On October 17, this columnist observed one TV news van and about three digital photographers. On Friday, October 28, we counted 13 TV vans during our visit.
After arriving and noting the large number of journalists there, we learned that film maker Michael Moore was scheduled to address the protesters later in the afternoon.
On the day that John Wayne received his Oscar - , California Governor Ronald Reagan had said at an impromptu news conference: "If it takes a bloodbath to end this dissention on campus, let's get it over." His spin doctors immediately amended the pronouncement but about four weeks later when four students at Kent State were shot, conservatives breathed a collective sigh of relief. It seems that the conservatives' tolerance level for dissention has remained constant.
The former actor/governor used his harsh response to anti-war demonstrations to establish his credentials as a conservative and then launch a campaign that he was able to parlay into gaining the Republican nomination for the Presidency.
Will the harsh response to Occupy Oakland provide the mayor of that city with a launch pad for a Presidential bid? We'll have to wait and see how that works out. One thing for sure, the folks at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory's product development division have, in Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, a poster child for criticism of the first high profile winner of the instant runoff voting process.
Could Michelle Bachman exploit the recent turmoil in Oakland? Why doesn't the design department at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory whip up a whacky prediction that Bachman might assert that Police Brutality is a variation of the right to free speech and therefore it is guaranteed by the First Amendment? She could publicize the thought by urging the Conservative dominated United States Supreme Court to legislate from the bench on that possible legal loophole. Would Governor Reagan have hesitated to do that?
We were out of Northern California when the Police cleared out the Occupy Oakland protesters and camp site earlier this week, but we noticed that in a photo caption on page one of the UCB student newspaper, The Daily Californian, on Friday October 28, 2011, that stated: "Violence on Tuesday at Occupy Oakland provoked police intervention." The online liberal media sites had convinced us that it was unprovoked. Is the UC Berkeley Journalism School being funded by Rupert Murdoch?
On Friday, October 28, while revisiting the Occupy Oakland site, we thought that perhaps the Tuesday confrontation might have had some unintended consequences such as the fact that now as much (if not more) media attention seems to be concentrated on the Oakland site than on the original Wall Street protest in New York City.
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