corporate oligarchy tries to define OWS protests, but fails

it's bad out there. even with all the suffering that an out-of-control financial oligarchy has caused the average working people of the US, they remain focused on maintaining their iron grip on the levers of power using their mouthpiece, the corporate media. here, we have a more sympathetic characterization of the protest than most. it even acknowledges that the spin machine is in high gear trying to malign and characterize the protests in its own terms:

Occupy Wall Street: More popular than you think - Political Hotsheet - CBS News: "The conservative criticism of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that it is a "growing mob" (House majority leader Eric Cantor) of "shiftless protestors" (The Tea Party Express) engaged in "class warfare" (GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain) whose grievances - whatever they are - are far outside the political mainstream.

The polls don't back that up.

A new survey out from Time Magazine found that 54 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of the protests, while just 23 percent have a negative impression. An NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, meanwhile, found that 37 percent of respondents "tend to support" the movement, while only 18 percent "tend to oppose" it.

The findings suggest that the right's portrait of the movement as a collection of lazy hippies who need to stop whining - to "take a shower and get a job" (Bill O'Reilly) - isn't resonating with most Americans."

the main quibble one has with the the lead of this article is the naming of the critics as "conservatives," since the protests really have nothing to do with the false ideological divide that is used to describe the US polity. liberal and conservative are bandied about, and the powers that be manipulate people in a divide-and-conquer strategy that serves to distract from the essence of what has trashed the american dream for so many people.

ninety-nine percent encompasses the entire spectrum of political belief in this country. the movement OWS is united in a challenge to the power of that one percent that controls the politicians, creating an environment that enables the maximum pillage of the nation's financial wealth, concentrating it in the hands of fewer and fewer people. the thing most people agree with is that the system as it is currently constituted is rigged, and no longer serves the interests of "we, the people."

as the story points out, and what one-percenters like bill o'reilly and rush limbaugh don't get, is that wedge issues and name calling will not be enough to distract people from their fundamenatal sense that the crony capitalist, corporatist system we have in the USA ia understood to be corrupt -- whether you're young, old, left, right, straight, gay, etc., this is a fact that no amount of media manipulation will banish from peoples' minds.