This is pretty amazing, even for Kaplan:
Faced with endless photographic documentation of the insane violence of 500 riot cops against a group of protesters in Oakland, the Washington Posteditors proved they are good Kaplan 1% corporate lackeys and choose this picture of … a riot cop petting a kitten. Not just any kitten, though. According to the Washington Post, the shameful excuse for a newspaper in the nation’s capital, it’s a kitten that was cruelly left there by the evil protesters. Hooray for the cops! Protesters hate kittens.
Elizabelle
Never mind the cat, way to go with the headline.
“Protesters wearing out their welcome nationwide.”
Really?
The founding fathers wanted us to have grass lawns, instead of free speech?
Villago Delenda Est
Your SCLM at work.
OK, it’s bad to wish for violence, but the Kaplan Daily Test building needs to be surrounded at say 10 AM one day and no one be allowed (well, Eugene Robinson, perhaps) out alive.
JenJen
“Protesters wearing out their welcome nationwide”?!
Sez who??
Cat
They have officially earned the nickname “Pravda on the Potomac”.
ABL
wow.
Steve
Wow!
slag
I can haz economic justis?
Baud
@Elizabelle:
And ignore the fact that “California” is right above that headline.
trollhattan
Mere words fail. Yay, WaPo.
(Kitteh was then sent to Afghanistan to face Taliban mousies. OPD is that tough.)
scav
Same cop might have thrown a flash-bang at the feline if the protesters had attempted to slow down and take it with them. But hey, so they decided to go with the Hello Kitty Photo Op instead.
smintheus
I think this must be an Onion special Kaplan parody issue.
slag
@trollhattan: I understand that the cops eventually named teh kitteh Boots. Apparently, a surname.
General Stuck
I think we are going to see more and more of this kind of schizoid break from reality amongst the countries 4th estate. It is choosing up sides time, and that means either the brutal truth being reported or a sanitized white washing for the status quo establishment folks, fighting bravely against the terrorists on the streets. Not the first time this equation has presented itself. And again, the beatings will not let up until order is restored, or the country does what is necessary to limit corp money in politics. Better yet to ban it altogether with public financed elections about ideas, not cash cows. That is the only course I see, otherwise, we are on a glide path to disaster that no super hero can rescue us from ourselves.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
After a brutal interrogation the cat confessed it wasn’t a stray cat that was hanging around the protesters because people were feeding it.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@JenJen: Sez the headline they recycled from the coverage of Anti-Vietnam War protests.
Cat Lady
Who does Kaplan think they’re kidding? Seriously, who do they think ONLY gets their news from the paper edition of the WaPo?
gbear
@Villago Delenda Est: Greg Sargent too.
@slag: We Iz teh 99 purrcent.
David Koch
I can Haz propaganda
handsmile
Earlier today on mistermix’s post “The Shrill Pundit Class” on mainstream broadcast coverage of the OWS movement, there was a broad consensus among commenters that “TV news can’t die fast enough.”
While I largely concur with this sentiment, there is no corporate media entity that I want to see expire more than Kaplan Test Prep Daily. Given its history and influence, there is no more pernicious newspaper now published in the United States.
DougJ
@handsmile:
I agree with you. And I think it’s national tv news that needs to die, not all tv news. Some local stuff is fine.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
We also hate Mittens.
.
.
slag
@gbear: Tell Mr. Broder ta give mah best ta basement cat.
Judas Escargot
Scott Olsen is awake. Not yet speaking.
scav
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
and I so want to add “Good-night Moonies only it’s the wrong paper.
Nethead Jay
First off, great titla. Second, with this the Village Propaganda Sheet has not just hit rock bottom, but proceeded to break out the jackhammer. Disgusting.
Bill
Is that all they got? Come on, WaPo. Let me fix the caption for ya:
“A police officer in Oakland, Calif., pets the one remaining kitten not eaten alive by Wall Street protestors. No live puppies were found.”
arguingwithsignposts
I’ll repeat what I wrote this morning:
If you really wonder why reporters are fumbling around (aside from those paid to shill for the corp interests), here it is straight from the horses mouth, so to speak:
JGabriel
Next up in WaPo, photo from the Oakland protests: Police Officer Cradles, Comforts, Dying Baby Trampled By Protesters Resisting Deserved Arrests!
