Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

The revolution will be supervised.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Republicans in disarray!

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

No one could have predicted…

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

In my day, never was longer.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

This fight is for everything.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Let there be snark.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

You are here: Home / Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

by | 61 Comments

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This is pretty amazing, even for Kaplan:

Faced with endless photographic documentation of the insane violence of 500 riot cops against a group of protesters in Oakland, the Washington Posteditors proved they are good Kaplan 1% corporate lackeys and choose this picture of … a riot cop petting a kitten. Not just any kitten, though. According to the Washington Post, the shameful excuse for a newspaper in the nation’s capital, it’s a kitten that was cruelly left there by the evil protesters. Hooray for the cops! Protesters hate kittens.

Reader Interactions

61Comments

  1. 1.

    Elizabelle

    Never mind the cat, way to go with the headline.

    “Protesters wearing out their welcome nationwide.”

    Really?

    The founding fathers wanted us to have grass lawns, instead of free speech?

  2. 2.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Your SCLM at work.

    OK, it’s bad to wish for violence, but the Kaplan Daily Test building needs to be surrounded at say 10 AM one day and no one be allowed (well, Eugene Robinson, perhaps) out alive.

  9. 9.

    trollhattan

    Mere words fail. Yay, WaPo.

    (Kitteh was then sent to Afghanistan to face Taliban mousies. OPD is that tough.)

  10. 10.

    scav

    Same cop might have thrown a flash-bang at the feline if the protesters had attempted to slow down and take it with them. But hey, so they decided to go with the Hello Kitty Photo Op instead.

  13. 13.

    General Stuck

    I think we are going to see more and more of this kind of schizoid break from reality amongst the countries 4th estate. It is choosing up sides time, and that means either the brutal truth being reported or a sanitized white washing for the status quo establishment folks, fighting bravely against the terrorists on the streets. Not the first time this equation has presented itself. And again, the beatings will not let up until order is restored, or the country does what is necessary to limit corp money in politics. Better yet to ban it altogether with public financed elections about ideas, not cash cows. That is the only course I see, otherwise, we are on a glide path to disaster that no super hero can rescue us from ourselves.

  16. 16.

    Cat Lady

    Who does Kaplan think they’re kidding? Seriously, who do they think ONLY gets their news from the paper edition of the WaPo?

  19. 19.

    handsmile

    Earlier today on mistermix’s post “The Shrill Pundit Class” on mainstream broadcast coverage of the OWS movement, there was a broad consensus among commenters that “TV news can’t die fast enough.”

    While I largely concur with this sentiment, there is no corporate media entity that I want to see expire more than Kaplan Test Prep Daily. Given its history and influence, there is no more pernicious newspaper now published in the United States.

  25. 25.

    Nethead Jay

    First off, great titla. Second, with this the Village Propaganda Sheet has not just hit rock bottom, but proceeded to break out the jackhammer. Disgusting.

  26. 26.

    Bill

    Is that all they got? Come on, WaPo. Let me fix the caption for ya:

    “A police officer in Oakland, Calif., pets the one remaining kitten not eaten alive by Wall Street protestors. No live puppies were found.”

  27. 27.

    arguingwithsignposts

    I’ll repeat what I wrote this morning:

    If you really wonder why reporters are fumbling around (aside from those paid to shill for the corp interests), here it is straight from the horses mouth, so to speak:

    Foster Kamer does not enjoy covering protests.
    __
    Kamer, a senior editor at the New York Observer, recounted a recent conversation he had with Jack Shafer, the Reuters media columnist, about this very issue. “He was talking about how he abhorred protest coverage,” Kamer told me in a recent phone conversation. “And I found that to be the case with a lot of alt weekly editors. That was my experience with [Village Voice editor] Tony Ortega. Any time we covered a protest it would drive him up the [gosh darned] wall. The thinking was: ‘So people are angry about something — what next?’ And so the instinct I’ve been trained to have, always — and I think it’s a lot of reporters’ instinct — is that protests are generally a non-news item.”

  28. 28.

