Colin McEnroe Show: Occupy Updates, Botched Butlers, & Listener Letters
We're big fans of Oxford commas here on the Colin McEnroe Show, and elsewhere.
From the size of the police presence that descended on Occupy Hartford's Turning Point Park yesterday afternoon, you would have guessed that General Zod and his super powered confederates had burst out of the phantom zone. Instead, the enormous caravan of cruisers, horses and police equipment was deployed to evict about ten scruffy, tired tent-dwellers.
Maybe the Hartford police were feeling some SWAT envy. Next door in West Hartford, the downtown is sparkling every night - not with Christmas lights, but with lots of lit-up cop cars as a movie called "PAWN" is shot in a vacant Friendly's restaurant. Townies have been gathering near the town common for glimpses of Ray Liotta, Forrest Whitaker or the rapper Common, and the West Hartford SWAT team - who knew there was one? -- is in the movie.
Today on the show, we'll bring you up to day of events around the state and dump out our mailbag on The Sack.
Leave your comments below, e-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us @wnprcolin.
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EMAIL FROM NANCY:
Three friends and I rallied with Occupy New Haven for the march around the green and returned twice after that as it sadly declined. First of all, the majority of those assembled were ordinary citizens, students, professors, attorneys, telephone company workers, etc. and retirees like us. We'd been asking each other for months: Where are the people? Why aren't they in the streets? The chance to take to the streets as we had during Vietnam, in the stand for civil rights and women's rights, was immensely rewarding for all of us.
After the walk, others came to ask about our experience - we saw it as a teaching moment, as they did, too, - but no one asked advice on what to do next. I fervently hope Occupy organizers will stand only in daylight hours. respectfully, in large numbers in public places. I saw them make it clear at the New Haven rally that alothough a union local was welcome to march, this is not solely a union demonstration. Sadly, they weren't able to discourage other groups. However it has been proven that large numbers of people present in public during daylight hours will make politicians act. This time, some of them kept asking, "What do you want? Tell us." That was only to discover which bone to throw.
This time, they need to know that Occupy movement wants honesty and fairness that will return what's become The United Scams of America to a country we can be proud to live in.This is not protest. It is opposition. to the re-distribtion of wealth that has already occurred and it should stand staunchly in place until change comes. Pass it on to those you know..
p.s. Perhaps it should be called a Demonstration of Dissatisfaction. The press (I was one of them for 30 years) could not then label it as a protest that seeks the redistribtion of weath ( which we all know is Marxist jargon) and in fact that redistribution has already happened, all unnoticed. Also, if it's not a Protest, the press cannot film only the wretched, (yes, and weird) unfortunates who seek only food and shelter.
EMAIL FROM KRISTI:
I just wanted you to know that I listen to your show at 8 pm!
EMAIL FROM RACHEL:
I heard you mention that according to some measurement your 8pm audience is statistically non-existent. So, I had to write to tell you how how much I appreciate being able to listen to your show when the literal and metaphorical noise of the day has mostly played itself out. Honestly, the show sounds different at night (yeah, occasionally I'll catch part of a show in the afternoon and then hear it again when I tune in the whole rebroadcast).
I'm a fairly recent listener. I live in the western part of the state and have only been able to receive the station's signal clearly in the last several months. The sensibility you bring in examining a wide range of topics is the single best advertisement for the merits of a liberal arts education. You're able to discourse as fluently with a Beckett scholar as with a seasoned Santa. I came away from the segment with Chris Mathews pretty certain that you had a more nuanced understanding of JFK than the guy who wrote the book.
But perhaps most compelling of all is that you bring the very same attention and intention, grace and equanimity to everyone you speak with on the show. It's a relief to listen to an intelligent host who can reveal some sense of himself while never making it about himself, rather, always illuminating the guest or the subject in question.
EMAIL FROM EVA:
Huge fan just wanted to to let you know that Rachel who was on the air today is also a NPR Colin nerd like myself and something that wasn't mentioned after the last caller was justifying her arrest is that the city of Hartford issued a press release allowing the protesters to pick up there belongings in that 8th time frame and when Rachel went to do just that she was still within that tome frame. I heard you mention 2hrs I just wish more people weren't as arrogant as that last caller.
Thanks for the show.
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