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 and rational skepticism 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 exactly true, 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 called Both 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. We have made many visits without being noticed or yelled at, for what it’s worth.
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A morning post Ken? You were up all night drinking weren't you?
Well, so was I, baconz, but you don't see ME posting at teh Wonketz in the morning.
Fuck, it's all I can do to drag my ass in here around midday.
what all these protesters need is for Election Day to be a federal holiday.
Right. So more people are hungover and don't vote.
I heard just the other day, that one reason why the Republican Voter Supression GOP Mafia wants to get rid of the Post Office is that Oregon and Washington states both allow voting my mail.
And if you stop people from voting, Republicans win!!!!!!
They sure as shit can't win on their platforms now can they?
Modern Republicans: Legislation by hostage taking and voter suppression. And all "news" should be all over that shit. Calling them out by name. But then, that would "liburl".
This Warshingtonian haz a sad over the moving of our ballots to the mail. Mrs. weejee & I loved walking over to TT Minor School to cast our vote, chat-up the neighbors, and bringing treats for Mr & Mrs Methuselah who were the poll workers.
Having just moved to Oregon, I'm sort of curious how it will look in an election cycle. Of course, I live in Commieland (Portland) proper, so I'm not likely to get many GOP contacts no matter what (although I did just see a sad looking woman in an Oregon GOP sweater putting up a poster for her longshot bid for Wu's seat – a poster that, of course, doesn't mention her affiliation with the satanic wingnuts). I just wonder how it impacts things like GOTV efforts when you have to convince people to fill out a ballot at home and remind them of when they have to get to the mailbox, rather than getting them physically to the polls. God knows we get plenty of people knocking on even the most remote doors for things all the time.
Considering that pretty much all private employers don't give employees off for the federal holidays Columbus Day and Veterans Day, and many don't for Martin Luther King Day, making election day a federal holiday would do jack shit for people who don't work for the government, schools or banks.
Well, since the Republicans are coming down like a hammer on government workers and school teachers, I can see an upside to a holiday that selectively frees them up. Why should Republicans be the only ones to get to tilt the field toward their likely voters?
And since employers are already legally obligated to give you time off to make it to the polls (although a lot of employers will claim you don't "need" the time, either because the polls stay open late or because (reality) they don't want you to vote), and it hasn't significantly boosted turnout, Dylan psychobabble can suck it.
Oh, and Election Day is a state holiday in a lot of places (Illinois, for example) but you'd never know it if you don't work for the state. They do it so state employees can work polling places, but no one else gets the day off.
And, the kids get the day off school in our district on Election Day, but that's just 'cuz the schools are used as polling places & they don't want to have to guard the children from strangers all day long.
I say we bring back the law that outlawed selling booze until the polls closed. That'll lift the pall from everyone's surly mood, right?
A kind and benevolent elections board would require that voters be given a cask of liquor upon entry to lessen the pain of the idiots v. d-bags that most of us get to choose on any given ballot.
Glad someone said something to these sacks of rat shit. Naomi Wolf got herself arrested and promptly ran to whatever news outlet that would listen so she could sound-off on how she was being so damned awesome by standing up for OWS.
Get off your self-centered soapboxes, cunts.
Dylan "Money Party" Ratigan is a unmitigated hack. One of those "no labels, both sides do it" twatwafflers.
"twatwafflers"
Ratigan – a true icon for the term.
"Stromtroopers." …sounds like a bunch of Jewish guys in riot gear with the last name "Stromberg" oy-veying about all the dreck in the nice park.
I don't know. I laughed. Sorry. I'll be quiet now.
Yeah, a little less bunch of Jewish guys and a little more buch of guys who killed a lot of Jews.
Who? Bloomberg's riot police? I think we're getting our metaphors mixed.
No, the original stormtroopers, otherwise known as the Waffen-SS or Schtuzstaffel.
Oh, yeah, I meant, uh, Bloomberg's swat team…nevermind.
The Storm – Troopers (Sturm Abteilung) or SA were an earlier group, let by Ernst Röhm as a part of the Nazi party. The SS were a distinct group led by Himmler, with sworn loyalty to Hitler, formed in part because the SA were becoming too hard to control. Röhm and the rest of the SA leadership (plus many other political opponents) were killed in the so-called “Night of the Long Knives" and the SA rank and file were mostly assimilated into the SS or Army.
