The Dark Side of the Occupy Wall Street Protests

Most of what I found at the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park this morning was inchoate. I met anti-capitalists who berated the federal government for regulating drugs, I learned that Alexander Hamilton was a tireless crusader against a central bank, and I was exposed to the usual 9/11 truthers and conspiracy theorists; and their kinder cousins, the terminally dumb.

Unfortunately, however, a small part of the protest was downright unpleasant. Moments after I arrived, I saw a Jewish gentleman being berated when he criticized a protester. (Shortly after my video camera was switched off, he (inexplicably) shouted the N-word at the same man.) 

By the way, during the course of his performance, he told me that he was white, Puerto Rican, Jewish, and African-American. I suggested he was, in fact, Confused, but he didn’t take much to that.