Talk:Reactions to Occupy Wall Street

RfC

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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The Criticism section of this article inadequately presents the criticism shown in mainstream media and the opinions formed by well-known politicians and well-respected people. After travelling to the dispute resolution noticeboard and then to the Mediation Cabal, we have come up with two variants that can be included into the article. Participants are asked to vote for Option 1 or Option 2 and their reasons why. Whenaxis (contribs) 01:40, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Option 1

Conservative criticism of OWS has sometimes been vitriolic. Andrew Hartman wrote in The Chronicle Review that "many conservatives and pundits view the Wall Street protesters as envious ingrates looking for government handouts because they fear responsibility." On October 5, 2011, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh told his listening audience: "When I was 10 years old I was more self-sufficient than this parade of human debris calling itself Occupy Wall Street." Glenn Beck said on his internet television network GBTV, "Capitalists, if you think that you can play footsies with these people, you are wrong. They will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you. They will do it. They’re not messing around." One tea-party group, the Tea Party Patriots, issued a statement that said in part, "Those occupying Wall Street and other cities, when they are intelligible, want less of what made America great and more of what is damaging to America: a bigger more powerful government to come in and take care of them so they don’t have to work like the rest of us who pay our bills.”

Support

• Support. This feels like a decent amount of material to be included. The process of paragraph placement was not discussed during the mediation cabal. I think this paragraph should be the second paragraph in the criticism section. Whether you support Option 1 or Option 2, please also state where you think the paragraph should be placed. Somedifferentstuff (talk) 11:13, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
• Support Frankly, I think it's too bad we can't spread the criticism throughout the article. But if these are the only two options that have been offered I choose the lesser of evils.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:20, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Oppose

• Oppose Although normally this should be a sufficient number of quotes, the comments do not give sufficient perspective of the conservative position. I am usually of the view that less is more but not in this instance. Responding to RFCIsthisuseful (talk) 19:50, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose, as incomplete, and also as a consequence more inflammatory, among other things. B^e——C_ritical 07:03, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Option 2

Conservative criticism of OWS has sometimes been vitriolic, casting the demonstrators as a thoroughly marginal group. Andrew Hartman wrote in The Chronicle Review that "many conservatives and pundits view the Wall Street protesters as envious ingrates looking for government handouts because they fear responsibility." Kate Zernike said in The New York Times that the Tea Party Patriots "portrayed Occupy protesters as freeloaders, or would-be freeloaders: 'Those occupying Wall Street and other cities, when they are intelligible, want less of what made America great and more of what is damaging to America: a bigger more powerful government to come in and take care of them so they don’t have to work like the rest of us who pay our bills.'" Brian Montopoli, writing for CBS News said that "The conservative criticism of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that it is a "growing mob" (House majority leader Eric Cantor) of "shiftless protestors" (The Tea Party Express) engaged in "class warfare" (GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain) whose grievances - whatever they are - are far outside the political mainstream." Matthew Continetti, also writing for CBS, said that conservatives "dismiss the movement as a fringe collection of left tendencies, along with assorted homeless, mental cases, and petty criminals." "Conservatives [have tried to] define the Occupy protesters before the protesters define themselves. Ed Morrissey, writing in The Week, insisted that the Occupy movement wants “seizures and redistributions, which necessarily means more bureaucracies, higher spending, and many more opportunities for collusion between authorities and moneyed interests in one way or another." Linda Colley said in The Guardian "A prime reason for [the diffidence between Democratic and Republican responses to OWS] is suggested by some of the Republican attacks on Occupy. The demonstrators were "mobs", said Eric Cantor, the House minority leader. Occupy was waging "class warfare", claimed Mitt Romney, an accusation some Republicans also level at Obama. But it was a rival of Romney for the Republican nomination, Herman Cain, who voiced the criticism Democrats and demonstrators here fear most. Occupy, and those backing it, according to Cain, are "anti-American"." Douglas Rushkoff, in a special to CNN said that "Like the spokesmen for Arab dictators feigning bewilderment over protesters' demands, mainstream television news reporters finally training their attention on the growing Occupy Wall Street protest movement seem determined to cast it as the random, silly blather of an ungrateful and lazy generation of weirdos. They couldn't be more wrong and, as time will tell, may eventually be forced to accept the inevitability of their own obsolescence." On October 5, 2011, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh told his listening audience: "When I was 10 years old I was more self-sufficient than this parade of human debris calling itself Occupy Wall Street." Glenn Beck said on his internet television network GBTV, "Capitalists, if you think that you can play footsies with these people, you are wrong. They will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you. They will do it. They’re not messing around." Newt Gingrich, said "All the Occupy movements starts with the premise that we all owe them everything. Now, that is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country and why you need to reassert something as simple as saying to them, go get a job right after you take a bath." Rick Santorum also told the protesters to get jobs.

