I’d like to think the Occupy Wall Street crowd understands their issue better than yours truly, but I’ve covered enough protests to know most folks screaming catchphrases are clueless reprobates with nothing much better to do. You there – dressed like a shepherd and reeking of ditch-water. Wanna change the world? Leave the street. Wash that ass. Get a job. Maybe then I’ll be the least bit interested in what you have to say (though chances are if you’re holding a homemade sign and wearing anything made of hemp, I’m gonna consider you still mad at your parents and officially not worth my time.) But hey, I didn’t log in to lose readers with my half-addled pragmatism. There’s tons of blogs featuring that weak cheese. Besides, politics cease to matter when the night sticks take flight. Just ask Rodney King.

Or better yet, ask FOX 5 photog Roy Isen and reporter Dick Brennan. They were among the news crews caught in an explosion of violence between New York Police officers and the great unwashed. No matter your theology, it’s a scary scene. Protestors pushing forth, cops swatting back with batons and pepper spray; if nothing else the footage proves you don’t cover a riot, you swim in one. Of course the Occupy Wall Street movement famously started via social media and some would say the mainstream media is only getting what they deserved for being late to the world’s most unpleasant party. Meh. I’m just glad that particular fracas is happening far from here, for as painful as it would be to catch a nightstick to the head, it would be even more excruciating to do so in a crowd full of people who still aren’t sure what in the hell they’re fighting for.