I’m not a part of Occupy Wall Street, and I certainly recognize it as a flawed movement, but movements for real change always are. When you search, you make false starts and have to retrace your steps and begin again. Martin Luther King, Jr. led some protests that were utter failures, but his constancy of vision sustained the Civil Rights Movement despite its missteps. My guess is that OWS won’t ultimately change much, whether it be tax codes or politicians using Congress as a cash register, though I hope I’m wrong. I know a lot of forces in the late 19th-century came together in America to cause real economic change, but something like that is the exception and not the rule. However, this incredibly condescending Daily Show piece, which obliviously accuses OWS organizers of being condescending, is too smug to be believed.

I’ll say one thing for Occupy Wall Street: It’s far better than Jon Stewart’s March for Nothing on Washington from last October, which allowed the Daily Show host to practice an inane brand of moral equivalency and spew a few platitudes, before everyone returned to their comfortable homes feeling better about themselves, without having had to confront the complexity of actual social responsibility. Nice and neat, with no chance of progress.