The Wall Street protesters want to be biggees benefiting from being above the law of the US and the laws of economics.
The Wall Street protesters and the Tea Party protesters have something in common, a revolt against the biggees each see as taking unfair advantages. The primary difference is that the Tea Party is opposed to the extra-constitutionality of liberal politicians in league with crony capitalists profiting each other at the expense of taxpayers, while the Wall Street protesters base is for more extra-constitutionality to expropriate for themselves the advantages garnered by all those profiting from free enterprise.
Tea Partiers want to keep the products of their labor and earnings, while the Wall Street protesters want government to redirect the products of others’ labor and earnings to themselves and causes of their allies.
Demographically, the Tea Partiers come from the middle-class who have more practical experience of the world, while the Wall Street protesters come almost entirely from the privileged white young people with relatively little real world experience.
Musically, the Tea Partiers have popular anthems of patriotism to enliven the reach of their cultural message, while the Wall Street protesters lack popular music with political themes. (This is a distinct and telling difference from the 1960s.)
Politically, the Tea Partiers have protested peacefully and within the law, while the Wall Street protests break laws and inconvenience the public. This alienates rather than enlists support.
PRwise, the Tea Partiers had to overcome major media’s reluctance to provide them coverage and its trumpeting of false charges from the left, while the mostly liberal major media have almost instantly favorably or neutrally headlined the Wall Street protesters.
The question is whether the tilt of the major media facing the alternative media will succeed in hiding these differences from most Americans. I doubt it. The liberal-tilting major media is itself seen as an out-of-touch and fading biggee. The support from public-employee unions with privileges above those in private business, the usual few extreme-leftist members of Congress, and from the usual rich far-left Hollywood celebrities just reinforces the perception of the usual leftist biggees wanting to lord it over taxpaying Americans. The Wall Street protesters and their leftist allies in media like to call themselves the 99%, kiddee columnist Ezra Klein sophistically asserting they want to see “the fundamental bargain of our economy – work hard, play by the rules, get ahead -- … restored.” Instead, they are the small minority who are or who want to be the 1%, exhibit little respect for the “rules” or virtues and rewards of free enterprise, demanding to “get ahead” with government-provided privileges.
P.S.: Donald Douglas adds some personal reality.