.
THE
It was a cat-astrophe.
A cat-alog of woes.
A political cat-aclysm.
A cat-egorical disaster.
JGabriel
Wonkette:
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with strings:
These are a few of Our Most Hated Things.
.
slag
@JGabriel: Finally! I’ve been waiting for a Sound of Music reference.
Though I was sure it would go the other way, with the cop as sister Maria:
Teardrops on hippies and whiskers on kittens…
But the theme’s the same.
Mike in NC
It’s been four years since we canceled the loathsome WaPo subscription. I feel so much cleaner.
celtidragonchick
@Judas Escargot:
Cautiously optimistic.
Thank God.
Elizabelle
@handsmile:
My mom subscribes to the WaPost. She recently told me she has saved every A section since Obama’s inauguration — for me, the Obot — so that I can “see the history of Obama’s presidency.”
I was so touched, but thought to myself , “Mom, what you have really done is saved me an archive so that I can read the decline of the Washington Post, issue by issue.”
It is going to be fascinating to go through those front sections.
Love my mom for being so thoughtful, and ache for her for not realizing that Katharine Graham’s great paper. Is no longer that.
Mnemosyne
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
That was my first thought, too.
The paper had better hope that the cop’s next action wasn’t to take the cat to the animal shelter where it got euthanized because of overcrowding, or they’re going to look like even bigger assholes. Impossible as that seems.
greennotGreen
Do they really think people take their *cats* to protests? And they know it was left behind by protesters…how? Tags, microchip? Bueller, Bueller? Anyone?
Elizabelle
@Baud:
I was gratified they restrained their urge to write “People’s Republic of California.”
WereBear (itouch)
Kitty may like the pat on the head, but such a gesture won’t get kitty fed.
Only props if you give the kitty a home.
birthmarker
Occupy America–Wearing Out Our Welcome Since 2011
Dream On
This revisionism is from the same world that brings you this –
Bart Gets Hit by a Car:
Blue Haired Lawyer: Mr. Burns, relate in your own words exactly what “really” happened on the day of the accident.
Mr. Burns: Certainly.
[In Burns’ Story]
Oh, it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining. I was driving to the orphanage to pass out toys…
Suddenly, that incorrigible Simpson boy darted in front of me.
[Bart gets hit by the car]
Mr. Burns: My goodness! Look what’s happened.
Smithers: It’s not important sir, let’s drive on.
Mr. Burns: You despicable cold-blooded monster!
Regardless of what you think, we must summon help and comfort the dear boy until the ambulance arrives.
NOOOOOOOO!! TAKE ME!! I’M OLD!!
[out of Burns’ story]
And that’s what happened.
Calming Influence
If the kitten had been Scott Olsen’s, the scene would be even more touching.
JScott
Huh. Live long enough and history does repeat itself. Looks a lot like the 1960’s.
smelter rat
@birthmarker…ooh, that’s good!
birthmarker
@smelter rat: I happily offer it to anyone who can make good use of it.
Suffern ACE
The obvious caption would have referenced the rodent problem that attracted the cat to the protest in the first place. Introducing the concept of protesters as kitteh neglectors just muddles the message that the protesters are dirty rodent magnets.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@arguingwithsignposts: Yeah. Wow. I had no idea that the level of enjoyment a reporter got out of reporting something determined its newsworthiness. I guess this means reporters who cover disasters and wars LIKE wading through mounds of human suffering and wreckage.
It would also certainly explain the Missing Blonde phenomenon (fap, fap).
birthmarker
Today on a sports blog I read, someone posted that OWS is taking food resources away from the homeless. Someone else told the poster to quit watching Fox News.
I was telling my child, and he said, “Since when did Fox News care about the homeless?” Ha! Smart kid!
(I don’t know if the story started on Fox News, I just tell it as it was told.)
