Occupy Jerusalem - 'Who Was Jesus' TV Special

There is a series on the Planet Green channel called Who Was Jesus? It's one of those pop-level looks at "the historical Jesus", which attempt to divine truths about Jesus as a person apart from religious doctrine and dogma. Given that the series appears on the Planet Green channel, I was fully prepared to be offended in some way, and while I only saw one episode of the series, two things were irksome about it. Well, more than two, but two that I felt like addressing in this post.

First was that the language used by the narrator to describe the economic and social conditions of the time were rooted in a particular disingenuous, modern, leftist rhetoric. Not that what they said was wrong per se, but the fact that they chose to say certain things repetitively -- while not saying many other things that could be said about first century Jewish and Roman culture -- revealed the presence of a particular ideology. Specifically, they referred to the "discrepancy of wealth" and "the suffering masses while a few prospered" over and over again. I will reiterate; it wasn't merely that they said these types of things, but that they made similar statements over and over again. The special could easily have been titled Occupy Jerusalem.

The second was some blatant racism by one historian. When talking about Mary when she goes with Jesus to Jerusalem, and Jesus goes to the temple, she says that "Just like a Jewish mother, Mary was worried to death when she couldn't find Jesus." I'm not hypersensitive when it comes to stereotypes, especially true ones, but this is one of those stereotypes that probably has little basis in reality. I'm aware of no evidence that suggests the average Jewish mother is appreciably more concerned about their children than non-Jewish mothers. The historian even reiterates the statement later, in addition to another trait of the Jewish mother that Mary displays after she finds Jesus, which the historian said was, I believe, relief. She was laughing as she relayed this observation of hers.

Again, I'm the last person to be overly politically correct and I certainly wasn't offended, but if they were exploring African history and she declared about some historical figure "he was, just like an African father, a deadbeat dad", I don't expect Planet Green would so readily include that programming on their channel. Even though, in this case, the attributes -- large amounts of worry and relief -- are either neutral or positive things, it's still quite surprising that they blithely include such dubious racial stereotypes.

Civil War

While I haven't had a chance to blog much recently, I've continued to wage war against the Occupy movement in discussions in real life and twitter. Most recently opposing the outcry from the left over Occupy Oakland being "attacked" by the police. In real time it was mostly reactions from rappers that I was responding to. In any case, the long and short of it is that I always give police the benefit of the doubt, and in this case there wasn't even much doubt to begin with. People were tweeting with straight faces at one moment about refusing to leave, ignoring police's orders, taunting them etc. and in the very next tweet complaining about police "brutality", which they had proudly, defiantly and knowingly brought upon themselves. And for what?

That's not the point of this post though. I give rappers (who are monolithically left in their worldviews) a hard time, but I still like some of their music. Most of the ones I disagree with the most are also ones whose music I do like, even though I disagree with the content when it's political or otherwise ideological. In the case of the new Immortal Technique, Chuck D, Killer Mike, and Brother Ali collaboration "Civil War" [be advised, the track contains vulgarity. Skip to 2:40 to avoid vulgarity and hear the part discussed below], I like the music and some of the content as well. The track is solid as a whole, but Brother Ali's verse is phenomenal. While I think the premise of his verse -- that America somehow restricted or abused the freedoms of Muslims in the wake of 9-11 -- is dubious and certainly not very timely (it would have been more apropos in 2002), still, the bottom line message about freedom is very true, and the technical aspects of the verse are stellar.

Listen
Our hearts were torn apart just like y'all was
Watching towers full of souls fall to sawdust
Every time we called your office you ignored us
Now you're holding hearings on us all inside of Congress
Microscopes on us, ask if we're Jihadists
My answer was in line with all of the founding fathers
I think Patrick said it best, give me liberty or death
I shall never accept anything less
You claim innocence, you play victimless
But you gave the kiss of death in the name of self-defense
Slavery and theft of other nations to the end
Of pacifying your citizenry with excess
We believe in freedom, justice.. security
But they're only pure when they're applied universally
So certainly if I rage against the machine my aim was only to clean the germs out of the circuitry
Urgently puttin fear inside your heart
Make you burn Qurans and tell me not to build a Mosque
Me, my wife and babies, we ain't never made Jihad
We just wanna touch our head to the floor and talk to God
Ask him to remove every blemish from our heart
The greatest threat of harm doesn't come from any bomb
The moment you refuse the human rights for just a few
What happens when that few includes you?
Civil war

Occupy Movement: You Are The 1%

As Occupy Oakland bragged that they were 3000 strong last night when they "took back" the area that cops made them vacate the day before, it struck me just how monstrous a lie Occupy's main slogan is. 3000 is the number Occupy Oakland boasts of at its absolute apex (though even this number was significantly bolstered by outside help, especially transplants from Occupy San Fran), and even that number only amounts to 0.7% the population of Oakland.

Occupy Wall Street itself has only consisted of a core, staying group of hundreds (though the group sometimes swells to thousands). This in a city of a population of 8 million, meaning that at OWS' high point they didn't even amount to 0.1% of the population of New York City. You can do similar calculations for the rest of the Occupy cities and see that those claiming to speak for the 99% don't even amount to 1% of the population, or close to it.

 Baby steps, fellas. Try 1, maybe 2%, first. If you're feeling extremely, unrealistically optimistic, aim for 5%. The true 99% have no interest in joining your ranks, and the actual numbers reflect as much. Speak for yourselves, take pride in the fact that you're a miniscule, "enlightened" minority, and trumpet it from the hills. Stop claiming to represent the 99%, though, because you don't. 

Not to mention Occupy is part of the so-called problem of the top 1% of wage-earners -- corporations, bankers, CEOs and the like -- as well. They haven't renounced corporate products, they aren't living off the grid, and therefore they are contributing daily to the same system they supposedly oppose. Perhaps people would take them more seriously if they actually practiced what they preached by refusing to put dollars into the pockets of corporations. Of course, this would effectively amount to the movement's suicide since it would mean not being able to access the internet (to say nothing of the manifold other ways they avail themselves of the products of corporations), which is their main tool of communication and organization. But if you really stand for an ideal, sometimes you have to make sacrifices, such as efficacy, relevance, even life. Be about it.

 UPDATE: Yet another similar, cogent point is being made by a circulating photo:

In other words, from a global perspective, even America's poor, and certainly middle class, are very rich by most standards. Poverty in modern America often entails a life with a cell phone, flatscreen TV, two cars, electricity, running water, curbside trash pickup etc. etc. So the vast majority of the poor, downtrodden 99% of Americans who aren't in the top 1% are actually among the most privileged persons on the planet, materially within in the top 0.01% to have ever lived.

UPDATE #2: The good folks over at South Park have taken on the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon and the one area they attacked most mercilessly was the imbecility of the rhetoric of "We are the 99%", making the same point that this piece makes.