I couldn’t help but notice this in the article about the “Wail of the 1%” that John linked to yesterday:
Jake DeSantis, a 40-year-old commodities trader at AIG, was an unlikely face of Wall Street greed. Stocky and clean cut, with an abiding moral streak, he’d worked summers for a bricklayer in the shadow of shuttered steel mills outside Pittsburgh; he was valedictorian of his high-school class and attended college at MIT.
You see, it doesn’t matter if he’s spoiled and greedy now, because he laid bricks over the summer when he was a teen-ager? Don’t you elitists get this?
It’s striking how much we now see the idea that a working-class childhood justifies an adulthood of careerist whoring. Somerby’s been all over this for years, but I think the most blatant example I’ve ever seen is this bit from a chat with Howard Kurtz recently:
Reader: Much of the scalding tone many of your writers on these chats are subjected to from readers is based on this premise. We know that the Post, the Times, the networks are working to support the establishment at all cost. (In Broder’s famous and haughty dismissal of Bill Clinton “this is not his town”). But the problem is that you guys don’t like to portray yourselves as defenders of the establishment. You are the “little guy.” No you are not. Be honest with your audience.
Howard Kurtz: Talk about sweeping generalizations! Evan Thomas declares himself part of the establishment and suddenly every member of the major newspapers and networks are pillars of that establishment as well?
That would be news to Brian Williams, who was a volunteer fireman as a young man and washed out in his first job at a tiny Kansas station. And news to me, a guy who went to a state university. And news to Katie Couric, who started out on the University of Virginia’s student paper and washed out in her first national job, at CNN. And news to longtime Post editor Len Downie, who went to Ohio State University and started here as an intern. And also news to me, a kid from Brooklyn who never met a professional journalist until my junior year at a state university.
If you want to say these are big corporations, if you want to criticize what they do, be my guest. But let’s not assume that everyone in the business grew up in the bosom of the establishment.
An even more amazing example is George Bush’s claim (from a 2000 Nick Lemann piece that’s subscription only) that the biggest difference between him and Al Gore is that Bush went to San Jacinto Junior High.
How did this idea of humble, or humbler, beginnings become so important? It’s worth noting that it’s Randian as well — her heroes usually come from the working class, even if they spend their adult lives spitting on it.
Update. I know that the Horatio Alger stuff has always been really big in stories about business people, but when did it cross over into being so important for journalists and politicians? I mean, I get the idea of “hungry kid” makes good, but when did it become a marker of solid journalistic common sense. That’s what I really don’t get.
Comrade Dread
It’s part of a popular myth in Americana. That the obscenely rich through sheer power of will, hard work, and the occasional lucky break managed to make it big, and so can you one day.
So don’t vote for those Progressives who want to hamstring the filthy rich with taxes and regulations. They’re just jealous losers who aren’t as American as we are.
DonBoy
Stocky and clean cut, with an abiding moral streak
Citation needed, asshole. Seriously, where did this come from?
Michael
cf. the late Saint Russert, working class regular Irish Catholic guy from Buffalo! Which made the perpetual MTP fluffathon more authentic, don’t ya know. Thanks for your role in fucking up my country, jackass.
Cpl. Cam
Left unsaid is how they would do anything to never go back to those humbler times.
Brachiator
There’s room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
– John Lennon
Blue Raven
The image of the hardscrabble farmer comes to mind. The romance of the pioneer movement. And the small details that get left out, like how Rose Wilder Lane’s posthumous editing of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s writings made sure to eliminate any hint of the fact her mother’s family often made ends meet only thanks to Federal farmers’ aid payments (aka welfare).
Stooleo
Yep, moral certitude and sheer will power allowed these ragged dicks to conquer all adversity and rise to their rightful place in the world.
Napoleon
@Brachiator:
Staying with the theme of this blog to use song lyrics in the title, that is what this thread should have been called.