Support

• I wrote option 2, with help from various other editors along the way including Somedifferentstuff. The question being asked by the paragraph is "How do RS say conservatives have portrayed OWS?" I originally tried to paraphrase the RS, but the result, though shorter, was criticized. Ultimately, I think the quotations offer a more neutral version. The RS carefully choose the words they use to characterize the Conservative rhetoric, and summarizing them in Wikipedia's voice was difficult. Yet, the sources are very reliable, and it is incumbent on us to include them, and to accurately convey what they say. I think that option 2 has a natural flow: it goes from quotations of the RS to direct quotes from the pundits and politicians, which show what the RS were talking about. Option one leaves out the majority of the sources, jumping right into the inflammatory quotes. I should note that there is also room in the article for text answering other questions such as "what is the Conservative analysis of OWS." This paragraph is about the portrayal. B^e——C_ritical 02:35, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

• Support I went through this suggestion very carefully because my first impression was quite negative. I split it into paragraphs (which I will post below) and read it again several times and linked any names of journalists important enough for a WP entry, and that seemed to help some. It is long, but I believe that it is important to include a wide variety of sources and views because the present article contains a large number of positive sources/views and we have been trying to present an unbiased article. It can be hard to read in some places, but given the fact that every word must be exact and well-sourced, there may be no way of getting around that problem. (I'm not sure if this is the place to put a criticism, but the Rushkoff "criticism" sounds more like a defense to me.) Gandydancer (talk) 21:15, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

  The sentence "They couldn't be more wrong and, as time will tell, may eventually be forced to accept the inevitability of their own obsolescence." Could be struck. Would that be an improvement? I like your paragraphing. Even random paragraphs make it easier to read. B^e——C_ritical 00:35, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

• Support option #2, which provides a more comprehensive overview of conservative criticism of Occupy Wall Street compared to option #1. Splitting it into separate short paragraphs as suggested below seems to be reasonable. I support the notion of integrating this information in the article as a subsection of the Criticism section, which would further organize the article by having a section about criticisms from "avowed" conservatives. Northamerica1000^(talk) 18:43, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
• Support Although I perhaps would normally have thought the section was too long it does give a good understanding of the conservative position, so perhaps all the quotes are needed. I do think that the phrase "thoroughly marginal" is not quite right. It might sound OK in American English but not in UK English. Would the words aberrant or deviant be more suitable. Interesting, in the UK the accusation has been that those involved in occupy are comfortable and middle class. Responding to RFC. Isthisuseful (talk) 20:05, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
• Support This is better than Option 1, which is rather incomplete, although I'd rather see Option 2 trimmed down a little as it is a bit over-long. Thom2002 (talk) 22:28, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
• Weak Support It definitely needs to be trimmed down. Last sentence about Rick Santorum adds little value to article and should be removed. Covers the criticisms more accurately than Option 1 but still needs major work.--MOLEY (talk) 03:40, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support As is. Meclee (talk) 18:26, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support - More complete than 1. But do something about that wall of text. Mercy! It's so dense the authors has trouble tracking the quote marks. I'm sure there are at least three paragraphs in there, I would hope even more than that. Jojalozzo 03:02, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it will be broken up example below [1] (: B^e——C_ritical 06:18, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Oppose

• Oppose. I think it's too long. I also do not agree with the overall order of the sentences used. It also mentions Newt Gringrich, even though he is already mentioned in the current article here. Somedifferentstuff (talk) 10:48, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose I see no reason to use either option.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:17, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Any remaining issues

First is this sentence: "The demonstrators were "mobs", said Eric Cantor, the House minority leader." Why is this being included when in another section of the article here it states, "House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va), in a speech to a Values Voter Summit, characterized the movement as "growing mobs" and said that Obama's "failed policies" and rhetoric "condon[ing] the pitting of Americans against Americans" were to blame." Somedifferentstuff (talk) 18:51, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Firstly, because the mention of Cantor is merely part of a longer quote. Secondly, because no one wants to try and spread the criticism section throughout the article, we agree that this would be extremely difficult to do. Someone called it a nightmare. But we seem to agree that that quote as a whole belongs in the paragraph. Also to a lesser extent because Wikipedia articles do not necessarily stand as single articles: we try to concentrate information into sections so people looking for specific information don't have to glean it from the entire article but can go directly to the section. Having information in more than one spot isn't necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps sometime it will be doable to rewrite in such a way that we don't have this redundancy, but no one appears up to the task just now. B^e——C_ritical 19:23, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

So with Becritical's addition the article would state: (1) "House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va), in a speech to a Values Voter Summit, characterized the movement as "growing mobs" --- (2) Brian Montopoli, writing for CBS News said that "The conservative criticism of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that it is a "growing mob" (House majority leader Eric Cantor) -- (3) The demonstrators were "mobs", said Eric Cantor, the House minority leader. --- Having the term "mob" mentioned THREE TIMES is unacceptable. Somedifferentstuff (talk) 10:38, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Also, it would be nice if people read 완젬스's ideas on my talk page and see if there are any creative solutions to his concerns. B^e——C_ritical 19:36, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Why don't we let the RfC run it's course for the full 31 days before jumping to conclusions that Option 2 is the most favorable? Regards, Whenaxis (contribs) 20:36, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

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