#OWS Protester Scares Off Product-Plugging MSNBC Blowhard
Here's a talking head from the MSNBC cable entertainment channel trying to get some video interview content for his political show. The guy getting yelled at is apparently "Dylan Ratigan," and his colleague is wearing a shirt from another MSNBC talk show, we guess? And this protester is going along with the interview until the television personality -- a careerist Wall Street business promoter who recently became a "populist," is that right? -- starts promoting the "Dylan Ratigan website" and also saying that what all these protesters need is for Election Day to be a federal holiday. Uhh ....
The "mood at Occupy Wall Street" has been very calm this week, relaxed even. The threat of Bloomberg's Stormtrooper Cleaning Calvary is gone, for now, and Zuccotti Park feels more like a neighborhood festival (with inflatable mattresses in neat rows) than a tense standoff with The Bankers. (Is that in itself a limiting factor here? Maybe. We'll deal with it later.) But even though you're far more likely to see a half-hour group meditation session led by a white-clad Sikh than any confrontation, we did notice a distinct andrationalskepticism of the liberal celebrities who now visit the encampment with some regularity.
On Tuesday, Jesse Jackson was making a walking tour through the park, accompanied by two burly assistant-guards. A small crowd of protesters and tourists gathered around him, or in his wake, but a lot of other ocupados turned their backs on the reflexive celebrity worship. And one young dude walking his bicycle past the commotion finally turned around and let go with a string of indignant insults. "The fuck has Jesse Jackson ever done for me," he yelled. "Motherfucker is famous for being famous." Now that's not exactlytrue, but it's true enough for a twenty year old. Or a forty year old, even, who knows him mostly from the unwatchable jabbering panelist shows he hosted on CNN in the early 1990s. (The last one was calledBoth Sides With Jesse Jackson.You know, because there are exactly two side to everything in the world of cable news.)
As for this Dylan Ratigan guy, he looks like another entitled teevee clown wanting everybody to fellate him because he's on a cable show with a daily audience of ~70,000, or about the number of daily visitors to Wonkette.Wehave made many visits without being noticed or yelled at, for what it's worth.