Cpl. Cam
@DonBoy: What that means in villager speak, as Bill Maher will tell you, is : He fucks his wife. Nothing more.
CT Voter
How did Howard Kurtz not get the original point, and manage to mangle it into a debate about one’s early career? You’re part of the establishment NOW Howie, even if you were born on Mars and attended Jupiter Junior High before emigrating to Earth.
gorp
Hey Tonto, watch me pull my phony, tough guy, man of the people, knows better than you image up by my manly, square jawed, steely eyed, real American boot straps!
par4
Kurtz mentions all of his fellow ‘wash-outs’ but doesn’t put together how degraded the media is now that they have reached the zenith of their careers.
JK
Warning: Long-term reading of Howard Kurtz may cause vomiting and severe headaches.
Cue the violin, before reading Kurtz’s response to the reader. Evan Thomas, Brian Williams, et al can go to hell. They are courtiers trying to pass themselves off as journalists.
I can’t wait to hear the hard luck story of Peggy “keep walking” Noonan.
Doug, since you mentioned Daily Howler’s Bob Somerby, I’m concerned about his mental health. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Madow are not close to my idea of great journalists, but Somerby’s non-stop, over the top, vicious, vitriolic, venomous attacks on them is disgusting. Somerby is not well and I think he needs some psychiatric help.
cleek
Kurtz’s whole reply is a strawman.
the question wasn’t asking about your fucking origins, numbskull.
Shawn in Showme
I think it’s pretty telling that these guys have to go back in time 20 years or more to prove they are down with the masses. Let that be a lesson to all of us — it doesn’t matter if you’re a fat slob now, you’re a world class athlete for life because you used to play Little League.
Just Some Fuckhead
I delivered Grit newspaper as a child. I defy anyone to be more hard-working Americana than that.
JayDenver
Pillars of the establishment, 2d generation.
Couric was born in Arlington, Virginia, the daughter of Elinor Tullie (née Hene), a homemaker and part-time writer, and John Martin Couric Jr., a public relations executive and news editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the United Press in Washington, D.C.
I picked Couric at random. Res ipsa loquitur.
DougJ
I agree completely. I’ve been thinking the same exact thing for weeks.
His attack on Ana-Marie Cox (who I don’t like either) was way, way, way over the top.
mcc
The Big Lie of America is a specific Horatio Alger plotline that everyone is supposed to be living, where everyone starts out in a sort of rugged Andrew Jackson like innocent-bliss poverty and through hard work and good manners rises to success and importance. This almost never actually happens, but it is important to try to rationalize everything as conforming to it anyway. Therefore, if a person is successful, it is because they started out under difficult circumstances and rose to the top via hard work and good manners and they deserve everything that happens to them. If a person is unsuccessful, it is because they did not work hard and/or have good manners and they deserve everything that happens to them. If you are unsuccessful this just means you’re not successful yet, so what you need to do is keep working hard and being polite and oppose higher taxes for the top 2% of earners because otherwise someday when you [somehow?] get rich and successful and buy the plumbing business you work for, they’ll be taking your money!
Shawn in Showme
Before or after you signed up for the Charles Atlas program? By the way, Chuck, I want my $30 back.
Bill Teefy
Reminds of the old saw, No one has more zeal than a convert.
Just an observation. Many of the most disgusting and grasping of any establishment are those who are rising into that establishment as they try to gain separation from their past.
Its like the Victorian novel where the rich industrialist slobbers after the Titled Class and adorns his life with the symbols of the aristocracy to a ridiculous level, all the while treating those of his origins as less than dirt.
Olly McPherson
I stopped reading Somerby a couple months ago, and I don’t regret it. The total absence of perspective was starting to become distressing.
theturtlemoves
I would propose that working hard in an early career would make people MORE inclined to defend the establishment once they are part of it. The game isn’t called “King of the half-way up the Hill” where you zealously defend your position somewhere around Camp 2…
leo
I think if you look a little more closely at the background of these people who supposedly pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, you’ll see they enjoyed all the perks of a middle class life.
