On the Square Today

In his latest On the Square column , David Mills examines Occupy Wall Street’s empty anger:

They make you miss Marx, these Occupy Wall Streeters. Though even the New York Times first treated them as a slightly comical affair, the major media now give them the same extensive, sober, even deferential treatment they give a major movement of which they approve.

But not, I think, because the “Occupiers” are really going anywhere with their protest or doing anything very useful, no matter to how many cities the occupations spread, but because others—the Paul Krugmans and Nicholas Kristofs of the world, for example—can project upon the Occupiers what meaning they want and appropriate their “anger” and “passion” and “outrage” for their own purposes.