So this phrase now exists:
With wintry weather poised to swoop into the cramped outdoor quarters of Occupy Wall Street protesters, it may not be long before more campers catch what’s being called “Zuccotti lung.” That’s what demonstrators have dubbed the sickness that seems to be spreading among them at an unpleasantly high rate these days: “It’s a real thing,” Willie Carey, 28, told the New York Times.
Other words and phrases in the article: “respiratory viruses,” “norovirus,” “winter vomiting virus,” and “tuberculosis.”
Doctors are trying to circulate through the park, treat the ill, and inoculate the still healthy. But progress has been uneven because many of the Occupy Wall Street people are feverish cranks who think that vaccinations are a “government conspiracy” to undermine the 99%’s glorious vanguard. Sexually transmitted diseases are of course also spreading, and some protesters are even suffering hearing damage from the drum circle. One wonders how much of this is really necessary for creating the “vibrant brand of urbanism” that the Washington Post laughingly declared Occupy centers have become.
You’d really think either the professional activists who are behind the protests or the closet ACORN activists who are pitching in would have stocked the medical tents with penicillin. Maybe there’s a working group or five on it, or maybe Chavez can send them some.
Rape and rape coverups haven’t been enough to get officials to intervene in the Lord of the Flies dystopias that various protesters have set up. But if Occupy Oakland is getting shut down on account of people dying – in that case by gunfire – then having a convulsing, vomiting petri dish in the center of Manhattan might finally force Bloomberg’s hand.
And while all those crimes and dangers might seem substantive to us, obviously the Occupy movement’s real is messaging. That’s why “framing is everything” liberal leading light George Lakoff has written a guide to protesters who want to reach Middle America. It repeats almost verbatim the notoriously incoherent and anti-scientific drivel that constituted his previous work, but who knows? Maybe the protesters can reframe their rape cover-ups as “community solidarity,” and their anti-vaccination craziness as “freedom from health.” Convinced yet?
If an old pooches memories of the vibrant revolutionary kids culture of the late 60's serve, the original baby boomer progenitors of post-industrial carbon copy mimicry of anti-bourgeoise Bastille-storming/Communard/Bolshevik etc. etc. etc. up-against-the-wall cul-de-sacs at least knew enough TO HOLD THEIR DARN REVOLUTIONS IN TEMPERATE WEATHER. Yeah yeah yeah, you guys with your Ethnography Studies post-graduate degrees can beat your bongos out to your hearts content in SoCal through Christmas but your brothers in the East Coast got a heavier time of it. n nI fondly remember listening to stoned Yalie pre-med students rhapsodize in the spring strikes shutting down the ivies like herpes attacking a group love-in that they were going to descend into the slums of New Haven and teach mathematics to disenfranchised black folks, or go up to Hartford and canvas door to door to teach community organizing to oppressed white blue collar workers and so forth and so forth. n nThen the schools called off finals for the semester and they all went home and worked on their tennis swings and tans. n nThe whole world's laughing! The whole world's laughing!
not so, besht–or at least, not always. I distinctly remember the Moratorium against the Vietnam War in DC in 1969 (or was it '70) and it was plenty chilly. I also remember taking a break from the cold by ducking into the Michigan SDS house for a quick toke, thereby just missing being tear gassed! I was so jealous of my friends, who could now notch that experience into their belts. n ngood times…
The Left has been compelled to embrace this travesy in hopes of countering the success of the Tea Party. While it's true that the only thing they're 99% of is wrong about everything, their claim of near total inclusiveness is an indicator of their hopes to lay claim to the public's imagination. Another self-validation inherent in the 99% claim is the general Leftist attitude that conservatives don't actually exist … to them all conservativsm consists of Fox News, one George Bush or another, Palin, Limbaugh, and a handful of others. n nI challenge you to find a Leftist (or even just a Democrat) who actually recognizes that those conservative voices mentioned above are actually expressions of the beliefs of many millions of Americans. Cental to their delusion is the belief that they are the only ones capable of independent thought, when, in fact, the opposite is more often the reality.