Unfortunately because that’s how they were brought up, they can’t really appreciate (or even identify) the gifts they were given. It was just part of the environment.
I mean, you only notice the presence of oxygen when it’s no longer there.
My Prius rolls on dubs
It’s completely Randian because to come from the “working class” and become rich and part of the establishment gives you that badge to flash around which reads:
I MADE IT THIS HIGH ON THE CAREER SCALE ON TALENT ALONE.
Which is what every Randian/Conservative/Libertarian wants to believe most of all in the deepest depths of their little selfish hearts; that they are truly Winners/Special/Chosen Ones.
And then be able to send their kids to private schools.
Jackmormon
Having gone to a state university confers lifelong protection against greed?
That is a seriously East-Coast, aristocratic, and even old-fashioned assumption.
JK
@Brachiator: Great song reference. Your post reminded me of this incredibly underrated and underappreciated song
Salt of the Earth / The Rolling Stones
Lets drink to the hard working people
Lets drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Lets drink to the salt of the earth
Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Say a prayer for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth
And when I search a faceless crowd
A swirling mass of gray and
Black and white
They dont look real to me
In fact, they look so strange
Raise your glass to the hard working people
Lets drink to the uncounted heads
Lets think of the wavering millions
Who need leaders but get gamblers instead
Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio
And when I look in the faceless crowd
A swirling mass of grays and
Black and white
They dont look real to me
Or dont they look so strange
Lets drink to the hard working people
Lets think of the lowly of birth
Spare a thought for the rag taggy people
Lets drink to the salt of the earth
Lets drink to the hard working people
Lets drink to the salt of the earth
Lets drink to the two thousand million
Lets think of the humble of birth
cmorenc
I genuinely admire people who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps from humble beginnings to achieve great professional and financial success. Except that his financial success was extremely modest by orders of magnitude compared to contemporary Wall Street Robber-baron standards, my father (who went to college and medical school on the post-WW2 GI Bill) fit that description, as did plenty of his classmates, colleagues, and the sort of friends he tended to seek out during his life. His financial “success” would aptly be labeled merely upper-middle class affluent compared to his dirt-poor depression-era upbringing.
NONETHELESS a frequent characteristic I’ve seen more often than not in these “self-made” up-from-humble-beginnings sorts of folks is that many of them never quite get over their sense of material hunger that often crosses the line into avarice and a near-insatiable need to accumulate as many tangible symbols of success as possible (including huge bank and investment accounts). Another frequent characteristic is a deep-seated sense that they’re deserving winners in the Darwinian competition that is the natural, inevitable, and rightful order of the world. That’s why so many (though hardly all) of the most outwardly successful among them morph at some point politically into colossal right-wing assholes.
Tax Analyst
My first job was at age thirteen in a car wash.
OK, OK, so my dad OWNED it, and I got to go in the air-conditioned office when things were slow. I got the same $1-an-hour everyone else started at (the Federal minimum wage in 1963), and it was still hard work.
Call it a “tie”.
I’ll go you two-out-of-three, though. After I left the family business I worked for a Termite Company – crawled under buildings and into attics toting buckets of carcenogenic, cancer-causing toxic chemicals.
Boy, was that stupid.
Janet Strange
@mcc: Years ago a professor in a class I was taking said something like, “The way to get the lower classes to accept their lot in life is to convince them that it’s their own fault that they aren’t more (materially) successful.”
Which made me think of a survey Ms. magazine did years ago about money. It was long. Near the beginning of the survey they asked why the average income of women was lower than that of men and overwhelmingly the women who replied picked one of the responses that had something to do with systemic discrimination against women.
A couple of pages later, there was a series of questions that added up to “Why aren’t you making more money?” and the responses were overwhelmingly, “I don’t work hard enough, I’m not ambitious enough, etc.”
