Occupy Wall Street is now an MTV reality show

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New York Magazine reported Monday that Occupy Wall Street Is Coming to MTV.

MTV announced today that True Life: I'm Occupying Wall Street will air in less than two weeks...On the night of November 5, we'll be treated to a well-edited version of the protests we've been watching for more than a month, starring college students Kait and Caitlin, and Bryan, a member of the Zuccotti Park sanitation team.

It looks like what the late Joe Bageant called The Hologram wins again. What is The Hologram? I'll let Joe describe it for you.

We suffer under a mass national hallucination. Americans, regardless of income or social position, now live in a culture entirely perceived inside a self-referential media hologram of a nation and world that does not exist. Our national reality is staged and held together by media, chiefly movie and television images. We live in a "theater state."

In our theater state, we know the world through media productions which are edited and shaped to instruct us on how to look and behave and view the outside world. As in all staged productions and illusions, everyone we see is an actor. There are the television actors portraying what supposedly represents reality. Non-actors in Congress perform in front of the cameras, as the American empire's cultural machinery weaves and spins out our cultural mythology.

Cultural myth production is an enormous industry in America.

And now that enormous industry has turned its eye onto Occupy Wall Street and converted it into entertainment. MTV has already released a preview of its reality show. Watch the clip at MTV's site.

For those who think that television and movie coverage is the ultimate validation of what you are doing, and that does seem to be a lot of people, congratulations, Occupy Wall Street has "made it." On the other hand, becoming famous is not the point. Changing the society, economy, and politics of the United States is. Keep up the good work, and remember that character is what one does when no one, including MTV's cameras, is watching.