Ignorance Is Strength

There was going to be a protest march in Berkeley on Tuesday, we learned.   When we attempted to ask some of the Shattuck Avenue panhandlers about the potential protest, they didn't have any particulars but when we mentioned skipping it because of a lack of enthusiasm about the new trend in journalism, a street people woman became very adamant in explaining the nuts and bolts details of journalism to this columnist.   People in a protest march have a right to privacy and must be asked for permission to take any photographs.  

Since this new meme is becoming ubiquitous and since this renders information we had gathered over the last four decades obsolete, we put it in the "straw that broke the camel's back" category and scrapped any inclination to take any pictures of the rumored protest march.   We could, we realized, do a trend-spotting column instead and stay comfortably right in the World's Laziest Journalist's world headquarters home office to write that.  

In an attempt to defuse our strong reaction to this new insight into contemporary journalism, we picked up our newly acquired copy of Tom Wolfe's "The Pump House Gang" (which we bought at the Berkeley Public Library) and began reading his article about Marshall McLuhan titled "What if he is right?"  

That got us thinking.   What if the lady is right?   What if the Protest March itself and not the Occupy Wall Street political agenda is the message?   We could write a McLuhanesque column and proclaim that the Protest March has become the protesters' version of the Hollywood tradition of walking the red carpet.  

We immediately recognized that watching the Murdochization of the news business is a serious matter and, like the news stories from Europe in the late Thirties warning about the dire implications of Hitler's rise to power, should be regarded as an ominous topic.

There are two ways to look at the lady's fervor:   either she is being unwittingly duped into aiding and abetting Rupert Murdoch's attempt to scuttle real journalism, or the people strongly urging her to protect the right to privacy are mole agent provocateurs consciously sabotaging the movement's own efforts to increase public awareness of the Occupy Wall Street political agenda.   Whatever.   The bottom line, either way, is that the conservative cause is being helped and the OWS program is being damaged.

The "ask permission" meme is as insulting to the basic tenants of journalism (as intended by the much revered "founding fathers" of American Democracy) as that lady (presumably) would be if she were offered the advice:   "Get a job!"   There is a school of Journalism at the University that is up the hill, so she could probably get a teaching job there, eh?

The diabolical self defeating aspect of this new attitude among protesters is very reminiscent of the dirty tricks stunts that were a hallmark of the Karl Rove political strategy.   Could it possibly be that . . . .   We will send our suspicions to the tips editor at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory and see if we can win their "News Tip of the Month" award for May.

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