Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Failure To Seize The Moment

[UPDATE]:

Apparently Gov. Walker threatened to call out the National Guard if public employees strike. OMG he wouldn't dare. He's poking a stick at a sleeping bear.

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I swear to God I am about to lose my shit.

Near as I can tell the only people covering the thousands of working people marching on the capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, are some liberal bloggers and Ed Schultz, who has been talking about this for three days. Well, that and liberal outfits like The Nation, which filed this report:
More than 10,000 Wisconsinites marched on the state Capitol Tuesday, as crowds rallied in cities around the state, students walked out of high schools and public employees lined roadways holding aloft banners declaring their determination to battle an attempt by Republican Governor Scott Walker to strip state workers of their collective bargaining rights and pack state government positions with political patronage appointees.

Another huge crowd -- numbering perhaps 8,000 -- surrounded the Capitol for a Tuesday night rally. Protests spread to the Milwaukee area, where hundreds of workers massed outside Walker's suburban home.

The crowds in Madison will swell Wednesday. The city's schools are closing, as teachers take sick days to join the protests and buses packed with public employees roll into the city.

The protests, unprecedented in recent Wisconsin history, are being organized by union—the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, the Wisconsin Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin and others—in anticipation of a Thursday vote on whether to give the governor powers that the senior member of the state legislature describes as nothing short of dictatorial.

Hellooooo! News media! Y'all might want to cover this! Think of it like Cairo, but ya know, in English and not so Muslim-y. Now will you cover it?

I mean, yes, there’s a little New York Times piece, but no, I am not seeing the wall-to-wall TV coverage we get every time 500 Teanuts in knee britches and tricorn hats decide to wave a misspelled sign. This is worse than irresponsible. This is a failure of epic proportions. This is why the news media is not trusted by the left. This is why no one reads your shitty newspapers or watches your lame cable news programs where you ruminate over the need for reasonableness.

News is happening. Here. In America! Go cover it! It really shouldn't be that fucking hard.

I mean, shit. Just one year ago the news media descended on Nashville to cover the first Tea Party convention at a level of one reporter for every three participants. We’ve got 10,000 working people descending on a state capitol and where’s Anderson Cooper? Brian Williams? Katie Couric?

You know who’s there? Fox News. I just heard a clip on the Ed Show where some Fox bimbette opines that the protests are surely going to turn violent soon. Yes of course they are, because we liberals always turn violent when a big group of us rally to defend our rights, or try to stop a bogus war, or try to save the planet from nuclear annihilation. Even though your side is the one waltzing around with guns strapped to your legs carrying signs about “watering the tree of liberty” and whatnot. Fuck off, I don’t have time for you idiots.

No, I want to know where the serious coverage of this unprecedented event is? Why aren’t you there on the scene?

And where are the Democrats? Hello?! This is your base, thousands of them, rallying for the right to collectively bargain, a founding principle of the liberal movement, why aren’t you people there? Why isn’t Nancy Pelosi there? Howard Dean? Hell, Dennis Kucinich? Anyone? Why aren’t liberal leaders flocking to the site of a major liberal protest? This is called an opportunity, you idiots.

(A question: Are they not there because the TV cameras aren’t there? Or are the TV cameras not there because the political leaders aren’t there?)

This is why we suck on just so, so many levels.



Via Down With Tyranny, a picture of today's rally: