Peter King fears Occupy Wall Street may gain political clout
Posted on Sunday, October 09, 2011 at 10:09 AM
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Speaking on the Laura Ingraham radio show this weekend King did his best to vilify the growing movement as a 'ragtag' band of malcontents, rather than a populist movement riding the surge of anger at the income inequality that is still growing in the United States (and which is now so unequal it puts us closer to Honduras than Sweden, say).
King recalled that such protests arose before in the 1960's. And that's when he also remembered how effective they ultimately were in changing the national debate.
And that's not the sort of message you want to send to the Occupy Wall Street organizers and participants, if you want to oppose them and their reform aganda, that is.
'They have no sense of purpose other than a basically anti-American tone and anti-capitalist. It's a ragtag mob basically,' King told Ingraham, sounding the all-purpose socialist alarm. But then he gave the group more encouragement than he may have intended.
'We have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy,' King warned. 'I'm taking this seriously in that I'm old enough to remember what happened in the 1960's when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can't allow that to happen.'
Accidentally evoking La Marseillaise, the national anthem of France, in the hope of dampening a growing democratic movement is going far off-message.
But perhaps King's sense, and that of the public's are in sync in this way: we are clearly at the start of this movement's effectiveness, not near the end.
34 Comments
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hollabackgurl | Oct 13, 2011, 08:34 PM EDT
The comment below this one is the dumbest thing I have ever read on this website. Most of Wall Street is honest? FFS. Geroge W Bush presided over a decade of unparalleled thievery and corruption on Wall Street, with tens of millions entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to artificially inflated commodity prices, and millions more displaced from their homes by corruption in the mortgage markets. The Tea Party was created by the billionaire Koch brothers to protect their interests and tax cuts, that is all. It's your own fault if you got suckered by them.
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seanomelbourne | Oct 10, 2011, 07:24 PM EDT
Geraldo was booed off by protesters with chants of"Fox lies" he scurried away with his tail between his legs.Geraldo is a failed husband,a failed democrat,a failed actor and just an all round failure,so he joined Fox part of the discredited "Newscorp".
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Ratslayer | Oct 10, 2011, 02:09 PM EDT
Be Afraid, anti-Middle Class, Republican-Tea Bagging traitors, Be VERY Afraid. This is just the beginning.
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McNamara31 | Oct 10, 2011, 12:43 PM EDT
It was so predictable...Soon after the Occupy Wall St protests began, Fox issued it's talking points to demean this group and say they didn't have a message.I hope by now people are finally seeing just who Fox represents, and who's interest they protect; it's certainly not the middle class.
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citizen69 | Oct 10, 2011, 12:14 PM EDT
Peter King fears equality? Time to bring the bankers to heel.
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OldMariner | Oct 10, 2011, 11:16 AM EDT
The big difference between the anti-Vietnam protests of the 60's and of anti-Wall St. ones of today is that the former were predominated by spoiled college kids who, in the case of males, didn't want to serve. That war was criminal and so was the immediate indifference of the anti-protest movement when the draft ended. What's criminal today is the greed of the financial sector with the compliance of a stupid and supine federal government. I commend the Wall St. protestors they are on high moral ground and despite what the talking heads on TV say, they do have a message. Both political parties are equally guilty. Obama, who also collected much money from Wall Street and the financial sector, allowed these crooked bastards to collect bonuses when all he had to do was use the bully pulpit to deny them this lucre. This to me was the defining, moment kick-in-the-ass, moment.
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eiriamach | Oct 10, 2011, 10:30 AM EDT
The "GOP ignores, condemns or ridicules the demonstrators on Wall Street and across America at its peril," yes, and at our peril too. If King can recall the protests of the 60's/early 70's, then he knows that when the press began to take an interest in the grievances of the protestors, change began to happen. So thanks for writing this article. I hope to read more like it.
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eiriamach | Oct 10, 2011, 10:07 AM EDT
Most of the condemnation of the Occupy Wall Street movement is coming from the GOP and its supporters. Yet its spontaneous, grassroots origins are similar to those of the Tea Party, which now, effectively, controls the Republican Party - and whose insane intransigence may well lead it to Fianna Fail's fate. The GOP's problem, of course, is that this latter movement took on Wall Street, their deep-pocketed friends, rather than Big Govt., their convenient whipping boy. But we have a dysfunctional government, an economy in deep crisis, a middle class that is rapidly becoming the working poor - and the titans of Wall Street making more money than ever. Yes, we are becoming more like a banana republic and the GOP ignores, condemns or ridicules the demonstrators on Wall Street and across America at its peril.
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hollabackgurl | Oct 10, 2011, 09:47 AM EDT
Wall Street wrecked the economy three years ago and nobody's been held responsible for that. Not a single person has been indicted or convicted for destroying 20% of our national net worth accumulated over the course of two centuries. The protestors are upset about the fact that Wall Street has iron control over the economic policies of this country, and that one party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the other party caters to them as well.
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kilkennyroots | Oct 10, 2011, 08:17 AM EDT
The candidate who recognizes that Occupy New York and the Tea Party are saying many of the same things and who can coherently identify the common themes between the two movements will be our next president.
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SingleDonald | Oct 09, 2011, 09:42 PM EDT
I have met Peter King. He is my Congressman, and I have been to a couple of his rallies, at Mulcahay's, in Wantagh, N.Y. I think he is sincere in fighting for American causes. I wrote him in late 1998, and asked him not to vote to impeach President Bill Clinton. Congressman Peter saw it my way, as Clinton's transgressions didn't rise to the level of impeachment. BTW, I was very happy that the President won at trial, in the Senate, in February, 1999. I know the congressman had Clinton to thank, for something concerning Ireland. Yet, I was pleased with his vote, in the House of Representatives Impeachment Hearings.
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TheOldPerfessor | Oct 09, 2011, 06:56 PM EDT
Peter King has very good reason to fear the protests in lower Manhattan. Takes air time away from his "Hate the Muslims" campaign, and his overall war against the truth and the Constitution of the United States.
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pilib04 | Oct 09, 2011, 06:17 PM EDT
To borrow a phrase: Peter King, THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE. Get over yourself.
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pilib04 | Oct 09, 2011, 06:16 PM EDT
Poor Pete King. Still hung up in the right wing world (who don't like or trust him because the leadership is all anglophiles). Maybe King needs a rest. Did it ever occur to him Occupy Wall Street is no different than the Tea Party. Just a different way of expressing themselves. Also a different point of view.
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