Michael Parenti -- Occupy America

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/09-0

Beginning with Occupy Wall Street in September 2011, a protest movement spread across the United States to 70 major cities and hundreds of other communities. Similar actions emerged in scores of other nations.

For the first two weeks, the corporate-owned mainstream media along with NPR did what they usually do with progressive protests: they ignored them. These were the same media that had given the Tea Party supporters saturation coverage for weeks on end, ordaining them “a major political force.”

The most common and effective mode of news repression is omission. By saying nothing or next to nothing about dissenting events, movements, candidates, or incidents, the media consign them to oblivion. When the Occupy movement spread across the country and could no longer be ignored, the media moved to the second manipulative method: trivialization and marginalization.

So we heard that the protestors were unclear about what they were protesting and they were “far removed from the mainstream.” Media cameras focused on the clown who danced on Wall Street in full-blown circus costume, and the youths who pounded bongo drums: “a carnival atmosphere” “youngsters out on a spree,” with “no connection to the millions of middle Americans” who supposedly watched with puzzlement and alarm.

More at the link --

[raccoon]

1. Glad Parenti weighed in on this. Recd. nt

[raccoon]

2. This paragraph, I think, is especially good so I'll quote it here:

"Do not for one moment think that the top policymakers and plutocrats don’t care what you think.
That is the only thing about you that wins their concern. They don’t care about the quality
of the air you breathe or the water you drink, or how happy or unhappy or stressed and unhealthy
or poor you might be. But they do want to know your thoughts about public affairs, if only to
get a handle on your mind. Every day they launch waves of disinformation to bloat your brains,
from the Pentagon to Fox News without stint."

[cui bono]

3. Kick because Michael Parenti is so great.

He really knows what's going on.

Will read this later on a break.

Thanks!