Occupy Wall Street's Off-Key Response to State of the Union Tonight

Tonight, Occupy Wall Street will be offering a response to the State of the Union address, following any Republican/Tea Party response. (They’ll be doing it live from D.C.) Occupy’s publicist has embargoed the response speech until after the State of the Union, but it’s not really worth printing anyway. (Also: yup, publicist, and yes, embargoed press releases. Hoo boy.) The language of the speech is bombastic yet vague, unspecific and sort of… narcissistic? Lots of rambling about how politics is bought and paid for, yadda yadda. (I mean, yes, that’s true! But it’s just atmospherics; why not name some names then?) About half of its claims are reminiscent of the Tea Party. (To be fair, Occupy and the Tea Party share about a 50% base common interest! Which is good and fascinating!) What’s worse about the planned speech is: it’s vaguely poetic without at all being poetry.

It’d be nice to have a real response to the State of the Union — not one written and distributed in advance. Oh well. The only good news: it promises longevity of the Occupy movement. That we can get behind. And to be fair(er): the presentation, Occupy-style, should make great theater! They might pull it off. Anyway I’m sure all the networks will broadcast it in its entirety. Riiiight?