Oakland police: "Let slip the kittens of war"

Matthew Yglesias, observing Shani O. Hilton's twitpic of the Washington Post front page today: "It's amazing that Oakland PD managed to disperse the Occupy Oakland crowd solely by petting kittens." Says Shani, "Not teargassing a soul!" She writes more about it here.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: occupy oakland • occupy wall street

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http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin

Pravda? Is that you, Pravda?
- Данила Володарский
  
  Nope. Pravda had decency and style to its lies.
http://www.paradea.org/notes/ Teirhan

good old ~~oakland tribune~~, symbol of journalistic integrity everywhere.
rekoil

Kitten at scene the following morning != it was left by protesters.
http://twitter.com/shani_o Shani Hilton

Xeni — Matt tweeted a picture I took of the Washington Post this morning, not the Oakland Tribune
http://twitter.com/#!/shani_o/status/129173942127697920I also blogged about it for the Washington City paper:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2011/10/26/oakland-police-love-kittens-teargas/
- http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin
  
  Sorry fixing
  - http://twitter.com/shani_o Shani Hilton
    
    thanks!
http://mattpacey.com Matthew Arnold Pacey

Those horrible hippies, leaving their poor kitty alone. Come on, it was only tear gas and rubber bullets. I mean, seriously, can’t put up with something that makes you cry and something that bounces?
retchdog

i love the blatant gradient. picture=total lie; headline=very selective interpretation; “fired tear gas and bean bags”=truth. as chomsky said, to get the truth, you read the news from back-to-front.
mwiik

Everyone talks about teh kitteh but nobody mentions that ominous ‘Protestors wearing out their welcome nationwide’. As if.
ChicagoD

“Wearing Out Their Welcome Nationwide”

Yes. Because America regarded them as house guests the first few weeks, but now they seem like maybe they are the friend from college living on your couch.

Good grief, Oak Town.
- Guest
  
  I know, right. Because “welcoming” is what protestors expect.
Guest

Of course the police are petting the kittens. Have you MET Anonymous?
http://twitter.com/AwesomeRobot AwesomeRobot

Those OWS people are clearly responsible for all stray cats. Those bastards.
pepik

That’s page A3, not the front page.
- Guest
  
  It’s the front section. Closest they’ve made yet.
http://twitter.com/Deprogrammer9 Depro9

um they shot a veteran in the face! http://youtu.be/L9O3o-7OvIY
Cowicide

“Protestors wearing out their welcome nationwide”

Washington Post showing its true scumbag propagandist colors.
- http://twitter.com/Deprogrammer9 Depro9
  
  nailed it
ninjapornstar

It’s “Mathew Yglesias.” Not, “Matty Iglesias.”
AncientScot

In truth, this is a fairly professional piece of propaganda. They must be getting to who-ever’s watching with a glower on their face. If not, they wouldn’t have started hiring professional (character) assassins. I mean, ‘bean bags’ aren’t so bad (unless they weigh half a pound and are served up at darned near 1,000 feet per second.) And we get to see the nice officer petting the kitty. He may even be a nice man. Just nice enough to lull the cat into a false sense of security before picking it up and sending it off to the animal pound. Humbug.
- That_Anonymous_Coward
  
  Sending it to the pound would be wasting resources. He can just stuff it into an abandoned sleeping bag and chuck it over a bridge just as easily.
  - travtastic
    
    Why would he toss a perfectly good sleeping bag that he could sell? But I assume he did mace the cat right after the picture was taken. Because, fuck, it was breathing.
    - uildaan
      
      I’m sure he could confiscate one from a homeless person, Because, fuck, the bum should get a job and real house
    - wiliwili
      
      look at the picture again, he’s actually trying to force the kitty to the ground and it’s resisting. that animal definitely got a face full of pepper spray right after this pic was snapped.
atimoshenko

“Protestors wearing out their welcome nationwide”??? Really? Who is it that no longer feels so welcoming? Lloyd Blankfein? Rush Limbaugh?
http://twitter.com/zeroanaphora แอ็ะปปี้

The non-editorializing-at-all heading “Protesters wearing out their welcome nationwide” is pretty awesome. When I first saw this I thought it was the New York Post. I knew the Washington Post had a reputation but holy cow.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Oliver-Schmieding/100000452523362 Oliver Schmieding

goebbels would have been proud of you, unknown journalist.
traalfaz

The true progress doesn’t even begin until they start to wear out their welcome.
travtastic

Even assuming the cat was with a protester (which is incredibly doubtful), I love how it reads “that was left behind”. You just walked calmly away without your kitty? That’s negligence, you self-centered proles!

It seriously looks to be that every single statement in that image is bullshit propaganda. It’s insidious enough that I’m beginning to suspect the punctuation.
telaquapacky

@tralfaz: Straight ahead. If they’re not getting Mr. and Mrs. Middle America sorely knotted up in their underpants, they’re not doing their job. Compare the little picnic the Tea Pottiers had in the mall to this- a massive popular eruption of geniune righteous indignation. I hope it never ends until the Koch brothers declare bankruptcy.
Chuck

“Hey Joe.”

“Yeah, sarge?”

“Can I borrow your daughter’s cat for something?”

“Uh … what for?”

“I just need it for a couple photos with the guys down where we cleaned out that protest.”

“Uh…”

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna let them kick it or anything. I promise.”
Cowicide

Washington Post,

I see your friendly, cat-petting officer who is “protecting” the American public from the monsters out there protesting for Satan…

And I raise you THIS, assholes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZLyUK0t0vQ
retchdog

in 2003, my old college-town paper had an article in the back pages covering a local protest of the iraq war. the picture they used was of an iraqi pro-saddam rally. :-/
Bloo

“Wearing out their welcome nationwide” — heard several commentators on CNN (people interviewed, not CNN journalists) saying things like “police had no choice but to… ” and “police decided they needed to do something” along with BS like “sanitary / health issues”. It appears that whoever is asking the police to do these things is also asking for a media slant on it.
Nick Wood

Ah, the catatonic state.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/5OQFBZ26C3VQ5ONGZGDBDY4BUU Mark A

They claimed to be concerned about rats coming into the park. I guess kitty made a liar out of them.
David Freccia

The Post’s Ombudsman talk ed about the photo today here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ask-the-post/post/occupy-oakland-whats-with-the-kitten-photo/2011/10/26/gIQA6kksJM_blog.html?hpid=z9
They claim the photo was chosen before the clash, and that it was a visual moment.
- Guest
  
  And completely ignore the part about how the kitten was definitively abandoned by a dreadlocked vegan hippie “on the grass”.
Ferry Chrispijn

Cat has a nice tie though.