Politics

Rolling Stone executive editor: ‘Krauthammer is clueless’

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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In his Friday Washington Post column, Charles Krauthammer had some tough words for the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters, asking if their outrage was justified:

“Starbucks-sipping, Levi’s-clad, iPhone-clutching protesters denounce corporate America,” he wrote, “even as they weep for Steve Jobs, corporate titan, billionaire eight times over. These indignant indolents saddled with their $50,000 student loans and English degrees have decided that their lack of gainful employment is rooted in the malice of the millionaires on whose homes they are now marching — to the applause of Democrats suffering acute Tea Party envy and now salivating at the energy these big-government anarchists will presumably give their cause.”

That analysis didn’t sit well with Rolling Stone magazine executive editor Eric Bates. On Friday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, Bates compared the current protest culture to the environment that produced Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

“They came out of this very West Coast anarchic culture and they came out of the ’60s,” Bates said. “And they applied those kinds of broader principles and broader feelings about the world to what they did. But I also think it’s worth noting Steve Jobs made something. Wall Street hasn’t made anything. Wall Street has taken. Wall Street has created these fictional products that cratered the world economy.”

And that’s where Bates said Krauthammer is wrong.

“Krauthammer is clueless when he says that about these protesters, because they’re not kids of privilege protesting the titans of industry,” Bates continued. “They’re people who have been wronged — and all the American people have — by criminal actions. They’re protesting crime. They’re protesting massive crime.”

Watch:

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