So even people who can see that the game is rigged . . . blame themselves rather than the system for their own situation. Almost every American buys the Big Lie, even if they think they don’t.
bvac
“But I’m just a caveman!”
SnarkIntern
On the day that “Holier than thou” became a phrase?
In the United States of Corporations, your grassrootiness is all about your humbliness. By pointing to their humbly fans, the Corporations can appear to be working for the Common Man.
For the record, I myself was born in a log cabin.
Tax Analyst
Love “Salt of the Earth”. Great song. Thanks, JK.
Zach Pruckowski
The journalists/commentators feel a need to convey empathy with their listeners/readers/viewers. They want to be able to say “regular people, like you and me”. They want to come across as representative of their audience and as empathetic with it. When they can’t get away with that (making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars), they instead focus on “I can empathize because I’ve been middle class”. They then use this empathy to try to downplay the giant divide between DC and the rest of the country (and I live in the DMV area, so I see this divide first hand daily).
Just Some Fuckhead
@Tax Analyst: First, I sold and delivered Grit newspaper before the age of 13. Secondly, Grit newspaper was targeted to Rural America and Rural America is All Kinds of Wholesome Goodliness and trumps everything. Thirdly, my dad ran a Sherwin Williams paint store which, if you will recall, used Red, White and Blue in the logo.
Thanks for playing. Please see my lovely assistant about your consolation prize.
David
Two myths often used in American politics are the “poor working boy who made good” and the “latest in the long line of patriots”. Otherwise known this time around as Obama and McCain.
It’s no surprise that the boy-made-good myth keeps popping up. Most of us like that story, approve of that story, want to be that story. It usually even has a flavor of truth to it.
But it is interesting when people with silver spoons impairing their speech (e.g., Bush and any number of supposedly populist conservatives) suddenly become heroic, or multi-million dollar compensated traders become boy-made-good. Seems to me, there should be a reality check here somewhere, both about the humbleness of their origins and about how much a boy has to whore himself to make good.
Seems to me that if you sell your soul to make good, you are no longer a boy-made-good, but a corporate whore. Especially if you work in a business that doesn’t produce anything of value (i.e., trading on Wall Street) or is flatly destructive of economic value (i.e., the banksters).
Too bad that the real Gault is so good at getting on his knees and blowing corporate America.
NobodySpecial
You know what bugs me most about this? Most of the superrich that I hear about who actually made their money the hard way tend to live more down-to-earth than many. In the city where I live, the big Richie Rich was not known for sartorial impress or for really ostentatious living.
His KIDS, now, that’s another story. And most of the nouveau riche or the ones who made it with bullshit scams like credit swaps and toxic assets never display that kind of salt.
passerby
@Brachiator:
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be…
– John Lennon
“…but they’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”
which is why Randian heroes spit on their fellow working class folk: individualism and self-reliance vs sheepledom.
schrodinger's cat
.
Don’t forget Tim Russert and his regular guy from Buffalo schtick.
Laura W
@Tax Analyst: Fuckhead’s lovely assistant quit earlier today (harassment something something), but I do have your consolation prize.
HyperIon
@Bill Teefy:
Little Dorrit is currently showing on PBS.
her father wants to totally deny that he was EVER in the poorhouse.
KRK
@Blue Raven:
What are you talking about? What federal programs were making aid payments to farmers in the 1870s and 1880s?
joe from Lowell
These are people who still think of David Broder as the authentic voice of the heartland, because he grew up in the mid-west sixty years ago.
Paul L.
Maybe you can ask John “Tabloid lies that I cheated on my wife with Cancer” Edwards or Joe “I go regularly to Katie’s restaurant which turns out to have been closed for 20 years” Biden? That seems to be their favorite narrative.
Or ask the people who claimed that Sarah Palin can not be Vice-President because she went to the University of Idaho.
@JK:
Links please. Quit teasing.
