WashPost Columnist: Occupy DC Protesters Just Like Yogi Bear

January 26th, 2012 12:57 PM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Yogi Bear lived in squalor in an urban park picking fights with the cops, urinating in public, and vexing local coffee shop owners and patrons.

But Washington Post Metro columnist Robert McCartney today romanticized the average Occupy DC squatter as reminiscent of "one of [his] childhood heroes," Yogi Bear.

"Like Yogi, the activists live cheerfully in national parks They regularly get away with breaking the rules. Most of all,they drive the authorities batty," McCartney noted in a January 26 column spurred on by Tuesday's House subcommittee about the National Park Service's laissez faire approach whereby the Park Police are not enforcing a ban on camping in McPherson Square, an urban park in the heart of downtown Washington, D.C.

Closing his column, McCartney hailed how "several McPherson demonstrators" have said they are open to a "compromise" if the Park Service would accept 24-hour vigils but ban tents and sleeping.

"If they did, I think it would show that, like Yogi, they're 'smarter than the average bear,'" McCartney closed his column.

The Post has certainly done its share to paint Occupy D.C. in a favorable and romanticized light (pun intended with that link) while burying news items critical of the squatters camp. Just yesterday, for example, coverage of the House hearing into Occupy D.C. was shuffled to the bottom of page A19.