As Brett noted yesterday on UPROXX, Stephen Colbert infiltrated Occupy Wall Street dressed up as Che Guevara for a segment on “The Colbert Report.” But the majority of the segment (video below) was an interview with these caricatures of liberal hipster scum. The woman on the right — yes, she really IS wearing oversize glasses AND a vintage dress AND Down Syndrome bangs — goes by the name “Ketchup.” Her name is Ketchup. And she says she’s a “female-bodied person,” because not all biological females identify themselves as women. Because apparently saying she’s a woman would be insulting to transgendered people? I don’t know.
I mean, here I am, someone who’s angry at the big banks and hedge funds who led to our nation’s financial ruin. I’ve lost a significant portion of my meager life savings thanks to their greed. I absolutely identify with the 99%. And yet these cheesedick academic douchebags make me want to reconsider my position. I’m thinking about joining the NYPD right now just for the outside chance to hit these people with a night stick.
Yo Occupy Wall Street, hire a PR firm.
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After seeing this last night, I about ran out the door to kill the first hippy I saw.
Seeing these people makes me want to work hard and get a better paying job
So these are the people who are suppose to change the country? Better drink my own piss.
I only saw last night’s segment, missed Part 1. But in part 2 I thought she came off as principled and thoughtful, if overly earnest at times–hardly a damning way to describe someone so young. Kind of surprised at the heat, Ufford. Isn’t ‘scum’ a bit much?
The 99% are all special, precious snowflakes doomed forever to be divided.
The 1% count on that.
I actually thought “schum” was a tad understated, if anything.
Ugh, hippies are the worst.
Yeah, that’s right, i just spelled “scum” with an H.
The downward waggling fingers is too much. I never thought I would ever say no to ketchup (sorry fries).
@DHG I believe this goes under the always defendable rule of “if a girl names herself after a condiment, she deserves whatever scorn and mockery you can give”
After watching that interview I want the South Park episode “Die Hippie Die” to become a reality.
/cranks up “Raining Blood” by Slayer
@DHG I believe the term scum is not pointed completely at these two, but at a larger stereotype as a whole.
That being said, her name is Ketchup and they use spirit fingers to make decisions. And they speak in “that” way that annoying hipster scum usually does. It made my head hurt and discouraged about the effectiveness of what they represent.
Isn’t ‘scum’ a bit much?
It’s just my opinion, you pussy.
What is it with hipster dudes and early onset male pattern baldness?
Moe Howard laughs at her haircut.
So, Ronald McDonald is a hipster in a female body now?
The video is unavailable for me, which is a shame as I can’t stop looking at Ketchup. She’s officially replaced Olivia Wilde as “America’s Beauty” now.
Just look at her! She must be an animal in bed.
Nice iPad, Mr. Anti corportion.
I just think it’s amazing how much she looks like the image of Dean Pelton on the linked story above this one.
I understand “why” the OWS (et al.) are doing what they’re doing. What I don’t understand is “what” they’re doing.
Isn’t ‘scum’ a bit much?
It’s not even close.
Tacos’s first theory: Any organized movement will rapidly become dominated by ignorant lunatics in weird clothes, followed by domination by preexisting larger groups whose beliefs/ends are not actually in line with the original movement.
Tacos’s second theory: The most sure way for Matt to get a lot of page views is to post something related to either politics, corgis, or Alison Brie dressed in costume.
Would calling her a dumb broad be an insult to transgendered people also?
They’d hire a PR firm, but all of the $450,000 they’ve collected is currently tied up in sending all of the participants in last week’s fuck-a-thon to VD clinics. Seriously.
These two degenerates lost me with the hand movements. If you can’t speak like an adult, and I understand that is asking a lot for 100% of society, then draw it on paper with crayons. Wiggly finger shit is super lame.
Bet she’s a lady in the street and a freak in the bed.
Amiright?
KETCHUP HITLER!
Fuck them for stealing those finger signals from the Itsy Bitsy Spider song.
Seriously? You guys know this is a spoof, right? And those aren’t real OWS protestors, right? Well, apparently you don’t!
HAHA MATT DON’T KNOW IT’S FAKE!
