Oh, Fox News! How hilarious you are! When the Tea Party demonstrations were at their peak, you referred to them as "patriots." Even when demonstrators showed up with guns strapped ostentatiously to their hips. Even when they waved signs showing Obama with a Hitler moustache. Or a watermelon. But the Occupy demonstrators show up without guns or Hitler references, and what do you call them? Terrorists.
You would be so damn funny if you weren't so damn dangerous.
But this post isn't about Murdoch's evil empire. It's about those demonstrations. Because we're Americans, we like simple answers, so pundits and just regular people want to know what, exactly, the Occupy demonstrators are all about. Stated simply and directly, please, with no annoying grey shades to obscure the black-and-white.
OK. Here you go.
In a Letter to the Editor of the Chicago Tribune, Linda Finley Belan sums it up in a way that anyone other than the blindly loyal followers of Drug-addled Gasbag Rush Limbaugh* can understand.
Read it here: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/chi-111012belan_briefs,0,1281188.story
In her cogent analysis of why big business is the target of these demonstrations, she says this--my favorite paragraph in her excellent essay: "Executives lament that they can't accomplish both goals [maintaining stock value and being profitable] by blaming their problems on external issues. They waste millions in buying off politicians to fix attention-diverting problems, like regulations and taxes. If they kept the millions they're throwing at the politicians and invested in their companies, they could jump start the economy right now."
Simple enough? It makes perfect sense.
*I believe that Stephanie Miller may have trademarked this description. If she didn't, she should have.
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