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EVERYTHING’S BETTER WITH PEPPER SPRAY
Nov. 23rd, 2011 08:44 pmOr, “It’s Thanksgiving – why not ruin it with random political commentary?”
Now that the #OWS momentum has been interrupted by the police so that protesters can be cleaned and pepper-sprayed, I guess it’s time for another #OWS post.
Obviously, the big story – apart from the apparently coordinated effort by the police across the country to start tearing down tents at more or less the same time – is Lt John Pike, who is now the hottest meme on the Interweb for pepper-spraying UC Davis protesters who were endangering both himself and the general public by passively sitting on the sidewalk and exercising an inalienable constitutional right.
You’d think Pike's pepper blitz would be an indefensible thing to do.
You’d be wrong, of course.
Just ask Megyn Kelly, who thinks pepper spray is harmless because it’s practically a condiment (it isn’t – though technically it is a food product in the same sense that boiling soup is a food product, but that doesn’t mean you’d want any thrown in yr face), or the Baltimore cop who claims Pike’s actions are “fairly standard procedure” – which is why of course cops pepper-spray Tea Party protesters and the Phelps family all the time.
Ha ha. Not really.
Okay. It’s not a perfect analogy – neither the Tea Party nor the WBC brought tents and stayed for two months. (Plus, Tea Party protesters are sometimes armed.) Also, the WBC protests are so small that they typically draw more hecklers than protesters.
But it does illustrate the point that there are double standards at work here, and they're a reflection of the general meme held by the right-wing and the police that left-wing protesters are a danger to society.
A lot of that is, I think, partly the result of leftover baggage from the 60s, when Straight America equated protesters with Communism. Newt Gingrich has even resorted to reviving the old “Get A Job” taunt that people used to whip out to heckle hippie protesters (but which is a particularly stupid thing to say today, given that high unemployment and crappy low-paying jobs are two of the reasons the #OWS kids are on the street in the first place).
Of course, it’s also because the Right tends to associate anti-capitalist protests with the anti-globalization protests of the 00s, which embodied a lot of the same left-wing politics and had a tendency to get rowdy thanks to the small groups of anarchist dingbats who would show up looking for an excuse to smash in a Starbucks window (as if that would actually change anything).
It seems like the complete lack of window-smashing/car-torching at #OWS protests has thrown The Authorities off-balance. The #OWS people have not been playing to media stereotype, and police officers who initially did play to stereotype have found that heavy-handed tactics are surprisingly harder to justify when you use them on, say, unarmed women as opposed to masked idiots kicking in windows.
Not that this stopped the Oakland Police from having fun. Or characters like Lt Pike. And not that such things have generated any additional sympathy for the #OWS movement, which in the public opinion polls is currently more like the 33% than the 99%.
On the other hand, while most people may not actively support the #OWS protests, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re actively against them, and it doesn’t mean they thus automatically support beating up students, shooting war vets in the head with gas canisters, and pepper-spraying the elderly (unless yr a Fox News commentator, in which case the police aren’t doing nearly enough of that for yr taste). I think that's a key reason why the #OWS thing has been allowed to go on as long as it has with (comparatively) minimal police interference up to now.
Whatever the case, it’s clear that The Authorities have had just about enough of #OWS, and are reverting to type. Which would be a great opportunity to start a serious discussion in the media over why the police are heavy-handed with the #OWS and not with right-wing protesters, and why they’re choosing to deploy riot-control tactics on people who are clearly not rioting.
Sadly, that’s not going to happen, not as long as the US media continues to cover #OWS the way it has – namely, ignore it until the police step in, then portray it as a standard “protesters clash with police” story, even though it’s the police doing most of the “clashing”.
ASIDE: On the topic of public support (or lack thereof) for #OWS, it’s worth mentioning that one poll claims 56% of America has no opinion either way. Which, I believe, also means that more Americans have an opinion about Kim Kardashian’s whirlwind marriage than about #OWS. Which, in turn, is probably why the 1% isn’t all that worried about the other 99%.