I catch a lot of shit some times for being a Republican and I admit, my party disappoints the shit out of me. Must of the time I find myself having to sheepishly justify the idiot views of the people around me and then hoping that my party will elect some sort of Ron Swanson/Teddy Roosevelt hybrid instead of the hypocrite rich southern white boys who mutter something about Reagen even though they aren’t fit to carry Ronnie’s jock.
When people (particularly women, because its really hard to get laid in LA when you vote GOP) ask me why I’m Republican I start to wonder why myself. I’m not unsympathetic to OWS after all and while I don’t think it’s solving the problem, I understand why it’s there. I’m not unwilling to accept compromise and I’m sick of being the party of No. I’m always wondering if I should switch parties and just go liberal so I can date a pilates instructor or something.
And then I see people like this and I’m reminded why I am the way I am: I just cannot bring myself to associate with people that fucking snooty.
I can put up with the racist, anti-intellectual war mongers and I can swallow the religious zealots with a shaky understanding of classical Conservative thought and I can even put up with the Objectivist weirdos who refuse to uphold the basic social contract of a polite society.
But I draw the line at hipsters and hippies. I swear to god meeting people like that makes me want to bomb Seattle.
@BooksMoore:
According to this “Nation” article Ketchup is working as an OWS facilitator. I guess there could be more than one “Ketchup”, but that is a very depressing thought.
[www.thenation.com]
Great. Fucking great. Nothing deflates a well-intentioned and long-overdue movement more than its’ representation by the motherfucking Burger King Kids Club.
I am the 69%.
/high five?
Said it before, I’ll say it again: Occupy Wallstreet is the Liberal Tea Party
@UU…you are a hero.
Listen, I need someone to convince the government to pay for the student loan debt from my 6 masters degrees. If Ketchup wants to fight this battle for me, I’m fine with that.
@thecursor:
Not to spin this thread off into abstract political philosophy, but what do you think a Ron Swanson/Teddy Roosevelt hybrid would look like, besides a sweet stache? Swanson is a libertarian who would oppose a large activist government and TR was anything but.
Good luck on getting laid in LA, the nice thing about DC is regardless of your philosophy you can find women who share it/want to convert you.
I can’t tell if my daughter has Down Syndrome bangs or plain ol’ Down Syndrome.
At least the hippies in the sixties had balls enough to make demands, take over buildings, do a little violence and have a defined platform. They were a gigantic pain in the ass to the government.
These clowns are just embarrassing. This is a movement manufactured by the elitist left to look like the people are leading an uprising. If it was a real uprising there would be more blood in the streets. OWS has no balls.
I would welcome the chance to hate-f**k ‘Ketchup’ while her granola boyfriend watches.
Seeing this makes me want to ride a horse through OWS, swinging a mace. And I actually agree with the basic tenants of what the more articulate OWS demonstrators have said is their cause. Jesus Christ.
Can the 99% part ways with these pretentious douchebags? Become the 98% or something?
I still remember the antiwat march in Manhattan in February 2003. A whole bunch of ordinary working and middle class people, and then these two unwashed assclowns with a giant papier mache puppet of Dick Cheney with blood coming out of his mouth.
Fuck you, hippies. You’re not helping.
*antiwar. I’m very much pro-wat.
“What is it with hipster dudes and early onset male pattern baldness?”
They’re trying to be ironic.
lol at Ketchup wearing a mustard yellow shirt.
If these two delusionally earnest Wes Anderson extras represent the movement, I think Wall Street can rest easy. We’ll see how effective pouting and finger waggling fares against tear gas and riot clubs.
I saw that hand-signal stuff somewhere else, too. So apparently that’s real. But that shit is retarded. What’s wrong with using actual words? I guess maybe Wall Street gets royalties for those or something.
And my understanding of her “female-bodied person” point is not that it’s about sensitivity towards transsexuals, but rather that she herself does not identify as a woman. She does have a pretty asexual look about her, dontcha think?
……Ketchup?……Catsup?……Ketchup?…….Catsup?……
@ Tacos
I sort of picture the merging of the two would sort of combine the best of both. Obviously I’m cherry picking my fantasy superman: Take a little of Swanson’s pro-business/ small government views, a little of Roosevelt’s intelligence and political savvy, moderate some of Swanson’s views and tone down Roosevelt’s activism a bit, but keep that rugged individualism and emphasis on personal responsibility.
The final product is a shotgun toting warrior-poet who believes in a small government but isn’t afraid to intervene when needed. An educated professional with a black belt in judo.
