Streetwise Professor

It is hard to figure out what is more ludicrous, the Occupy “movement”, or the media coverage thereof.  After reading this article from the NYT (big h/t to R), I think it has to be the latter.  Your challenge this evening: to see whether you can read this article without either doubling over in laughter or vomiting uncontrollably.  It starts out ridiculously, and then plunges downhill from there:

Many Americans these days, from the huddled masses of Occupy Wall Street to the coifed confines of the presidential campaign, are talking about the future of capitalism.

Masses?  A couple of hundred people in this city, a couple of hundred more in that, in a country of 300 million, count as “masses”?

The article is about the efforts of people in the People’s Republic of Boulder, CO to replace its “corporate” utility with a publicly-owned venture.

What really stands out is the incredible, overweening self-regard of these people.  For example:

Proponents of ballot issues 2C and 2B, which includes a $1.9 million tax increase in the first year to pay for planning and analysis, say that the utility industry desperately fears a public awakening, and that a John Brown-like raid on a monopoly in one place could galvanize electricity consumers all across the nation to push for change.

John Brown?  Really.  Yeah, fighting against chattel slavery.  Renewable energy.  Same thing.

And yeah.  I’m sure electricity execs are just paralyzed with fear.

And this:

In the electricity fight, left-leaning politics have been aligned with hard science, supporters say, creating a unique platform for thinking creatively about electricity and democracy.

Climate and weather research, in particular, has a huge presence in the city, at federal institutions like the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration along with the tech-heavy University of Colorado that sprawls through the center of town. More than two-thirds of the population over age 25 has a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to census figures — compared with just over 36 percent for Colorado as a whole.

Aren’t they special?  Obviously so superior to the other ignorant Coloradoans.  (Wait: I thought Occupy was fighting on behalf of the 99 percent–many of whom don’t have “bachelor’s degrees or higher.  The condescension is nauseating.)

And of course, many of these two-thirds have degrees that might–might–qualify them to serve a latte.

If Boulder wants to serve as a vortex of stupidity and overpay for electricity, far be it from me to stand in their way.  But the Occupy movement wants to inflict its idiocy on the rest of us.  That’s a different story.

The OWS types and their fellow travelers are abetted by a media that consistently overlooks the hard core leftist elements, the incoherence of its message, and the anti-social behavior of many of its (ironically, socialist) participants.  The utter credulousness of this NYT piece on Boulder, with its gratuitous and silly portrayal of the Occupy types as representative of some “huddled masses” that exist only in the imagination of Kirk Johnson and his ilk, is all too typical of most media coverage.  If Occupy was shown for what it truly is, a collection of muddled asses, the entire charade would collapse in an instant, exeunt accompanied by well-deserved gales of derisive laughter.