It’s July. The news tends to be less momentous than at other times. The Scrapbook understands that. But the media’s sudden fixation on individual acts of “protest” has us wishing for more stories about kids giving back to the community and celebrities saying dumb things.
The week of Independence Day was especially packed with stories about people making asses of themselves. In Huntsville, Ala., a man shouted “Womp, womp” as a priest delivered the invocation at a small gathering at a park gazebo to protest President Trump’s policies along the U.S.-Mexico border. (“Womp, womp” is the dismissive sound made by the egregious Corey Lewandowski on Fox News when another commentator mentioned a girl with Down syndrome separated from her parents.) This lone counter-protester then brandished a gun, ensuring his instant arrest by nearby police officers.
A story about an idiot troublemaker would have worked well on a local alt-paper’s police blotter page, but it strikes us as thin gruel for a full 800-word story in the Washington Post, complete with interviews and dramatic narrative storytelling (“All around [the priest], people were shaking, crying and getting up from the ground”). Coverage also appeared, among other places, in Politico, Newsweek, and the New York Times.
Then we were given extensive coverage in the Post and USA Today and on CNN and MSNBC of a mom, no doubt heeding the counsel of Rep. Maxine Waters to harass cabinet members, who confronted then-director of the EPA Scott Pruitt as he lunched at a Washington restaurant. Video of the encounter quickly went viral on social media. Initial reports described the woman, Kristin Mink, as a “school teacher,” and so she is, but the fact that her employer is the very upmarket D.C. private school Sidwell Friends rather complicated the idea that her exploit was a spontaneous demand for justice from the hoi polloi. “[Pruitt’s] scandals, I told him, would ultimately push him out,” the woman wrote in an op-ed for the Guardian, after video of her stunt went viral, “but his real crime was the one he was committing against children like my son . . . ”
On the Fourth itself, another lone demonstrator climbed onto the hem of the robe of the Statue of Liberty. The woman, Patricia Okoumou, refused to come down until “all the children are released,” though after about three hours police nabbed her and took her away. Meanwhile, visitors who traveled great distances to see Lady Liberty on the Fourth of July were turned away, and cable and network news channels had reporters on location to cover this major news event. A week later The Scrapbook received an email press release urging Okoumou’s sympathizers not to donate money to “false gofundme accounts attempting to raise money in her name,” which suggests that the news media weren’t the only ones trying to capitalize on her stunt.
We appreciate the challenge posed by slow news days. But surely there are more interesting things for enterprising journalists to cover—gas prices? restaurant sanitation ratings?—than what some nincompoops do to gain attention.