I'd have thought Strom-troopers were some group that was dedicated to keeping the memory of Senator Thurmond alive.
Perhaps to be a member you have to be a grandchild.
Or maybe "Stromtroopers" is what they call the state police in South Carolina. (Though the untranslated "Strom Abteilung" has a certain poetic correctness.)
I thought Stormtroopers were a group in white plastic armor with absolutely horrible aim.
Some of whom were very short.
"If you lie, I'm going to call you a liar."
That guy is not going to get a job on a cable news show any time soon, that's for sure.
An uplifting post first thing? Who are you Mr/Ms poster and what have you done with Ken?
Uhhhh…That Guy for president!
That One/That Guy 2012!
That One won in 2008.
Well, sure. But not with That Guy as his running mate. Biden can become Secretary of All Things Cool and Old School. Wait till you see the Secretarial Classic T-Bird.
We have made many visits without being noticed or yelled at, for what it’s worth.
Ken Layne, man of the people!
(Let me know when you need a media flack, Ken. I gots no experience in that line of work, but as you can see I'm ready to start.)
~
Jesse Jackson! Woo-hoo!
Rhymin' Man,
Tall and tan,
Rhyme or reason,
Play your hand –
Rhyme on this – rhyme on that
Oh, you naughty Democrat!
They say when Doctor King got shot,
Jesse hatched an awful plot,
Dipped his hands in the Doctor's blood,
'N rubbed his shirt like playin' with mud
Looked around for all the press,
Said: "Check me out, my name is Jess!
I'll be known from towns 'n farms –
Doctor King died in my arms!"
A few years later, legend says,
Rhymin' man made a run for Prez
Farrakhan made him a clown,
Over there near Hymie-Town
Said he was a diplomat –
Hobbin' an-a-knobbin' with Arafat
Castro was simpatico,
Though the U.S. voters, they said: "No!"
Rhymin' Man,
Tall and tan,
Rhyme or reason,
Play your hand –
Rhyme on this – rhyme on that
Oh, you naughty Democrat!
"a daily audience of ~70,000, or about the number of daily visitors to Wonkette."
Yeah, but I think 69,800 of those are a single Breitbart troll under different aliases, desperately searching for the downfist button.
Well that's just incorrect, but whatever.
The downbutton fapping of the Breitbart troll????
You mean he's got more than 69,800 aliases? Man that guy is tireless!
I love that OWS protesters aren't toeing the line with these "journalists". I also love that they make Fux "reporters" wet, and then shit, their trousers.
I love that you said "toeing the line." It's so rare that I get to see that spelt properly any more.
Stop, you're making my toes curl.
From what I've seen of his show lately — and to preface, I know very little about his background — he's been pushing some online proposal to get money out of the electoral system. Seems genuine enough; he's pretty hard to put into a particular group or box. He's made it kind of clear on his show given that OWS is supposed to be an open forum that he wanted to try and sell his idea, down there. Free country, right?
I'm confused to say the least, but my initial reaction is dude is being more a dick than Ratigan was. I guess I'd get it if I really thought Dylan was down their hawking his website for pageviews for MSNBC, but if you've seen Dylan, you get the feeling he doesn't give a flying fuck, anymore, about his employer or even whether he's on TV or not.
I guess what I'm saying is I need to see what lead up to this, because I'm not convinced by what I saw and what I know of Ratigan's show that he's a shill or company man like say, John King or that horrible Erin Burnett.
I hope to god this isn't a movement going in the too-cool-for-school phase with stereotypical bitchy, liberal cliques. They shouldn't be showing awe to celebrities, but the reflexive sardonicism where you just out-and-out bitterly insult someone for no other reason than them being famous is obnoxious.
I agree with you, Ratigan doesnt seem as ego driven as other news 'personalities' & his campaign finance reform issue is important.
Just wish he'd stop yelling so much on his show,gets hard to listen to with the yellin, but he's ok in my book.