Church Lady
It’s the infamous “up by your bootstraps” model. We tend to admire the successful that come from modest backgrounds much more than those that, while equally successful, stated out on a higher rung on the economic ladder. Remember Ann Richards one-liner about Bush – something along the lines of him starting out with a silver foot in his mouth. Ergo, those that start out from an advantaged background have it easier than those that don’t. It’s all part of the American psyche.
passerby
@David:
I don’t understand why you would attribute this behavior to Galt. I thought it was his rage against cookie cutter architecture that drove him to take the ugly corporate buildings down with dynamite.
Perhaps I’m not understanding your reference to “the real Galt”. (?)
Zifnab
@mcc:
That basically nails it in my mind. The difference between a maker like Jake DeSantis and a taker like one of his less fortunate brick-laying coworkers is that the taker didn’t work as hard.
Now, some might say that DeSantis isn’t entitled to his million dollar bonus any more than a brick layer who collapses the house he’s building is deserving of a pay raise, but those people are liberal elitists who just want to keep the hard working American down.
Zifnab
@Paul L.:
Remind me again what John Edward’s fidelity or Joe Biden’s dining habits have to do with their economic life story. Also, remind me again, which of these guys wrote a page long op-ed in the New York Times demanding a six figure bonus in compensation for work at their collapsing businesses.
TenguPhule
Actually, Paul L, the problem wih Palin was that she was a fucking vengeful moron with delusions of grandeur.
But keep on throwing out those jackalopes, they’re an endangered species here after all.
Church Lady
And remember that Chris Matthews (he of the $5 million a year contract) is a “regular guy” and quite proud of his humble Philadelphis upbringing (if the way he drones on and on about it is any indication).
Kris
Gotta love white privilege.
aimai
KRK,
I don’t know what Blue Raven is talking about specifically but, of course, the Ingalls’ famously took part in the giveway of indian land by “staking claims” to land and agreeing to plant it and maintain it a certain way in order to get ownership of it. That big land giveway was a huge government program, sponsored and paid for with the use of the military to drive the indians off the land in the first place. In addition, just going by the books themselves, Pa never really “makes it” on his own–and neither does Alamanzo. Both make ends meet by working for the railroads and other proto corporate interests.
aimai
And don’t get me started on the bizzaro world libertarian messages in The Long Winter.
KRK
@aimai:
Yeah, I know about the homesteading and the side jobs in the Ingalls story, but that’s not what Blue Raven is talking about. BR seems to believe that something along the lines of current farm payment programs was in place in the mid-19th century, which is news to me. If it really existed, I’d like to know more.
Brendan
Read back over this thread and you’ll see that the majority of commentators identify money and wealth with moral turpitude and generally lesser moral status. Whether that’s true or not isn’t really the point; the idea, rightly or wrongly, is afoot among many people in this country. People who self-perceive themselves as falling into that class, or believe that they would be perceived by others as doing so, try to identify out of it as best they can- and citing some sort of working class connection is an obvious method. It’s essentially a self-defense mechanism, and as such, probably a sign that some element of the debate against modern malefactors of great wealth is being won.
colleeniem
Is it just me, or is the author of that original piece a little tone-deaf to profile the asshole that wrote the watb open letter to the NYT when Jakie wanted to keep his bonus to send it all to charity? Because even though he was a VP, he had NO IDEA about the problems in AIG?
Yeah. He can keep his moral streak.
JK
@Paul L.:
Go to http://www.dailyhowler.com/archives-2009.shtml
April 17: I see myself in others, he says. Maddow and Olbermann won’t
April 16: KO’s report may have been the dumbest thing we’ve ever seen on cable
April 15: Maddow was emoting hard—and handing us rubes half a story
April 14: They say Somalia is a failed state. Then too, there’s progressive cable
April 4: This morning’s Post is sadly instructive–and Countdown gives us a treat
April 3: We liberals can be happy at last—as a big net keeps dumbing us down
April 2: Ohhh jeeez! We’d had our fill of this channel’s dishonesty maybe like ten years go
April 1: You might not mind their mugging and clowning—if their reporting was good
March 31: We’re going to discuss that “in depth,” the host said. That’s where the humor began
March 30: A former sports guy—and a former Rhodes Scholar—continue to dumb liberals down
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Somerby has a stalker-like obsession with Olbermann and Maddow.
