Guy W. Farmer: Time's Person of the Year: 'The Protester?'

I was flabbergasted, even gobsmacked (an Australian synonym for flabbergasted) last month when Time magazine named "the protester" as its Person of the Year for 2011. The news weekly lumped those raggedy Occupy Wall Street demonstrators in with the brave Arab Spring protesters who overthrew a couple of brutal dictators in the turbulent Middle East.

Time attempted to justify its questionable editorial decision by asserting that "massive and effective street protest was a global oxymoron until ... starting exactly a year ago, it became the defining trope (turning point) of our times. And the protester once again became a maker of history." Well, maybe.

Time's weird selection generated diametrically opposed responses from the political left and the right, even on the Appeal's lively Opinion page. Liberal Anne Macquarie was enthusiastic about the Occupy movement. "I've recently been watching democracy take place and I'm thrilled," she wrote after visiting occupiers at Zuccotti Park in New York City. And she praised the tiny Occupy Carson City movement for generating "real ideas" through "real discussions." How nice for them.

From what I've seen of the Carson City occupiers, they look to me like a minuscule group of aging hippies trying to relive the good old protest days at UC Berkeley. One of them is a former Carson City supervisor, and a couple of them live in big houses on the hill west of town. We used to call these people "limousine liberals"; let's rebrand them as Lakeview liberals (I'm suppressing a snicker).

On the other side of the political spectrum, conservative firebrand Chuck Muth wrote a hard-hitting column titled "Occupy Loserville, USA" in which he labeled the occupiers as "losers, riff-raff, misfits (and) hippie wannabes. ... Then again, I'm sugarcoating it," he wrote. I'm with Chuck on this one.

"Class warfare whining, belly-aching, kvetching, moaning and groaning about freebies and entitlements may be a God-given free speech right, but it's not a trait most productive Americans choose to support," he added. You tell 'em, Chuck!

The occupiers refer to themselves as "the 99 percent." If that were true, however, there would be more than five or six of them standing out in front of the Legislative Building with their illegible signs. With unemployment at 8 or 9 percent, more than 92 percent of working Americans have better things to do, like spending time with their families during the holiday season.

Almost everyone agrees that the occupiers lack a clear set of goals and objectives. They deplore Wall Street greed and corporate misbehavior, as most of us do, but what many of them really want is to replace capitalism with socialism so that government bureaucrats can redistribute income in the name of "fairness" and "equality." In other words, they want us to be more like Europe. No, thanks!

While I admire the brave Arab Spring protesters, I think it's an insult to compare them to America's ragtag occupiers. My message to those folks is: Get a job! And Happy New Year, too.

• Guy W. Farmer is the Appeal's senior political columnist.