On Tuesday’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Maddow, speaking with HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher, likened the Occupy Wall Street protests to the tea party but added that despite activists’ statements that the protests are peaceful, the threat that they could become an angry mob might give them a sense of “dangerousness.”
The tea party, Maddow said, is “seen as essentially driving all Republican political decisions at this point. Is that in part … because they were seen as being potentially violent, because they were seen as an unruly mob? I was thinking about that as we see Eric Cantor and other Republican congressmen denouncing the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ people as an angry mob and somehow dangerous to the country. I wonder if a sense of dangerousness is what gives them power.”
Maher agreed with the MSNBC host, adding that the “Occupy Wall Street” movement conjures up images from Martin Scorsese’s violent, riot-centered movie, “The Gangs of New York.”
“Well yeah, I think so,” Maher said. “I mean, this idea that they’re marching now on millionaires’ homes, I couldn’t help but think of that scene in the Martin Scorsese movie ‘Gangs of New York’ where the riots break out in New York and Martin Scorsese has the cameo where he plays this rich guy. He’s in his Fifth Avenue apartment and a brick comes through the window. Well, you know, if a brick came through Rupert Murdoch’s window, yes, I have a feeling Fox News would be a lot more gentle on the Wall Street people.”
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