Nylund
What is with this idea that going to a “state” school makes you instantly, and forever a hard working honest blue collar American, perpetually at odds with “the establishment?”
In my given field, the article-cited Ohio State is actually very well-respected. One of the best. University of Michigan, Maryland, Minnesota, and Wisconsin are also very well-respected in my field, to say nothing of those “state” schools, UCLA and Berkeley.
Does anyone really buy the notion that 4 years at UCLA makes you a permanent member of the “little guy” class? Someone who could never possibly ever be considered part of the powers that be?
And even if you did grow up poor and had no advantages, I think a few decades as a millionaire will override that past.
And Jesus, am I supposed to feel pity for people who landed jobs or internships right out of college at CNN or the New York Times? How did those people ever overcome such set backs? Truly Slumdog Millionaires, every last one of them.
Paul L.
@Zifnab:
Both have hyped/promoted their “working class” background during their campaigns.
Joe Biden mentioned the Restaurant to show his connection to the common man.
Church Lady don’t forget Mike Barnicle.
TenguPhule
Yes, SATSQ.
They left their souls on the floor and their morals at the door.
TenguPhule
And has nothing to do with Edward’s fidelity or lack there of.
Now if he’d been buying $10,000 an hour hookers….
anonevent
@Just Some Fuckhead: I would say something about my dad and me mowing yards so that we would have food that evening, but that just means I was poor, not hard working. It wouldn’t count in their books.
Brachiator
@HyperIon:
Little Dorrit should be required viewing. Even though a number of episodes have already run, you can easily pick up the thread of the plot and get involved in the narrative.
Among the standouts of the uniformly excellent cast, Andy (Gollum) is surprisingly effective as “the murderous, but sexy French rogue” Rigaud.
And everyone should keep his or her eye on a certain Mr. Merdle, banker extraordinaire.
srv
@passerby: That would be Howard Roark, the Fountainhead. Not Galt of Atlas Shrugged.
Dennis-SGMM
If the media wasn’t largely a bunch of insular, out of touch douchebags who’ve grown giddy from inhaling each other’s farts then Howie wouldn’t have to go to such laughable lengths to deny it.
JK
If you want to see the clearest demonstration that the Washington Press Corps are royalty who are totally out of touch with their readers and viewers tune into C-SPAN when they broadcast the White House Correspondents Dinner or Radio and TV Broadcasters Dinner. Prior to the dinners, C-SPAN airs the arrival of the guests and it’s just like the red carpet walk of stars at the Oscars.
I don’t care about the hard scrabble backstory for any member of the Washington Press Corps. These people are scum who have sold their souls for access. Call them stenographers, lapdogs, or courtiers, but Jesus Christ, don’t ever call them journalists.
Zifnab
@Paul L.:
And that entitled them to massive corporate bonuses how now?
JayDenver
Four Yorkshiremen
This thread got me to thinking about one of my favorite Monty Python skits.
Paul L.
@TenguPhule:
How about hiring his mistress Rielle Hunter to video his campaign or having his top donors paying for her expenses.
Dennis-SGMM
I’ve lost track. Did that cost more or less than Republican donors paid for the Wasilla Snowbillys’ shopping sprees?
cleek
speaking of Paul L., i’ve upgraded the pie filters so that they can pull new pie comments from my server, on-the-fly (BJAX, bitches!). this means you get new delicious pie filling automatically – in case you were getting bored with the same old flavors.
eemom
I only recently started reading Somerby, but I think you are on to something. Right on about the weird obsession with Olbermann and Maddow, and also there is a kind of manic repetitiveness to his posts.
