NYT Does It Again (Updated)

An article that could have been -- well, it could have been a lot of things, but don't look for any real insights here. It's all a surface reading, and the surface isn't even right. Like this:

In fact, the two movements do share key traits. They emerged out of nowhere but quickly became potent political forces, driven by anxiety about the economy, a belief that big institutions favor the reckless over the hard-working, grievances that are inchoate and even contradictory, and an insistence that they are “leaderless.” “End the Fed” signs — and even some of those yellow Gadsden flags — have found a place at Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street protests alike.

Where they differ is in where they place the blame. While Occupy forces find fault in the banks and super-rich, the Tea Party movement blames the government for the economic calamity brought on by the mortgage crisis, and sees the wealthy as job creators who will lift the country out of its economic malaise. To them, the solution is less regulation of banks, not more.

Start with the "where they came from part." It's widely known at this time that the Tea Party movement was initially organized by conservative campaign consultants funded by, among others, the Koch brothers. Their first target was health-care reform, followed quickly by the social safety net in general. Come on, people, these "protesters" were being bussed in to town hall meetings with other people's Congressional representatives with instructions to disrupt the proceedings as much as possible. This is "inchoate and even contradictory"? These people were all but scripted.

The article merely echoes the right-wing blogosphere and conservative media characterizations, with little evidence of anything even remotely resembling fact-checking, and certainly no trace of skepticism. Sorry, but if you note that the right wing is portraying the Occupy Wall Street crowd as anti-Semitic, let's have some real analysis of the accuracy of that statement. And the article is full of assertions that raised flags for me, none of them examined at all.

It doesn't even rise to the level of "he said, she said" -- it's all "he said."

Recommended use: liner for litter box.

Update: There is some ray of hope here, although I can't credit the Times in particular -- just some of its contributors. Nicholas Kristof has a very lucid layout of the major focus of the Occupy protesters,and Paul Krugman, as might be expected, ha been on it for a while. (Check here, here, and here.

Best quote:

The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask, Don’t they understand what we’ve done for the U.S. economy?

The answer is: yes, many of the protesters do understand what Wall Street and more generally the nation’s economic elite have done for us. And that’s why they’re protesting.