    JGabriel

    Next up in WaPo, photo from the Oakland protests: Police Officer Cradles, Comforts, Dying Baby Trampled By Protesters Resisting Deserved Arrests!

    .

  30. 30.

    JGabriel

    Wonkette:

    Protesters hate kittens.

    Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with strings:

    These are a few of Our Most Hated Things.

    .

  31. 31.

    slag

    @JGabriel: Finally! I’ve been waiting for a Sound of Music reference.

    Though I was sure it would go the other way, with the cop as sister Maria:
    Teardrops on hippies and whiskers on kittens…

    But the theme’s the same.

  32. 32.

    Mike in NC

    “Protesters wearing out their welcome nationwide”

    It’s been four years since we canceled the loathsome WaPo subscription. I feel so much cleaner.

  34. 34.

    Elizabelle

    @handsmile:

    My mom subscribes to the WaPost. She recently told me she has saved every A section since Obama’s inauguration — for me, the Obot — so that I can “see the history of Obama’s presidency.”

    I was so touched, but thought to myself , “Mom, what you have really done is saved me an archive so that I can read the decline of the Washington Post, issue by issue.”

    It is going to be fascinating to go through those front sections.

    Love my mom for being so thoughtful, and ache for her for not realizing that Katharine Graham’s great paper. Is no longer that.

  35. 35.

    Mnemosyne

    @Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:

    After a brutal interrogation the cat confessed it wasn’t a stray cat that was hanging around the protesters because people were feeding it.

    That was my first thought, too.

    The paper had better hope that the cop’s next action wasn’t to take the cat to the animal shelter where it got euthanized because of overcrowding, or they’re going to look like even bigger assholes. Impossible as that seems.

  36. 36.

    greennotGreen

    Do they really think people take their *cats* to protests? And they know it was left behind by protesters…how? Tags, microchip? Bueller, Bueller? Anyone?

  40. 40.

    Dream On

    This revisionism is from the same world that brings you this –

    Bart Gets Hit by a Car:

    Blue Haired Lawyer: Mr. Burns, relate in your own words exactly what “really” happened on the day of the accident.
    Mr. Burns: Certainly.

    [In Burns’ Story]
    Oh, it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining. I was driving to the orphanage to pass out toys…
    Suddenly, that incorrigible Simpson boy darted in front of me.

    [Bart gets hit by the car]

    Mr. Burns: My goodness! Look what’s happened.
    Smithers: It’s not important sir, let’s drive on.
    Mr. Burns: You despicable cold-blooded monster!
    Regardless of what you think, we must summon help and comfort the dear boy until the ambulance arrives.
    NOOOOOOOO!! TAKE ME!! I’M OLD!!

    [out of Burns’ story]

    And that’s what happened.

  45. 45.

    Suffern ACE

    The obvious caption would have referenced the rodent problem that attracted the cat to the protest in the first place. Introducing the concept of protesters as kitteh neglectors just muddles the message that the protesters are dirty rodent magnets.

  46. 46.

    Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen

    @arguingwithsignposts: Yeah. Wow. I had no idea that the level of enjoyment a reporter got out of reporting something determined its newsworthiness. I guess this means reporters who cover disasters and wars LIKE wading through mounds of human suffering and wreckage.

    It would also certainly explain the Missing Blonde phenomenon (fap, fap).

  47. 47.

    birthmarker

    Today on a sports blog I read, someone posted that OWS is taking food resources away from the homeless. Someone else told the poster to quit watching Fox News.

    I was telling my child, and he said, “Since when did Fox News care about the homeless?” Ha! Smart kid!

    (I don’t know if the story started on Fox News, I just tell it as it was told.)

    DougJ-does your title refer to a movie, song or book?

  49. 49.

    KJbrooklyn

    And all the protesters said “no I’m the prettiest, no I’m the prettiest” Until only one protester was left.

  50. 50.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    .
    .
    How dare those dirty fucking firebaggers demand that President Obama’s Justice Department investigate the Oakland Police Department for their violent police-state crimes against OWS and Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen, and furthermore ask for some grifting “donations” to fund his brain surgery?
    .
    .

