As you likely recall, the media lost their collective minds when the Tea Party movement first emerged. The Fourth Estate turned Fifth Column and went out of its way to portray earnest and concerned citizens as racist, paranoid, and violent. The Scrapbook is as weary as anyone of pointing out media double standards, but reading the adoring news reports about the Occupy Wall Street movement is enough to leave even the most jaded media consumer reaching for an airsickness bag.

A quick recap of some of the goings-on, since you’re unlikely to have read about most of these incidents in major media outlets: So far the most memorable image of the protest is of one of the participants defecating on a police car. A uniformed military officer was harassed and spat on while walking past protesters in Boston. An SUV in Eugene, Oregon, was set on fire and spray-painted with Occupy Wall Street slogans. A speaker at the Occupy L.A. protest warned that “ultimately, the bourgeoisie won’t go without violent means,” before making several animated interjections about revolution and socialism.

And then there’s the anti-Semi-tism. To the old saw about “death and taxes” it’s safe to add that another one of life’s inevitabilities is this: Wherever two or three lefties gather to complain about Wall Street, at least one of them will blame the nation’s economic woes on the less than 2 percent of the population who eat Chinese food on Christmas. Anti-Semitic signs were obvious at Occupy Wall Street protests, especially when compared with the thin gruel reporters cited in accusing the Tea Party movement of racism.

Now we don’t think Occupy Wall Street is necessarily defined by anti-Semitism. There are enough protesters to encompass a large and diverse assortment of unpleasant ideologies. But the fact that the protests were in large part inspired by the left-wing Canadian magazine Adbusters ought to give people pause.

The magazine’s editor, Kalle Lasn, has repeatedly been criticized for publishing such quality articles as the 2004 cri de coeur “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?”—which consisted of a list of prominent Jewish intellectuals accompanied by some barely coherent commentary about how Jews were responsible for the war in Iraq, or something. Adbusters later ran afoul of the Holocaust Museum by repurposing the museum’s images of the Warsaw Ghetto as part of an inarticulate gripe about Gaza. David Duke himself has felt moved to defend the magazine publicly. Can you imagine if the Tea Party were largely the creation of such an unsavory character?

As expected, the media are going out of their way to help the Occupy Wall Street movement along. A Time magazine poll last week reported the movement twice as popular as the Tea Party. Of course, the magazine achieved this result by asking a question that was more loaded than a Kennedy scion at an open bar. The poll emphasized the group’s supposed opposition to bank bailouts. Time further failed to mention in its poll that the Tea Party was protesting bailouts over two years ago. (And when the Tea Party objected to bank bailouts, they did so without the class warfare, demands for forgiving imprudently incurred student loan debt, and poor hygiene.)

So what else can the media do to sell the public on this movement? Former MSNBC host Donny Deutsch went on Morning Joe last week and made a modest proposal: Occupy Wall Street needs a “Kent State Moment,” but, you know, without the violence. We’re not sure what Deutsch is getting at, and frankly we don’t want to know. But until Deutsch and the rest of his media peers get their wish, we’re pretty sure that burning SUVs and pooping on police cars is unlikely to have the intended galvanizing effect.

Protesters Only the Media Can Love

As you likely recall, the media lost their collective minds when the Tea Party movement first emerged. The Fourth Estate turned Fifth Column and went out of its way to portray earnest and concerned citizens as racist, paranoid, and violent. The Scrapbook is as weary as anyone of pointing out media double standards, but reading the adoring news reports about the Occupy Wall Street movement is enough to leave even the most jaded media consumer reaching for an airsickness bag.

A quick recap of some of the goings-on, since you’re unlikely to have read about most of these incidents in major media outlets: So far the most memorable image of the protest is of one of the participants defecating on a police car. A uniformed military officer was harassed and spat on while walking past protesters in Boston. An SUV in Eugene, Oregon, was set on fire and spray-painted with Occupy Wall Street slogans. A speaker at the Occupy L.A. protest warned that “ultimately, the bourgeoisie won’t go without violent means,” before making several animated interjections about revolution and socialism.

And then there’s the anti-Semi-tism. To the old saw about “death and taxes” it’s safe to add that another one of life’s inevitabilities is this: Wherever two or three lefties gather to complain about Wall Street, at least one of them will blame the nation’s economic woes on the less than 2 percent of the population who eat Chinese food on Christmas. Anti-Semitic signs were obvious at Occupy Wall Street protests, especially when compared with the thin gruel reporters cited in accusing the Tea Party movement of racism.

Now we don’t think Occupy Wall Street is necessarily defined by anti-Semitism. There are enough protesters to encompass a large and diverse assortment of unpleasant ideologies. But the fact that the protests were in large part inspired by the left-wing Canadian magazine Adbusters ought to give people pause.

The magazine’s editor, Kalle Lasn, has repeatedly been criticized for publishing such quality articles as the 2004 cri de coeur “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?”—which consisted of a list of prominent Jewish intellectuals accompanied by some barely coherent commentary about how Jews were responsible for the war in Iraq, or something. Adbusters later ran afoul of the Holocaust Museum by repurposing the museum’s images of the Warsaw Ghetto as part of an inarticulate gripe about Gaza. David Duke himself has felt moved to defend the magazine publicly. Can you imagine if the Tea Party were largely the creation of such an unsavory character?

As expected, the media are going out of their way to help the Occupy Wall Street movement along. A Time magazine poll last week reported the movement twice as popular as the Tea Party. Of course, the magazine achieved this result by asking a question that was more loaded than a Kennedy scion at an open bar. The poll emphasized the group’s supposed opposition to bank bailouts. Time further failed to mention in its poll that the Tea Party was protesting bailouts over two years ago. (And when the Tea Party objected to bank bailouts, they did so without the class warfare, demands for forgiving imprudently incurred student loan debt, and poor hygiene.)

So what else can the media do to sell the public on this movement? Former MSNBC host Donny Deutsch went on Morning Joe last week and made a modest proposal: Occupy Wall Street needs a “Kent State Moment,” but, you know, without the violence. We’re not sure what Deutsch is getting at, and frankly we don’t want to know. But until Deutsch and the rest of his media peers get their wish, we’re pretty sure that burning SUVs and pooping on police cars is unlikely to have the intended galvanizing effect.