The other night, I ran into a veteran journalist, a writer who I always considered was among the “plugged in.”

Yet when I told him I was reporting on Occupied Wall Street, he plugged out, and stared at me cluelessly.

“What do they want,” he asked, echoing the questioned raised endlessly by TV pundits and editorial commentators.

He didn’t seem to know or care who “they” are, or why they have taken to living in parks to make their point.

He and his colleagues seem to be saying that to understand what’s going on, it all be first compressed into a press release with bullet points they can simplify further.

“I don’t get it,” he sighed.

“Its about Occupying Wall Street,” I replied, “Occupying Wall Street, challenging the power of its economic power.”

Another blank look…

It’s as if we need our politics to follow a predictable format characterized by legislators playing to the cameras, message points, and pithy slogans.

Deeper Challenge

The idea of a deeper challenge to a totally compromised system driven by big money and special interests is considered by some as an anomaly that belongs in another century,

Extra parliamentary political movements don’t compute for some who want the political debate limited to rituals like elections, traditional “debates” and up and down votes on selective laws.

In this world, politics is best left to politicians with citizens there to look but not to act.

There seem to be three factors at work.

1. Financial issues are treated as exotic, beyond our comprehension and best left in back of the paper in the business pages where obscurantist language makes it so dense that most readers turn away.

2. The upper classes, now referred to as the 1 percent, and the people who identify with them or uncritically rely on them for financial guidance cannot comprehend any critique that challenges their prerogatives and power. They use terms like “unsophisticated” to deligitimize protesters who challenge their pretensions and priorities.

3. Some don’t and won’t “get it” because it is not in their interest to do so. They shamelessly use their power to impose their will on the legislative process with an eye on loosening or abandoning any financial reforms that force higher standards of transparency.

Example: even as Occupy Wall Street wins public support for its campaign against inequality and challenge to big banks and corporations, The Obama Administration is about to eviscerate laws that insure corporate accountability.

Mike Taibbi explains the latest way Washington is aligned with Wall Street in Rolling Stone: (Amazing isn’t it that a music magazine does a better job of covering these issues than our financial media,)

He writes, “Barack Obama is apparently expressing willingness to junk big chunks of Sarbanes-Oxley in exchange for support for his jobs program. Business leaders are balking at creating new jobs unless Obama makes compliance with S-O voluntary for all firms valued at under $1 billion

“Here’s how to translate this move: companies are saying they can’t attract investment unless they can hide their financials from investors. So the CEOs and gazillionaires on Obama’s Jobs Council want the politically-vulnerable president to give them license to cook the books in exchange for support for his jobs program.

“From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“‘All you’re going to do is have more fraud. The ultimate losers are going to be investors,’ said Jeff Klink, a former federal prosecutor whose Gateway Center firm helps clients prevent and detect fraud.”

Next…Massive Fraud