OWS is running a movement that almost everyone believes should exist in some form, but they’re using questionable strategy, come off as dickheads to the media, and have no way to tell if they’re accomplishing anything.
The good news is, if this doesn’t work out, they’re shoo-ins to run the War on Terror.
Ketchup is also the one filming the video. Fast forward or wait til the last 10 seconds.
I want to support this cause, but fuck these people.
Sorry, forgot the link:
[www.youtube.com]
Does the sun in NYC not emit UV rays? How the fuck does she spend all that time outside and stay so pale?
@TG – thanks for de-bunking the de-bunker. I trust matt would *never* post a story without extensive background research, but on both Colbert and the Daily show interviews I often find myself thinking “NFW, these people are NOT real.”
Also for page views @Matt – Zooey is single again and I’m not reading about it here? Did you switch teams (actually, i can’t remember which one you’re on)?
\ Team Zooey!!
Ketchup. Way to be taken seriously. Fragmented sentences. Are my. Favorite, sorry.
@thecursor I think you are my soulmate. And I live in L.A. And I’m a woman – not this female bodied hippie hipster weirdo garbage.
I think this illustrates the problem with obsessing over language in a political situation. Is there really any idea-content underneath the finger-dazzles and diamond cutters (I will, of course, refuse to acknowledge this jazz-handed bullshit)? Not really. It’s a vague, even conservative notion of populist collectivism–rule by majority, parliamentary procedure, et. al..
What Occupy really needs is a notion of truth, a ground. All of this reworked participatory formalism just further ingrains already-existent ideas in a different guise, and it’s not going anywhere. Identify something, not just nebulous half-thoughts about gender politics and disliking greed. The problem isn’t that they’re academic twats, it’s that they’re weak, pretentiously academic twats that aren’t thinking things through to an actual point or assertion.
Oh fuck, people tried to get intellectual in this motherfucker! Quick, get the juggling Ferengi out here! Dick joke! Kill life failures like hippies and tea partiers and Klingon impersonators!
@baphomet: Good point. This interview highlights the problem with OWS, like the Tea Party before it. There may be a narrow point that merits serious debate and resolution; in OWS’s case undue influence of monied interests, particularly corporations, in the political and governmental process. Unfortunately the movement gets filled/hijacked by morons who want to broaden the scope beyond a clearly defined issue to everything they think is wrong in the world. This makes having constructive dialog or action almost impossible because nobody can agree on what they should discuss or what a resolution would look like.
If OWS (which, like the Tea Party is not a monolithic group) came out with a focused statement saying:
“We think monied interests wield too much influence in government and politics. This influence has bad results, most recently the economic turmoil of the past few years, where these interests were both shielded from appropriate oversight before the crash by virtue of their influence, and were insulated, at our expense, from the results of their actions. This situation is contra to the principles of fairness and liberty enshrined in our constitutional democracy and must be fixed.”
That is clearly defined and you can imagine what a solution to that would look like. Then folks who have faith in government oversight would advocate for more of it, folks who are skeptical of government oversight because they think the additional oversight will just be captured by monied interests will argue for less government so there is less to be captured and used, and we can move forward. But not with a woman named Ketchup…boo, just boo.
@Tacos: Agreed (obviously). I think one of the best unintended results of the stasis you point out is that it actually undermines the notion of democracy being an end unto itself; that is, simply “participating” isn’t enough, and never has been. And, parallel to your point about over-broadening, the weirdest thing about Occupiers doing this kind of generalization-unto-death is that it really did begin with a clear anchoring event (banks over-leveraging and hyper-producing toxic assets; the political process’ inability to properly address it, as you said), but many/most seemed to want the mere recognition of that event to do the hard work of forming a response. Even Zizek *braces for cockpunch* has been pushing the “don’t make demands, just occupy/strike” modality, and it’s…well, it’s going all Ketchup. I’m not sure that Occupy will/can condense into a single-issue “movement,” but I do think that creating some kind of oscillation (I almost said dialectic) between inclusive, intrusive action and rigorously formulated demands is essential to it producing anything of lasting effect. Either extreme by itself is just too easily co-opted or defused by existing processes.
@Feklahr: FART FART BOOGER DICK. I hate sounding intellectual but I hate weak politics more. PEE.