That's been my problem with him. He's shrill as hell. I have no affinity for the guy's personality, but of all the talking heads that litter the MSM landscape he seems to be one of the very few that gets what's going on. Whether his solutions mean anything is something that is and should always be up for debate, but he's seemed to have reached a point in his life of where he's tired like the rest of us of playing the game that is life in this nation, today.
I really can't believe I'm defending the guy, because personality-wise, he's really not all that different from Bill O'Reilly. But, I haven't been getting the impression that he's a phoney. Some people actually do have conversions. You can kind of document on air how bitter and lucid the guy's gotten. Hell, he damn-near blacked-out from rage aimed at our system a few weeks back. Dare I say he has some of Ken's sensibilities.
Believe it or not, the pure insanity of the tea party and the 30 or so years of failed conservative policies are actually pushing people who were in past lives ambivalent to the system towards us. People are beginning to have real conversions and real epiphanies.
That actually happened to my dad (Ye Olde Phart) — a Goldwater conservative, he initially thought the teatardaloons had a point. But the more he watched, the more incensed he got at them for being such clueless pricks.
He now thinks no one should have more than $50 million in wealth, with the rest going to the government to fix our broken nation — which puts him a tad to the left of me, which I never thought was possible.
So it is happening — maybe not in a wave, but one by one, people are starting to realize that continuing to do what we've been doing ain't working. At least not for a vast majority of folks.
Wow. Your Dad is one of us Real Oldz, and I am very impressed!
I'm with you, Negropolis. He did this on Morning Joe one day, about a year ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjkQULrGeqI
and the smug assholes that populate the rest of the table (with the possible exception of Ridley) roll their eyes and try to steer the topic back to "why O'Reilly made some valid points" or some shit. I believe this was before he had his own show, and an hour of Ratigan can occasionally be too much. But watching him call out the "journalists" sitting around that table for their gross negligence in handling the "war on Islam" topic for the past 9 years was delicious. Especially when seen in that context, Ratigan comes off as the only person on the teevee news set who ever paid attention at all to anything.
Agreed — I frankly think he and Maddow are as close to sane/honest(ish) as we're likely to get on cable teevee in this age. I loved his total losing-his-shit rant/freakout on the bought congress while his panel just sat there hoping he wouldn't bite them.
This is supposed to be the 99%, I'm not sure why we want to make a feast out of public figures who show support to OWS.
Ok, I thought I was going crazy reading this post cause Dylan is one of the only people I bother to watch on MSNBC (along with my girl Rach!).
I can definitely see how he would rub people the wrong way. Judging a book by it's cover, he seems like your run of the mill former lacrosse (or crew, take your pick) player who majored in Econ but never did any work. His approach is, how you say, a bit abrasive. But he's the only one on that network that's been talking about this – Wall Street fraud specifically – for years and in really plain (and justifiably angry) language.
The OWS people are not ready to accept someone's message, especially from a major network personality but he's definitely on their side. I don't mind a couple of douchebags on our side as long as they don't run over everyone to the front of the line.
This might be a bold statement, but this guy was OWS before the movement even got going. He's been bitching about the how bought the system is since he's been on MSNBC. This guy seems to genuinely be disillusioned with the place in which he once occupied and existed.
I don't mind anyone kicking the tires to test for possible insideous infiltrators or phonies, just don't take a mallet to the windshield on the first day is alI ask. To go after Dylan like he was some fraud from Fox News or some shit was totally inappropriate. My friends need to come correct, and that means respecting people who respect you, and if by chance they make what you see as a faux pas, address it with respect as opposed to addressing it like it was some kind of dance off or poetry slam.
What part of "liberal movement" didn't you understand? Of course some of them are tearing into anyone who they see as trying to steer their conversation. Never mind that they claim to be open to just such steering. If a leader starts to emerge from the grassroots, you watch – they'll be carved up like a tofurkey on Native People's Tragedy Day in a month or so.
Why do I get the strong feeling that you've participated in grassroots organizing?
Although I did sign Ratigan's proposal and I don't think he's a *complete* douche, I'm with the guy who called him a liar. No one really gives a rat's patoot about his show or his website in this context.
Dylan, support OWS as a PERSON, not a PERSONALITY, and maybe this shit won't happen. We're too used to these egomaniacs being our mouthpieces…
Don't get me wrong, I totally get why folks down their would at the very least be skeptical to some media guy coming down, but I can do without the bullshit machismo turf wars down on a square practically preaching itself as a forum for any and everyone who wants to sell an argument or point or issue.