  52. 52.

    wilfred

    I never quite get the point of these media obsessions, especially when that same media is approvingly quoted when supporting one’s positions. There is plenty of alternative media – al jazeera, Press TV, Z, etc.

    In any case, what matters most is statewide and national politicians speaking out against police actions targeting OWS. Without that, there will be zero protection for OWS. So far, to my knowledge, only Barbara Lee has defended OWS here, and she was bit equivocal. Brown was Mayor of Oakland during the 2003 anti-war protests and was pretty pro-police, as I recall.

    Where’s Feinstein (guffaw) or Boxer? You either stand in front of the police or behind the police. Time to take a fucking position, no?

  53. 53.

    PIGL

    This headline and photo would be considered over the top is fracking Ruritania, where the President never gets less than 98% of the vote, and every single starving toothless peasant woman is his baba, and the students crushed in the streets by tanks and invisibly tortured to death in dungeons are dangerous communist enemies…

    Ooops: I started off trying to be funny, and ended up talking about Argentina, and every tin-pot dicatorship these Rat Bastards have supported for ever.

    Make no mistake: this paper will be spreading the same pack of judicious lies when the OWS crowd are openly shot* in the streets, and their supporters die screaming in black prisons. There is no depth of horror and oppression to which they will not eagerly plunge. The owners and editors need to DIAF, and any honest person who works there needs to quit.

    * Shot with the real lethal ordinance, maybe the explosive or poisoned kind, not the “sub-lethal” rounds used so far.

    Also, I meant 80s Argentina, not present-day. They got over their murderous fascist death-worshippers. America has just noticing that there may be a problem.

  55. 55.

    Arclite

    @DougJ: How does this post NOT have the tag Our Failed Media Experiment. This is an epic fail. Nay, this is an intentional subversion of the duty of the press.

  57. 57.

    badpoetry

    I remember a friend of mine spent some time in China in the nineties, and he brought back some books and pamphlets that were the official Chinese government account of what REALLY happened in Tiananmen Square. Heroic soldiers, hopelessly outnumbered by the vicious protestors, were bravely able to restore the public order, at great cost to themselves.

    But even the Chinese government couldn’t stoop so low as to show the Chinese soldiers petting an abandoned cat. Who says we’re falling behind the Chinese?

  59. 59.

    Chris H

    FWIW, Kaplan has responded to the controversy. Sez Kaplan photo editor Carol McKaye:

    When I was looking at the Tuesday wire service photographs from the Oakland City Hall grounds, the violent protest images were not in the mix because that confrontation had not yet occurred. The late-night, violent protest was in response to the Tuesday eviction by the Oakland police. Even though the story, written later in the evening, included information about the arrests and tear gas, no news images had moved by our production deadline, probably because Oakland is on Pacific time–a three-hour difference. The photograph was chosen because it was a visual “moment” in time showing a police officer doing something interesting–not just walking through tents and trash. The wire service images that moved overnight and this morning offer a much different look at last night’s protest.

    ….so by the time they wrote the story, they had information regarding the violence, tear gas, etc., but no images? Why not just publish the story without an image then? This smacks of b.s.

  61. 61.

    Don

    As I told someone on twitter, this is not surprising at all from the newspaper who decided they wouldn’t pull the PARADE profile of Bhutto from their distribution despite how embarrassingly inadequate it was, given that she’d been assassinated several days earlier.

    Not that the article linked above really addresses WaPo’s actions – it’s all about PARADE rather than the question of whether it made sense to distribute it. Poynter actually addresses that and if you’re at all interested in media you need to be following their twitter feed & articles along with Jay Rosen and Shirky (whose profiles were probably helped by this recent O’Klown nonsense).

    The often entertaining Mike Riggs tweeted this:
    This is a nimble, experimental newspaper: http://ow.ly/7a3Xl This is not: http://ow.ly/7a3YH

    and he’s dead-on.

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