
Second, who cares if he was high when he flipped out on the protesters? It’s almost more understandable if he was. If he has a substance abuse problem, I might sympathize with him a little bit. Addicts need help, not scorn.
But if this was the angry rant of a sober man? That’s much more troubling. That says something about Breitbart as a human being, deep down – about his anger and instability as a person without the use of drugs.
Now, I can’t be sure about this, but last I checked running around screaming “behave yourself” at a bunch of peaceful protesters and struggling with security is not exactly behaving oneself.
It’s also remarkably stupid. There are these things called “camera phones” and another thing he may have heard of called “the internet.”
Breitbart is many things, but stupid enough to hand the left a viral video like this? It’s a head-scratcher for sure.
Occupy protesters congregated outside of CPAC, hoping to stir up some media attention and irritate conservatives in attendance. Not in a million years did they hope to get so far under Breitbart’s skin.
Do we know if he has a drinking problem? Because I just cannot for the life of me fathom what he was thinking here. Behave yourself? Seriously?
I half expected Bill Maher to show up suddenly and start making wise-cracks about how they should all go get a job, followed by a big make-out scene between the two.
Oh well. We can’t have everything. Even in an age of rapidly-shared-stupidity.
I’m not sure what Occupy Wall Street did to Bill Maher – someone typically sympathetic to left-leaning causes like OWS – but he’s not happy.
“As I watch them on the news now, I find myself almost in agreement with Newt Gingrich, like, ‘You know what, get a job.’ Only because the people who originally started it, I think they went home. Now it’s just these anarchists stragglers. And this is the problem when your movement involves sleeping over in the park. You wind up attracting the people who were sleeping over in the park anyway. And I think this is where we are with the ‘Occupy movement’” Maher said.
“They did a great job of bringing up the issue of income inequality to the floor, but now it’s just a bunch of douchebags who think throwing a chair through the Starbucks window is going to bring on the revolution,” he continued.
Now, this is obviously a dickish thing to say, but peel back the hyperbole and there is some merit here.
Maher thinks the movement is just leftovers now. A once-honorable movement that brought the issue of income inequality to light devolved into douchebaggery.
The real problem isn’t that the OWS folks were against the wrong things – it’s that they were simply against things rather than evolving; that they couldn’t push past the tent-city model is a problem. Whether it’s just stragglers left over is harder to say. But the worst of the bunch will inevitably get the most attention.
Of course, I find myself in some disagreement with many in the Occupy scene over the proper role of markets and government, so perhaps I’m just biased. A sharp, clear focus on improving access to healthcare, fixing the tax code by simplifying it and making it more progressive, and working toward a less interventionist military would have been far better than the perpetually ad hoc OWS movement. Hell, I would have been happy if Occupy had morphed into a civil libertarian movement, concerned more with the plight of non-violent drug offenders (mostly minorities) locked away in our bulging prisons rather than the focus on student loan debt. (I mean – really? Student loan debt is the hill we’re going to die on here?)
(Okay, I’m being snarky here, and I realize there’s more to it than this, but still.)
I’m not a big fan of Maher, whose antipathy toward the many groups he disagrees with departs from being funny rather quickly and ends up looking like, well, douchebaggery as far as I’m concerned. But I do agree that Occupy outwore its welcome long ago, for lack of evolution. I don’t think OWS should give up, I just think that they should grow.
P.S. It is ironic that Maher would say “Get a job!” when OWS is basically complaining about a serious lack of jobs in this economy. And not ironic in a good way. I just think that the OWS model of protest, tent-cities, and so forth is seriously flawed, basically guaranteeing that the loudest and most alienating voices in the movement will have the largest megaphones.
The end of 2011 has seen the passing of many famous public figures. The death of Václav Havel, the intellectual and revolutionary who led the Velvet Revolution, comes on the heels of the death of Christopher Hitchens, the famous atheist and writer whose support for the Iraq War distanced him from many on the left. Interestingly, […]
Occupy wants to occupy Black Friday and discourage shoppers. But discouraging economic activity is the exact opposite of what protesters say they want. Apparently Occupy protesters around the country are planning protests at big box stores and other national retailers in order to either A) help spur on the imminent downfall of capitalism or B) […]
[See updates below.] The above video is of Jennifer Fox, an Occupy Seattle protester who says she had a miscarriage after she was pepper-sprayed and punched in the stomach by police at a recent protest. Dominic Holden reports: “I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in,” she says. […]
I have written as a friendly critic – or a skeptical supporter? – of the Occupy movement many times now. Over the weekend I wrote several posts condemning the police violence at UC Davis and UC Berkeley that occurred this past week. Before that, I wrote several posts about the limits of the protest movement […]
The police violence on display at UC Davis this Friday is not the first of its kind in response to the Occupy movement. As I wrote yesterday, a similar incident involving police beating protesters at UC Berkeley happened this past Tuesday. There have been numerous other incidents as well, from to to to City and […]
Police at UC Davis maced a group of peaceful Occupy protesters in a gross display of excessive force Friday. The video, which I posted earlier today, has since gone viral. Police are not backing down from the action despite the police actions being widely criticized. “If you look at the video you are going to […]
Events like the one in the above video have been far too common in the police response to Occupy protests across the country. I do believe that Occupy is at a tipping point, and that it must grow beyond and evolve away from the tent city occupations, but this police response is absurd and excessive. […]