Same as it ever was.
Don't spray me bro,
This is dF
Now that the #OWS momentum has been interrupted by the police so that protesters can be cleaned and pepper-sprayed, I guess it’s time for another #OWS post.
Obviously, the big story – apart from the apparently coordinated effort by the police across the country to start tearing down tents at more or less the same time – is Lt John Pike, who is now the hottest meme on the Interweb for pepper-spraying UC Davis protesters who were endangering both himself and the general public by passively sitting on the sidewalk and exercising an inalienable constitutional right.
You’d think Pike's pepper blitz would be an indefensible thing to do.
You’d be wrong, of course.
Just ask Megyn Kelly, who thinks pepper spray is harmless because it’s practically a condiment (it isn’t – though technically it is a food product in the same sense that boiling soup is a food product, but that doesn’t mean you’d want any thrown in yr face), or the Baltimore cop who claims Pike’s actions are “fairly standard procedure” – which is why of course cops pepper-spray Tea Party protesters and the Phelps family all the time.
Ha ha. Not really.
Okay. It’s not a perfect analogy – neither the Tea Party nor the WBC brought tents and stayed for two months. (Plus, Tea Party protesters are sometimes armed.) Also, the WBC protests are so small that they typically draw more hecklers than protesters.
But it does illustrate the point that there are double standards at work here, and they're a reflection of the general meme held by the right-wing and the police that left-wing protesters are a danger to society.
A lot of that is, I think, partly the result of leftover baggage from the 60s, when Straight America equated protesters with Communism. Newt Gingrich has even resorted to reviving the old “Get A Job” taunt that people used to whip out to heckle hippie protesters (but which is a particularly stupid thing to say today, given that high unemployment and crappy low-paying jobs are two of the reasons the #OWS kids are on the street in the first place).
Of course, it’s also because the Right tends to associate anti-capitalist protests with the anti-globalization protests of the 00s, which embodied a lot of the same left-wing politics and had a tendency to get rowdy thanks to the small groups of anarchist dingbats who would show up looking for an excuse to smash in a Starbucks window (as if that would actually change anything).
It seems like the complete lack of window-smashing/car-torching at #OWS protests has thrown The Authorities off-balance. The #OWS people have not been playing to media stereotype, and police officers who initially did play to stereotype have found that heavy-handed tactics are surprisingly harder to justify when you use them on, say, unarmed women as opposed to masked idiots kicking in windows.
Not that this stopped the Oakland Police from having fun. Or characters like Lt Pike. And not that such things have generated any additional sympathy for the #OWS movement, which in the public opinion polls is currently more like the 33% than the 99%.
On the other hand, while most people may not actively support the #OWS protests, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re actively against them, and it doesn’t mean they thus automatically support beating up students, shooting war vets in the head with gas canisters, and pepper-spraying the elderly (unless yr a Fox News commentator, in which case the police aren’t doing nearly enough of that for yr taste). I think that's a key reason why the #OWS thing has been allowed to go on as long as it has with (comparatively) minimal police interference up to now.
Whatever the case, it’s clear that The Authorities have had just about enough of #OWS, and are reverting to type. Which would be a great opportunity to start a serious discussion in the media over why the police are heavy-handed with the #OWS and not with right-wing protesters, and why they’re choosing to deploy riot-control tactics on people who are clearly not rioting.
Sadly, that’s not going to happen, not as long as the US media continues to cover #OWS the way it has – namely, ignore it until the police step in, then portray it as a standard “protesters clash with police” story, even though it’s the police doing most of the “clashing”.
ASIDE: On the topic of public support (or lack thereof) for #OWS, it’s worth mentioning that one poll claims 56% of America has no opinion either way. Which, I believe, also means that more Americans have an opinion about Kim Kardashian’s whirlwind marriage than about #OWS. Which, in turn, is probably why the 1% isn’t all that worried about the other 99%.
Same as it ever was.
Don't spray me bro,
This is dF
