The front page of Saturday's Washington Post featured a story titled " Obama looks to harness anti-Wall St. angst" directly below a picture of a wild-looking protester strangling a police officer with this caption: "A man affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street protests tackles a police officer during a march in New York. Police arrested 15 people during demonstrations Friday, but the movement gained a victory after a plan to clear people from a Manhattan park was halted."
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This, it turns out, is an element of President Obama's reelection strategy. " President Obama and his team have decided to turn public anger at Wall Street into a central tenet of their reelection strategy," the Post reports.
The Post concedes that this posture might be a bit preposterous. "Much of [Obama's] top economic team has roots in the financial services industry, and in recent months Daley and top campaign aides have devoted much of their time improving the relationship with big-dollar donors on Wall Street."
Yet the paper fails to ask whether the White House is endorsing the violent--and unlawful--elements of the protest. ( There is also the question of rampant anti-Semitism, which goes completely ignored here, as well.)
Given the choice between siding with the law or with a protest made up of hooligans who place police officers in headlocks, who would you pick? For the presidnt of the United States, it's supposedly a politically prudent choice to side with the criminals.