Amanpour Touts Wall Street Protests as 'Revolution,' Pleased Politicians 'Finally' Recognize It
Offering the kind of respect, admiration and promotion ABC News has yet to offer Tea Party activists, Christiane Amanpour on Sunday asserted the far-left protesters are a 'populist movement' representing a 'revolution,' cited how it has 'finally' been recognized by politicians, characterized it as an answer to the Tea Party and included an 'Occupy Wall Street activist' on her roundtable.
'The revolution is being televised and tweeted and Facebooked,' she trumpeted in plugging the roundtable, proclaiming: 'The Occupy Wall Street protests are suddenly all that Washington can talk about. Are we witnessing the birth of a new kind of Tea Party?'
'This week,' she touted at the top of the program, 'inside the uprising as the Wall Street protests spread, Washington finally takes note.' Following soundbites from Eric Cantor and Jay Carney, she asked: 'Is this the left's answer to the Tea Party?'
Introducing the roundtable, she repeated her 'finally' formulation:
Washington reacts to the Occupy Wall Street protests now entering their third week. Yesterday thousands of demonstrations marched in New York's Washington Square Park. That was their second mass rally. Meantime, the protests have quickly expanded to other cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, as well as here in the nation's capital. And this week, politicians of both parties finally realize that these young people could not be ignored.
The roundtable featured Jesse LaGreca who is blogging about the protests for the far-left Daily Kos, a favor This Week did not extend in April of 2009 to a Tea Party activist. Amanpour prodded him to do more so his 'populous movement' could have greater impact:
I want to ask you, some of your most-vociferous supporters, like our colleague Paul Krugman, has spoken quite glowingly about this populist movement and you've even heard people around this table saying it should be harnessed, but also saying that it's the moment now to perhaps try to translate that into some kind of political question, political demand. Is there something that you can make this about?
In between her segments on the Wall Street protests, which included an on-scene update from reporter Cecilia Vega at a park in New York City, Amanpour delivered a friendly interview with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. She wondered if President Obama is being liberal enough to satisfy Pelosi:
It's no secret that you were quite disappointed in some of the President's previous public advocacy. Do you now think that there is a pivot that's significant, that there is a new combative President who's going out and really doing what you had hoped to uphold the Democratic flag?
Amanpour's questions to Pelosi in the pre-recorded session run on the Sunday, October 9 This Week:
> The President is barnstorming the country trying to sell this jobs bill. But it looks like the Senate Democrats aren't dying to take it up. Why not?
> He keeps saying that I want the people to push this through because he doesn't think it's going to make it in either the Senate or the House.
> It's no secret that you were quite disappointed in some of the President's previous public advocacy. Do you now think that there is a pivot that's significant, that there is a new combative President who's going out and really doing what you had hoped to uphold the Democratic flag?
> Do you think the case has been made well enough for accountable government, effective government?
> When the American people look in, they see this increasing dysfunction in this building, in this town. At the same time, congressional approval amongst people is at somewhere 14 percent, the lowest since we have been taking those polls.
> People, American people, are now occupying Wall Street, they are spreading their protests to various other cities in the United States. They're expressing frustration, they're expressing fear over joblessness. Do you support them?
> I just want to get your reaction to some comments by Eric Cantor today, he said quotes, 'I'm increasingly concerned-'
[CANTOR: -about the growing mobs, occupying wall street and the other cities across the country. And believe it or not some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans.]
> The story now seems to be one of class warfare. Are you concerned and worried that this is going to be the story going into the elections?
> Can I just ask you about a little local spat? There was a back and forth between Elizabeth Warren and between Senator Brown in Massachusetts.
[DEBATE QUESTIONER: To help pay for his law school education Scott Brown posed for Cosmo. How did you pay for your college education?
ELIZABETH WARREN: I kept my clothes on.
RADIO HOST: Have you officially responded to Elizabeth Warren's comment about how she didn't take her clothes off?
SENATOR BROWN: Thank god.]
What did you make of all of that?
[PELOSI: The response that you just gave, 'thank god,' I think spoke volumes how clueless Senator Scott Brown is. It spoke volumes of disrespecting women.]
