So … is Occupy officially a joke now?

Well, around here they’ve always been a joke, but yesterday’s May Day performances probably cinched that reputation. Earlier today, I taped a segment for the Tom Sullivan Show on Fox Business that will air on Saturday, and the consensus opinion was that the movement ran out of steam — or, rather, that the movement boiled back down to the professional anarchist and whiner classes that have been conducting these kinds of protests for at least the last 13 years, ever since the WTO riots in Seattle, Washington.

These days, they’re not even trying. Breitbart captured this video of May Day protesters that, er, didn’t know what they were protesting. Most of them didn’t even speak the same language as the signs they held:They’re outsourcing protests over a lack of jobs? How ironic.

But what do I know? I’m not hip to all you young cats. What does a more culturally simpatico publication think — like, say, The Village Voice? They pretty much think it’s a joke, too:

We witnessed several of Tuesday’s May Day festivities. While not everyone involved in the demonstrations were “bums” (which we pointed out in a post yesterday), the media’s take doesn’t seem to be too far off — it’s hard to take many of these people seriously when they’re are biting cops, dumping buckets of feces in public places, and strolling around New York in Halloween costumes.


As Susan Ostrowski, a 55-year-old woman who works at a Wall Street insurance company, suggests, it seems some of the occupiers would be better served by “find[ing] jobs and protest[ing] on their time off. They should get involved politically, register to vote rather than sitting and sleeping on the steps in sleeping bags.”

As we mentioned yesterday, not all of the occupiers are unemployed hobos. Unfortunately, the non-unemployed hobos involved with Occupy Wall Street get lumped in with the “bums” because the “bums” and their antics get the most ink in the press.

That’s because they’re the only novelty left in the “movement.” Besides, what else do you call people who won’t get a job, sleep in the streets, panhandle and complain? “Bums” sounds about right to me.