CNN Soft Peddles ‘Occupy’ Lawbreaking, Asks if Police Have ‘Sympathy’ With Occupiers

-By Warner Todd Huston

On November 30, CNN’s T. J. Holmes gave us a great example of how the Old Media is soft peddling the law breaking going on at the Occupy events in order to make these events seem far less dangerous and illicit than they are. Like many in the Old Media, Holmes seems desperate to give lawbreaking Occupiers as much cover as possible — a benefit they never offered the Tea Partiers.

In an interview with an L.A. city police commander about the clearing of Occupy Los Angeles, Holmes did his best to minimize the number of arrests of members of the Occupy protest. The actual number of arrests was 200, but Holmes repeatedly characterized that numbers as “dozens.”

Now, I don’t know about you but when I hear “dozens” I think of the number 24. Being generous I might even say three dozen (a healthy 36) could be thought of as “dozens.” On the other hand, when someone tells me “200” the word “dozens” doesn’t at all come to mind. I just don’t think of 18 dozen as “dozens.” I think of them as hundreds!

Of course, Holmes was desperate to make hundreds seem less imposing. So, to him, two hundred arrests became minimized to “dozens.”

It must be pointed out here that even after two years of Tea Party protests featuring millions of Americans and often seeing many thousands appearing at any given event never saw 200 arrests during the whole time! In fact, there weren’t even 100 arrests in two years with millions of protesters. Not even 50 or 25 arrests, for that matter.

This soft peddling of the Occupy-Whatevers, though, is of a piece with the penchant of the entire Old Media to ignore the lawbreaking going on at the Occupy events. The truth is simply being ignored by the media. A recent tally by John Nolte shows 364 serious incidents to date of criminal actions — one short of one for every day of the year — at the various Occupy events across the country. And this list doesn’t count the many thousands of local laws, ordinances, and permitting rules that have been flouted by these Occupy protests.

Speaking of permits and other local ordinances, laws that nearly every Occupy event in the country has broken with impunity, the Richmond Tea Party complained that they were charged thousands of dollars by the city of Richmond to be allowed to hold their events (including being forced to take out a $10 million insurance policy) while the Occupy-Whatevers were not charged a cent for their protests. Because of their complaints, the City of Richmond is now auditing the group’s taxes! This is far, far different treatment than the lawbreakers of the Occupy events are being lavished with, isn’t it?

The sad fact is that the Occupiers are being afforded every break, given excuses from complying with every law in order to enjoy their freedom of speech while the Tea Party events were required to observe every dot and crossed “t” of the law to be allowed to observe their First Amendment rights.

But, getting back to CNN’s T.J. Homes, he wasn’t done trying to raise sympathy for the Occupiers by just downplaying the arrests seen in L.A. He even indulged a little fantasy scenario by trying to get the policeman he was interviewing to “admit” that his officers really, really loved those nice hippies.

As chronicled by Newsbusters, Holmes asked a question backed by no evidence and containing no newsworthiness.

“In some ways, uh, maybe a couple of your officers, that I’m sure, around the department, maybe this conversation came up, where you know in some ways you sympathize with the protesters and maybe some of the officers even conflicted about having to grab some of them and pluck them out of there because I’m sure some of your officers may feel like maybe they could wish they could be out there protesting in some way. Did you find that some of your officers do have that conflict?”

Out of what body orifice did Holmes pull that nonsense? And did Holmes ever ask any police officers if they had sympathy for the Tea Party participants? My guess is that he never did.

In any case, Holmes’ positive spin on the Occupiers is a great example of how the entire Old Media establishment is glossing up the Occupy events to make them seem legitimate and elicit sympathy for them.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.

For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.


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