You've got folks down their hawking OWS trinkets and this dude is going to puff out his chest because had the gall to plug a website for getting money out of politics? Really, dude? I hope the movement isn't that petty; I really hope it's bigger than this reflexive defensivism at any dude that comes down with a camera. They were bitching for weeks on end that no one was covering them, and then when they start getting coverage — particularly from the few outlets that are our friends or at least sympathize with us — they get bitchy about the coverage.
We gotta' learn how to deal, y'all; we've got to be bigger and thicker-skinned than that. This movement has to leave up to its inclusive ideal. I really wish Ratigan would have stayed; I wish someone would have had the courage to mediate that, because the differences were relatively minor. This was the definition of a misunderstanding. Ratigan is not the enemy, and if we're going to start to push away sympathizers of all people, this shit is in some serious trouble.
Well said. I love what #OWS is doing and I think it could be the beginnings of a movement we desperately need in this country but I completely agree with your last paragraph. Dylan Ratigan is certainly not the enemy.
A-HEM!
Horrible, eh? We need to talk, young man.
Protestors. SO cliche.
Why does everybody at OWS look like they live in New York?
What, you were expecting more Uzbekis?
That's You, Becky, Becky, Becky, Stan, Stan to you, thankyewverymuch.
OT
On the LSM, al Jazeera, et al, it sounds like Qaddafi has joined bin Laden and he was killed in Sirte.
Serves him right, for being a fucking Republican.
You said it! Once he and Bush started cozying up to one another he went on my shit list.
I could take the oppressing his own people, supporting terrorism, Lockerbie and the German disco, etc. but that went too far!
Good. Now we can have Liz n' Dick on the Sunday shows this weekend kvetching about how Obama isn't keeping America Safe.™
maybe Ken got the word on Gadhafi. Am I the first to say pictures or GTFO?
But MSNBC is supposed to be the liberal new network! Well in the sense that they have three shows with at least somewhat liberal hosts, and actually have liberal guests on sometimes, unlike the 0 liberals who ever appear on Fox or CNN (which likes to treat middling centrists as liberals). But they still have three hours of Joe Scarborough every morning, and Pat Buchanan as a regular guest.
"Pat Buchanan as a regular guest"
I think that fucker has an apartment at the MSNBC studios. The fact that he can turn up at any time of day on any show is the reason that I don't watch TV anymore. Fortunately he hasn't popped up on NFL Gameday, Fox NFL Sunday, or CBS' NFL Today, or I'd be really fucked.
Yeah, but I think we indirectly have Pat to thank for Rachel Maddow emerging (along with KO's support) as a star. She abused him so thoroughly in all those panels in the 2008 election cycle that I think it made people at the network stand up and take notice that maybe America was ready for a strong, smart woman to helm a show.
Of course, I also love when she has Pat on her show, because his idiocy and her good manners makes her start acting all infectiously giggly. Which in turn makes me have the naughty thoughts that I know will never come true, but which do make life so much more bearable.
I have a ginormous crush on Rache myself.
The best show on MSNBC, which requires the use of a DVR, is Chris Hayes. Unfortunately, it's Up witih CH, which always makes me think of Up with People. I can't stand Dylan Ratigan's show, which seems to be mostly about him.
Methinks OWS might use the media a bit more on their side.
And until Ed Schultz parked his fat ass in Madison, absolutely no one had paid any attention to the thousands of people on the street protesting against that Kock brothers' lackey, Scott Muwalker.
Next time a Wonkette writer goes out there can he wear a sandwich board with a picture of the sandwich demon on it?
*sigh* These people. Is it too much to ask for another Eugene V. Debs?
SOCIALIZM!
And yes, yes it is. These days, ol' Eugene would be a reality TV star with 24/7 backstage access to his life leading up to any major labor action. Which would in turn expose all his dirty laundry and make him a corporatist millionaire in the long run.
I thought about this and came to the conclusion that Debs use of Christian vocabulary would allow him to get away with having a largish load of dirty laundry in these very Christian United States. As to the millions, I hesitate to judge.