Ketchup makes me feel a LOT better about my second grade school photo. I was just really, really ahead of my time, that’s all.
I now wanna see ED-209 gun these hipster shitheads down.
All you essay writers above don’t need jobs, you new lives. This is Matt’s blog. You need not tell us your bloated opinions gleaned from too many hours on the Internet. Just say, “Fuck Occupy Wall Street. Fuck the 1 percent. Fuck Bush. Fuck Obama. Roll tide!” and be done with it.
@Baphometropolitan: Completely normal to see Žižek and “FART FART BOOGER DICK” mentioned in the same post.
I’d totally dip my french fry in some ketchup.
@ Tacos and other interested people, I saw this the other day. I can’t watch the video because I am currently in the UK, but based on your comments maybe you would like to read this.
[www.petitiononline.com]
I know I am going to be slammed for writing this: there are some points in the comments here that I can identify with- especially the perceived hipster intellectual snobbery but I think one of the greatest things about the US is that there so many different people and cultures. is all the hatin’ really necessary?
@Tacos and @Baphometropolitan, see this is my major problem with this movement: it has become little more than a chance to be a part of a movement. They’re occupying an area of New York that actually has very little real importance to the day to day financial market and is little more than a symbol of where the money is. So basically these people are protesting without a cause on the site of a symbol that has little real value. So when people actually open their mouths and say things like “They don’t need a cause”, this movement dies just a little bit quicker. Occupy Wall Street has reached a weird cross roads between ex hippies trying to relive old battles, angry radicals who wanted to protest anyway, and the real people who this whole thing should be about anyway and honestly, this whole thing could do with fewer of the first two and more of the third.
@x1hthor: Thanks for the link, I was impressed up to point 6, then the scope expanded and the logic train derailed, but at least it is a start.
@Monke Business: Sorry I broke into you house and forced you, at gun point, to read all of these comments.
@thecursor/Head Bee Guy- There’s also the fact that the vast majority of newsmedia are controlled by some of the very same monied interests against which OWS is protesting- so while Colbert and his team obviously selected the most obnoxious people he could find to satirize the movement, they were also to satirize news coverage of it, which will obviously not interview Ketchup so as to still be able to play the “fair coverage” dodge, but will pick folks a just a tier below in the ridiculous stakes to show on the teevee/in papers/on blogs.
@Keith, That’s frankly more a matter of opinion than a matter of fact and it’s based more on perception than anything else. The idea that media colludes with all power is an old accusation that’s thrown around when people feel like they’re getting beaten up on TV. I worked in local news, I can tell you from experience that when a reporter does a hit job on somebody it looks radically different from just an average story. Most of the coverage I’ve seen so far is what I call passive reporting, because when you’ve got rioting and marching in the streets most reporters sort of turn off their brains and just report what is happening. Naturally that report is filtered through their own personal bias and perception but its still not usually an active, probing “gotcha” type thing. It’s laziness more than anything else. These guys look in a crowd, see who’s interesting or looks interesting and assume that’s the story. They aren’t probing down deep the get the substance because why bother? The substance is right there getting gassed by the cops. The idea that some shadowy figure picks up a phone and says “Fuck em” and everybody from the ND down to the correspondent starts towing the line is silly. News Organizations are just not THAT organized. Not only that but every reporter in the universe dreams of the day when somebody will tell them to kill a story because that’s how you get famous in the news business. They’ll be able to write a book about the incident and it’ll get turned into a movie and you’ll get on the lecture circuit. Anyone who thinks the media, which makes money on controversy of any kind, would actively collude to protect somebody from controversy because they are powerful is not playing with all the facts frankly.
These protests are the liberal’s response to the tea party. They are timed to push an agenda that coincides with Obama’s during his run for re-election. The liberals hope that the media perceives, and reports on, this as a voice of the people. The fact that even the media is reporting it as confused and not really accomplishing anything means that Obama’s agenda is not going to fly in the election. AWKWARD!
These guys aren’t hippie’s you clueless mongs, they’re hipsters. Trendies. Don’t sully the good name of hippies (which I’m not, incidentally) by including fashionista’s in the same pool.
Read a bit more. Gain a bit more knowledge.
Colbert Report is Comedy. Stephen picked two great foils to his persona.
I will be interested to see if the occupy movement eventually clarifies objectives and pushes for specific change.