Losers, hooligans, cult followers, hypocrites and STD-carriers. These were some of ways that Sun News Network hosts Ezra Levant and Jacqui Delaney described Occupy Canada activists in downtown Toronto.
Their 25 minute broadcast on The Source centred on Levant's visit to the "unwashed masses" camped out in that city's St. James Park.
"I was amongst the 'loogans' today", he remarked, a term that Delaney explained as "part loser, part hooligan."
In a series of combative exchanges with protesters, Levant, who last year authored Ethical Oil, accused the activists of hypocrisy and suggested they were privileged white kids. He later described one protestor as a "cult follower" and referred to the St. James campout as an "STD festival."
Delaney backed him up, implying that many of the attendees were homeless people and referred to the event as the "silly little Occupy movement."
She said she doesn't "necessarily agree" with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, "but I get it, there's a point."
"You think there's dignity in being in [St. James] Park," she remarked later, "give your head a shake -- there's nothing dignified about that."
Sun News wasn't the only Canadian media source to ridicule Canada's Occupy Movement, a countrywide series of protests inspired by the month long occupation of New York's Wall Street.
Calgary Herald columnist Licia Corbella described her city's event as "one of the most humorous things I’ve witnessed in months," comparing one participant's calls for more renewable electricity to "stardust and unicorn sweat."
In Vancouver last weekend, thousands of people gathered at the downtown Art Gallery to protest corporate malfeasance and inequality.
Post a comment on this Tyee thread to suggest what methods the movement should pursue next.
Geoff Dembicki reports for The Tyee.
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