Comic book writer Frank Miller lashed out against the Occupy Wall Street movement on his blog last week. In a nasty screed, Miller called the movement "Nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists" and told the protesters to enlist against the real enemy, which he defined as Al-Qaeda and 'Islamicism.' "Wake up, pond scum," he demanded.
Wake up, Frank Miller.
The Occupy Wall Street protests are so much more than an "unruly mob." To anyone paying an ounce of attention, it is clear that the occupiers have taken to the streets to protest our rapacious financial system, severe income disparity, and corporate control of our government. They are not professional anarchists, but ordinary American citizens fed up with the corruption that has overtaken our society.
To grasp the lameness of Miller's slander, let's take a look at one of those so-called loutish protestors, a family friend named Vince Taylor. Vince turned 75 this year, and journeyed to New York a few weeks ago to be a part of the protests. One of the smartest people I know, Vince is a Ph.D. economist at MIT who worked for the Rand Corporation in the 1960s and later started a successful software business. Vince came with his own portable poster, which read, "Break up the Banks, End Corporate Personhood, 90% Top Tax Rate" on one side, and "75 and Disgusted" on the other.
The protestors I've met at Occupy Wall Street have been mostly young men and women who are passionate in their determination to change the way the country is run. If the Occupy movement does have a tinge of "Woodstock-era nostalgia," as Miller put it, why is this such a bad thing? At Woodstock, a generation came together in search of American values like freedom. At Occupy Wall Street, our generation is coming together to demand similar American values: a freedom from economic inequality.
To dismiss the occupiers as clowns and call their movement a "bowel movement" is to turn sound like a seven-year-old. If that's the best that Miller can do, he should stick to cartooning.
They just don't want their overpaid salaries ripped from their banks.
KEEP IT STRONG OWS!!
What's your goal? Why Wall-Street? Why not Greenwich where hedge-funds managers reside? They're the ones who ruined your economy. Why not the the White House or the Senate? Obviously the bad guys are all there? What you're doing in Wall Street is just disrupting petty-workers there, the janitor, the low-paid clerks etc.
This is not People's Power. This is a bunch of people who are scared that they're gonna lose their LIFESTYLE...yeah, lifestyle, not the life itself. Just because the police did some harsh crowd control on you, pepper-sprayed your eyes and took you to spend a night in jail...those don't make Occupy a for-people-by-the-people-movement. That's just lame. That's not even hardcore enough story to be lashed out on the net. "Uuh, The police pepper-sprayed my eyes..." So, what?
And if you're wondering what people's power really like, just open your history book. The pre-Independence struggle of US, that's people's power. Arab Spring; 1986 Marcos' Philippine;. and Indonesia 1998. Those were people's power. And what differentiated those movement with yours? People died there....and they died not for their lifestyle. Your movement is nothing but a mockery to the real struggle that is people's power.
If you hadn't noticed, they're doing more than just using pepper spray on people. They're beating them with clubs and using the Sonic Cannon (LRAD) now, which can cause permanent and irreparable damage to eardrums. And let's be clear, if the police were to start opening fire, we would have straight up riots. And not the kind like after a football/soccer game, either.
As for the location, it started in Wallstreet as a form of symbolism. You get what symbolism is, right? Don't play dumb now just to try and score points. Notice, now, it's spread to dozens and dozens of other locations? This is what movements do.
This is exactly the way things in America are going. Pretty soon the only way you are going to be able to survive if you have the same mentality as the characters of Sin City.
So what changed Frank Miller?
As I am part Spanish I find his obsession on the war on "Terror/Islam" ridiculous for various reasons. In my birth country you can still see the remnants of the religious war that was fought for 800 years and still they do not hold such a nasty ugly bile ridden view as the one he spews out about Muslims. There was a vast richness that was brought by the Moors to Spain and it is celebrated.
His whole interjection of Islam into the OWS argument was way out of left field, which underscores how out of touch he is with the struggle of the average American. He also fails to see the real trouble of the economy because, well he's doing quite well, until it touches him he may not rethink his view. If he was half the writer he's held up to be he would have first gone down to OWS and would've talked with the people there before unleashing his childish irrational rant.
I do agree with Mr. Komanoff's assertion that Miller should stick to comics. Frank Miller comics have sucked since the 80s and the last thing we need is anyone being indoctrinated into his small minded world view through his "art."