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October 5, 2011

Preview of Coming Attractions: Obama Jobs Roadshow Meets “Occupy Wall Street”

By Michael Shaw

What I’m really curious to watch in these coming days is how the Obama roadshow intersects the Occupy Wall Street movement (and, of course, how visual media is going to message/massage it). It’s one thing to capture wage slaves bumping up against suits, Brooks Brothers or NYPD, in Lower Manhattan. It’s another thing when it’s Obama’s suit and/or all manner of enforcement folks on the campaign trail.

Anyway… yesterday the St. Louis Post Dispatch inserted the rather oblique photo above in the fifteenth slot of their otherwise rah-rah sixteen photo “President Barack Obama visits St. Louis” slideshow, the image at least acknowledging the protester were there. (And now I’m wondering — click the pic to enlarge, if you need to — what is best stock for me to buy to invest in cat food???) And then, did I mention Obama was in town for two fundraisers in one evening, one at $25k a pop?

On the newswire menu, AFP/Getty Images offered out this photo — one of the few I could find. Besides illuminating how “Occupy” is fast becoming the first word of choice for cities, states and power structures just about anywhere the rich and everybody else divide, the fact I didn’t see many other examples suggests the wire services are probably still finding their feet at this point on OWS, or that OWS is. Fact of the matter is, though (even if Press Sec Jay Carney finessed away a question about the fledgling movement this morning), that OWS and BHO are on course, in the coming days and weeks, to do a lot of co-occupying of the same space. (Imagine there’s a pun in there somewhere.)

Bottom-line, though: can you imagine the pill Obama’s communications people are having to swallow right now, the assignment being: how to tightly control the optics surround the jobs roadshow, as packaged as it is in a populist narrative, as the President comes in contact with the raw, real thing?

Click for Bag’s OWS Coverage to-date.

(photo: Johnny Andrews/Post-dispatch.com caption: Protesters and onlookers gather Tuesday to glimpse President Obama in his motorcade as he is driven to the Renaissance St. Louis Grand Hotel in downtown St. Louis. photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images caption: Protestors hold signs outside a Democratic campaign fundraiser event by US President Barack Obama in St. Louis, Missouri, October 4, 2011.)

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  • Anonymous

    You think Obama, the community organizer, will find protestors too raw? I don’t see it. I think he’ll be fine.

  • Gasho

    Oh, yes.  This should be a VERY interesting topic to follow.  Obama can talk populism as a campaigner, but he’s sure been pretty snuggly with the elite 1% as a politician.  Can he chum it up with the 99% after failing to provide the accountability they are demanding?  

    He missed the boat on holding Bush accountable for unjustified and unfunded wars (and, no, I’m not giving up on this — EVER).

    He didn’t do much to hold the financial industry elite accountable for plundering the system.  I kind of remember him lending them $14,000,000,000,000 or something to that effect.. then letting them off the hook when they stopped performing their lending function in the marketplace.

    He’s really got to hit this head on if he wants to stay on top of it.. get out of the limo and address the crowd.  Or else he’s likely to be labeled with a big fat 1% #ashtag.  

    • Anonymous

      The bank bailout (Troubled Assets Recovery Program) was signed into law on October 3, 2008 by George W. Bush.

      Can’t we get the recent history right, at least? I mean, I’m pretty sure everybody who posts here was alive and conscious three years ago.

  • Pingback: “Occupy Wall Street/We are the 99 percent” and the Democrats | Colonel Despard's Radical Comment

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/42THFKXIPMJHQBIH6OPI4RVIDY Thebes

    Both political parties have sold out the American People to their corporate backers.
    Welcome to a Government by the 1%, of the 1%, and for the 1%.
    Obomber is just as guilty as W

  • http://bestbuycreditcardonline.com/www-hrsaccount-com-bestbuy-pay-bill/ Bill BeSt BuY

    these people were very tired of the street shows, but such slogans are yet in use.

  • http://www.uggsbaileybutton4u.com/ Suzann

    wow I loved it!

  • Gasho

    True, true. I confess I was and am aware of that, BUT with Geithner put in charge of Obama’s economic bailout team and the lack of demands made after lending them so much cash … he inherited the bailout in my mind, much like drone strikes, wiretapping, Guantanamo, and tax cuts for the wealthy.  Bush may have started all those things, but Obama has continued each of them, so … give me a break if I say he lent those guys lots of money.. BECAUSE HE DID. So it wasn’t $14T.. but, what.. half of that??

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/42THFKXIPMJHQBIH6OPI4RVIDY Thebes

    TARP was a small fraction of the total bailouts. The FED bailed out Citigroup to the tune of $300+ Billion. Other banks got similar bailouts, and the FED bailed out foreign central banks as well. Its difficult to know if ANY of this has been paid back as The FED refuses to allow itself to be audited.

    Certainly Bush II is to blame for some of this, but Obomber shares the blame and continued the programs transfering wealth from The American People to his base- The Richest 1%- same as Bush’s base.

  • Anonymous

    It was a law, not an executive order the president could override. And the giant banks were failing, with how many billions of dollars backed by the FDIC? Can the FDIC cover every depositor’s loss up to $250K when the largest banks in the country fail at the same time? We’d all like to believe they could, but most insurance companies expect a worst case loss situation which is far short of total chaos.
    Of course Obama followed through and propped up the banks. Did he want to be the guy who refused to enforce the law which would prop them up, only to see people across the country lose all their money?It wasn’t about kissing up to the bankers. It was about keeping the country afloat. The law should have been better crafted to ensure that the banks couldn’t sit on the money, but he wasn’t in charge when the law was put together; and now that he is, the Republican minority filibusters everything he tries to do. 

    And it was (I think) $17 billion. The banks asked for $50 billion, but I don’t think they ever got that much.

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