A Good Question In Dire Need Of An Answer

I’ve asked myself – when I’m not busy lampooning the demonstrations and their overkill media coverage – why are the Twin Cities media covering “Occupy Twin Cities” as lavishly as they are?

FInally, Jason DeRusha from WCCO asks the same question:

Reg Chapman and I were talking in the newsroom last night about how the coverage of the protest itself probably should stop fairly soon. Frankly, the fact that crowds haven’t really mushroomed tells us something about Minnesotans. Perhaps we’re not really the protesting type; perhaps this crowd of protestors doesn’t resonate with the middle class working people who are upset about Wall Street, mortgages, bank fees, etc [Ding ding ding – Ed]; perhaps it’s getting cold.

I think we oughtta run with the “Doesn’t Resonate” bit.

On the NARN show over the weekend, “Swiftee”, my old friend and conservative gadfly to the stars, made a great point when he called in; the Flea Party could have been a mass phenomenon, had it stuck with being for corporate perfidy what the Tea Party was to big government.  Let’s face it; the Tea Party’s roots are in revulsion at the government picking winners and losers and deciding which private enterprises are “too big to fail”.

The Flea Party blew it, of course; what could have been a outlet for a lot of legitimate outrage and concern on the part of Middle America either turned into a “progressive” platform or was never intended to be anything but.  And by “progressive”, I mean the worst side of “progressive”-ism; the groupthink, the chanting, the nods back to the miasma of the early seventies that still make a lot of Americans above the age of 45 queasy.

And from a newsman’s perspective – as I noted in my video from “People’s Plaza” on Saturday – there’s really no there there, if you leave either your barely-covered ideology or the news guy’s natural desire to be there with a camera when the molotov cocktails start flying and the hats and bats come out, or at least something qualifying as news happens. Which, it seems clear, isn’t likely to happen.

But the bigger issue is that the crowd is smallish, and there just isn’t news happening.

Face it – retreaded hippies and SEIU members and college activists chanting and making demands isn’t even dog bites man; it’s dog licks dog.

And in fact, that’s where I’m inspired by [a bit of viewer email he’d gotten]. Because we stop covering the protests or protestors doesn’t mean we stop covering the issue that motivated the original Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City.

What are the economic questions you want answered?

Question – and I’m not trying to be snarky, but I largely stopped watching most mainstream TV news years ago: what economic questions have you (WCCO and the larger media, not DeRusha personally, although the question is aimed at him) covered?

The role of the government intervention in creating the housing bubble?

The role of Obamacare and the administration’s mania for regulation in stalling hiring?

The real effect of three years of people chanting “tax the rich”, with a nudge and a wink and a “this is change you can believe in!” from sitting administrations in DC and Saint Paul, has had on entrepreneurship and expansion?

They’d all be great starts.

If you want that kind of coverage, you need to make your voice heard.

Well, there you go!

That, and tell Esme Murphy to stop painting the toenails of DFL politicians on the air.