I'll be back in NYC on Saturday, I can come and yell at Ken , if that's OK.
"We have made many visits without being noticed or yelled at, for what it’s worth."
What do you plug? The gin, or the ass-fucking?
There's the star-spangled TruckNutz (TM), too. And an ass-fucking gin sounds better than a cotton gin.
The colleague appears to be Cenk Uygur, the host of Young Turks. So no only is he the douche wearing the band's tshirt at the concert, he's the douche in the band.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenk_Uygur
Dylan's OK. He left CNBC, which is nothing but a tool for Wall Street. Good enough for me.
Yes, he left NBC to work for NBC. That took balls.
Point taken.
Dylan at least had the sense to take his own camera crew for his "visit" to the great mass of un-washed. Last week Maddow showed-up in the wee hours when she heard the people were going to be evicted from the park (for cleaning, not certain if they meant people or park) and there might be blood on the streets — Oh the Kandahar! As it turned out NYPD lost their nerve or came to their senses, or were too busy at that early hour with morning coffee, so Maddow left quietly. Later in the day, her houseboy Will, was asking on Twitter, if "anyone" had a photo of her at the protests. Turns out no one even bothered. Get a clue MSNBC. When you ignore people for weeks because your Masters tell you to, don't expect them to make nice-nice when you finally do show-up.
Dylan Rattigan was dead to me (or would have been, if I'd known he existed prior to the following egregious act on his part) when he took the time slot that rightfully belonged to my pretend boyfriend (yay Keith, for bringing him back) David "You're Welcome" Schuster.
PS Good riddance, Moamar. Mallomar? No, that's a deelicious candy treat. Whatever. Good riddance, douchebag of Libya.
Cenk Uygur is all right. One of the best liberal columnists out there, IMHO. Don't know this Dylan Ratigan guy.
So, Wonkette gets 70,000 hits a day? I'm actually kind of impressed.
I concur. Maddow and TYT podcasts help get me through the work day.
I was right pissed off @MSNBC for firing Cenk and putting Reverend Al on in his place. Again though, I'm getting a lot more done around the house with all the shows I don't "have" to watch anymore.
He's a fraud. He's not a journalist. He's a capitalist who plays at being a journalist. Hmmm. How many of them would that apply to? Katie?
Cenk Uygur is all right. One of the best liberal columnists out there, IMHO. Don't know this Dylan Ratigan guy.
I just went over to Huffpo and read something by Dylan Ratigan. He wants Barry to fire Tim Geithner's worthless butt, with which I agree. And getting corporate money out of elections is good.
So, while I don't necessarily disagree with the guy who called him out on a couple of porkie pies, it seems to me this is a disagreement between people who are all on the same team. Moving on.
I will yell at you, Ken (na, just kidding). I'm personally incensed at these assholes calling OWS a "mob," and they MIGHT get violent. If these goddamn babies are in such a panic, go move to China where they won't have to deal with the right for peaceful assembly and protest.
You probably don't realize this, but you have a much better chance of being torn to pieces by an irate mob as a capitalist in China than you do on Wall Street.
Wonkette doesn't get yelled at? What happenned to all the trolls from the ALL CAPPS brigade?
Also, Election days totally should be holidays, so that voters who still have jobs (if any) have an easier time casting their ballots.
I know a little about Ratigan. He's establishment, sorta like Jerry McGuire (the character, not the actor who played him.) He had a gig on cnbc and smelled the mortgage scam blowup coming and tried to report on it, but peer pressure and being the first of the teevee actors to embrace candidate O was just a bit too much for the Fox Lite™ crowd. The website he's plugging is his establishment way of trying to get money out of politics, which he thinks is still possible, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. He's also had on white collar crime prosecutor William Black and OWS's David DeGraw and let them speak their respective pieces uninterpreted on his show, so no downfist from me. Not for this anyway.
Ratigan regularly has Exiled editor and horse-semen-pie flinger Mark Ames on his show, so he can't be all bad.
Oops. You're right. Still, my point stands.
For what its worth: There's non-political historical precedent for use of the word "storm trooper" at least as far back as trench warfare in WWI, and the tactical function underpinning the term has existed as long as there's been fortifications that have needed to be "taken by storm."
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