Has this news clip passed your way yet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yrT-0Xbrn4

Explained by Media Matters for America:

So, to recap, Fox News chose to air a video composed of snippets of Occupy Wall Street protesters speaking, giving various reasons for their presence at the rally, and then concluded that there was no unified reason for the protest. It neglected to air a video of one of the protesters making a lucid, reasoned argument for change and equality and holding Fox accountable for its behavior. Fair and balanced, as usual.

Fox News is sometimes a too-easy target -- their egregious offenses seem to make everyone else, like the CBC, look reasonable -- but they do make it really easy to look at how organized and purposeful media obfuscation is.

I dunno which vegetable is which any more, but I think direct action is a viable and necessary tactic because the version of "democracy" we use won't let us vote out capitalism, or vote in a more democratic version of democracy.

Thanks for parking that here; I saw it on Facebook and was amazed at this guy's super-articulate improv skills. (Others on FB were suggesting he run for the presidency.) I have to point out the performative role of Jesse's attire in this scene. Did Fox first approach him because he's sporting the Confederate Civil-War re-enactor look? And did he dress like thsi with an eye to baiting Fox?

I wasn't aware of the back story, but it's exemplary. Fox is such an easy target, true, and I never want to give it the oxygen of further publicity, but this video is an excellent illustration of the "blind and dumb" principle, hard at work to fog up the public mind.

Lastly, just want to mention that I'd like to see this

the version of "democracy" we use won't let us vote out capitalism, or vote in a more democratic version of democracy.

in sky-writing.

And then there's the rare but delightful analyss that gives one all types of food for thinking about the "weird global media event" that #OccupyWallStreet is. Not that it comes courtesy of the mainstream media, unless your mainstream media include Verso Books.

Wark, McKenzie. "How to occupy an abstraction." Verso Books blog. 3 Oct. 2011.
http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/728-mckenzie-wark-on-occupy-wall-street-how-to-occupy-an-abstraction

If you read nothing esle about the occupations, read this.

Thanks Michael. Josh Evans has been reading up on the theory of "zombie economics" and sharing about it with this group. I'm with you about reading prognoses about the world financial system. Makes me think we should start offering courses in kinfe-sharpening and water purification.

I think that you see the protests through your own political filter (depending on your biases) When I saw the dollar munching zombies I thought of the original Romero films in which the zombies go to the mall to continue to consume - post life. The food of choice for Wall Street zombies would likely be currency. I was in a Save On foods this Saturday as I was waiting for my car to have some work done on it and muzak was playing loudly - prompting me to leave as soon as possible. I think the goal of much of our social order (not just advertising, just listen to George Bush's injunction in the film the Inside Job to people that even though they are working class they can have large homes like the upper middle class) is to encourage mindless consumerism for plebs but the most likely form of acquisition (vs. consumption, implying day to day subsistence) for wall street types is various forms of portable property such as paper currency. Wasn't a lot of the aspiration in Victorian times in emulation of the upper classes (frequently not to the benefit of those doing the emulating). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_America

I think that 'zombie politics' is an apt description for a province that is essentially a one party state and whose economy is based on a single industry (O&G exploration and extraction). If you haven't had any new ideas for 30-50 years can you really be alive in the sense of intellectual engagement (require an EKG reading registering something other than brain death). Thanksgiving dinners should consist of brains and entrails (depending on Romero vs. Shaun of the Dead zombie sub type dietary preferences). Maybe that recent fire at a dump in which toxic vapours were released and asthmatics were advised to stay indoors is just the beginning of the capital city's zombie apocalypse.

Hadn't heard of the dump fire. Ew.

The more I think of it, the more the zombie economics theory can be extended to apply to lots of different domains of contemporary life in which the dead exert a continuing influence or control over the living. (Which definitely encompasses copyright, then, for example -- as in whatever happens when anybody tries to do anything with or about the otherwise mostly dead J.D. Salinger.)

As for filter and bias, I certainly won't pretend to see #OWS in any purportedly unfiltered way. In the age of Fox News and Big Pharma, I tend to take any claim to objectivity with a shaker full of salt. (That said, I also really don't want Facebook or Google or whatever algorithm filtering the Internet all the time to coddle my own biases.)

BTW - this article about #Occupy that I read last night is easily the best thing I've read about it so far, adding all types of angles and layers of interest. (It's not exactly hiding its filter either, sitting there on the Verso Books site.)

Wark, McKenzie. "How to occupy an abstraction." Verso Books blog. 3 Oct. 2011.
http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/728-mckenzie-wark-on-occupy-wall-street-how-to-occupy-an-abstraction

If you read nothing esle about the occupations, read this.