DougJ-does your title refer to a movie, song or book?
JenJen
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Ahhhhhhh. Thanks!! :-)
KJbrooklyn
And all the protesters said “no I’m the prettiest, no I’m the prettiest” Until only one protester was left.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
How dare those dirty fucking firebaggers demand that President Obama’s Justice Department investigate the Oakland Police Department for their violent police-state crimes against OWS and Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen, and furthermore ask for some grifting “donations” to fund his brain surgery?
.
.
birthmarker
@efgoldman: Ha! Thanks.
wilfred
I never quite get the point of these media obsessions, especially when that same media is approvingly quoted when supporting one’s positions. There is plenty of alternative media – al jazeera, Press TV, Z, etc.
In any case, what matters most is statewide and national politicians speaking out against police actions targeting OWS. Without that, there will be zero protection for OWS. So far, to my knowledge, only Barbara Lee has defended OWS here, and she was bit equivocal. Brown was Mayor of Oakland during the 2003 anti-war protests and was pretty pro-police, as I recall.
Where’s Feinstein (guffaw) or Boxer? You either stand in front of the police or behind the police. Time to take a fucking position, no?
PIGL
This headline and photo would be considered over the top is fracking Ruritania, where the President never gets less than 98% of the vote, and every single starving toothless peasant woman is his baba, and the students crushed in the streets by tanks and invisibly tortured to death in dungeons are dangerous communist enemies…
Ooops: I started off trying to be funny, and ended up talking about Argentina, and every tin-pot dicatorship these Rat Bastards have supported for ever.
Make no mistake: this paper will be spreading the same pack of judicious lies when the OWS crowd are openly shot* in the streets, and their supporters die screaming in black prisons. There is no depth of horror and oppression to which they will not eagerly plunge. The owners and editors need to DIAF, and any honest person who works there needs to quit.
* Shot with the real lethal ordinance, maybe the explosive or poisoned kind, not the “sub-lethal” rounds used so far.
Also, I meant 80s Argentina, not present-day. They got over their murderous fascist death-worshippers. America has just noticing that there may be a problem.
G
@efgoldman:
wikipedia not much help with referenced link.
a 60s movie IIRC
and the name of a rather forgettable late 80s early 90s hair band “faster pussycat” http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Q8z4SEbsqbw
Arclite
@DougJ: How does this post NOT have the tag Our Failed Media Experiment. This is an epic fail. Nay, this is an intentional subversion of the duty of the press.
DougJ
@Arclite:
I forgot!
badpoetry
I remember a friend of mine spent some time in China in the nineties, and he brought back some books and pamphlets that were the official Chinese government account of what REALLY happened in Tiananmen Square. Heroic soldiers, hopelessly outnumbered by the vicious protestors, were bravely able to restore the public order, at great cost to themselves.
But even the Chinese government couldn’t stoop so low as to show the Chinese soldiers petting an abandoned cat. Who says we’re falling behind the Chinese?
Paul in KY
@Bill: You can get a job with the Post with that kind of talent!
Chris H
FWIW, Kaplan has responded to the controversy. Sez Kaplan photo editor Carol McKaye:
….so by the time they wrote the story, they had information regarding the violence, tear gas, etc., but no images? Why not just publish the story without an image then? This smacks of b.s.
Chris H
Oops, forgot the link: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2011/10/27/of-cops-and-cats/
Don
As I told someone on twitter, this is not surprising at all from the newspaper who decided they wouldn’t pull the PARADE profile of Bhutto from their distribution despite how embarrassingly inadequate it was, given that she’d been assassinated several days earlier.
Not that the article linked above really addresses WaPo’s actions – it’s all about PARADE rather than the question of whether it made sense to distribute it. Poynter actually addresses that and if you’re at all interested in media you need to be following their twitter feed & articles along with Jay Rosen and Shirky (whose profiles were probably helped by this recent O’Klown nonsense).
The often entertaining Mike Riggs tweeted this:
This is a nimble, experimental newspaper: http://ow.ly/7a3Xl This is not: http://ow.ly/7a3YH
and he’s dead-on.