NOW IN THE TIMES: Weekly on the web, Gene Lyons.

  • NOW IN THE TIMES: Weekly on the web, Gene Lyons.

Gene Lyons’ weekly column joins our on-line lineup today.

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Here’s his first column for us, on the Occupy Wall Street movement, with a local reference on which to build. He notes the hysterical reaction of the Fox/Limbaugh echo chamber to the movement, which apparently enjoys plenty of sympathy. (What, you love bankers and Wall Street?)

An excitable columnist in my local newspaper described Occupy Wall Street protestors as an “unwashed, whining, smelly mob occupying and infesting Wall Street.”

Infesting, no less. “The Flea Party,” the man called them, blood sucking insects “being paid by big-bucks special interests…to create violent confrontations.” Elsewhere, he likened the protestors to Nazis.

The author gave no evidence of said conspiracy; his was sheer paranoia. Meanwhile, the only big-bucks special interest in sight would be Americans for Prosperity, funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, which employs Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Mike Masterson’s wife as “Director of Grassroots for Arkansas,” i.e. as a professional Tea Party activist.

Nice work if you can get it.

(I think Mizriz Masterson has moved on to paid employment by a Republican political consulting firm, but she still lights up Twitter with pro-Koch talking points.)

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