Does someone know a way to help the man?
anonevent
@Paul L.:
I know you want to avoid any discussion of this, but the difference between Edwards and Gingrich is that Edwards used his background to continue to fight for the working class, while Gingrich used his background to destroy virtually everything built to promote the working class. (Ha, they both cheated on their cancer stricken wives.) The point of the article was not that poor people are saints, or that you automatically become evil because you became rich, but that growing up poor doesn’t bestow on you a free pass to fuck other people over.
Bill Teefy
@HyperIon: Yep. For whatever reason I have been digging that period lately. History of the Poor Law and the Union Workhouse. Read Michael Armstrong, Factory Boy last month and re-read A Christmas Carol last night.
Everytime I read/hear one of their talking points I feel myself wanting to reply by quoting Dickens. I think he wrote all of their material. and most of mine.
It is almost frightening to see the rationalizations of that period regurgitated by the wingnuttia today. Cue the comment that America DOES not require children to work a 15 hour workday, etc. Which of course is due to the progressive push of people like Dickens as opposed to Market Forces.
Interesting note in the forward in my version of A Christmas Carol, was that Dickens Father was in debtors prison and as a 13 year old he had to work in a Blacking factory pasting labels on bottles of Blacking (dye) to help get his family out of debt. Not quite like delivering the Grist…and he is not American, so we shall leave the crown on Just Some Fuckhead’s worthy brow. Note: As a kid, I covered on a paper route for a friend just one week. That is a job that I would not wish on anyone.
cleek
has he given up bitching about the 2000 election yet ?
TenguPhule
@JSF
I had to eat instant grits once as a child.
A horrible, horrible experience.
Tonal Crow
“The importance of humble beginnings” is a rhetorical device used to deceive the peasants into believing that they eventually will be rich, but only if they refrain from taxing the existing rich.
skippy
well i bought the xray specs and sea monkeys. that was hard work. and look where i am today.
Paul L.
Maybe more:
Edwards Mistress’ Hush Money: $15,000/Month
Definitively less than Obama’s
CoronationInauguration.passerby
@srv:
Oops. Epic lapse. Thanks for straightening me out.
jeffreyw
Translation: Hey! I shit my diapers as a child, just like you…(you low bred scum).
Just Some Fuckhead
@TenguPhule: Are you serious? Grits are awesome, especially with fried eggs. Give ’em another try. You can trust Hard Working Americana Fuckhead.
gwangung
@Paul L.:
Which, in turn, was less than Bush’s bash, with inflation figured in.
You’re a bald-faced liar, Paul, and it’s a sucker’s bet you’ve never worked with or for the poor or any group that helps them, you greedy, selfish bastard.
kay
I don’t think people in finance are going to have to worry so much about taxes when this all shakes out.
No one will trust them to handle their money, so they won’t have any income.
Nellcote
Kurtz’s disdain for state universities is pretty elitist.
Tax Analyst
Well, I’ve found, through personal experience, mind you, that if you are a Fuckhead you will surely lose lovely personal assistants…it’s not a matter of “if”, but only “when. However, I am quite certain you are assuming a far too modest role here, Laura W.
Be that as it may, I graciously accept the consolation prize, although since I am at work and we have a “no streaming during biz hours” rule, I can’t actually appreciate it’s full wonderfulness at present moment.
I’m still not sure Fuckhead didn’t pull a GW Bush on me, though, I once vacuumed 1/2 the interior floors of over a 1,000 on a single Saturday lo those many years ago. I don’t see delivering some local newsrag to rural hicks as being any more hard-working/character-building than that, Harrummppphhh. It certainly seems more pointless in retrospect (the vacuuming). I sure wouldn’t want to have to do that again any time soon. I guess the point was that I ought to make sure and get a good education so I wouldn’t have to make my living doing stuff like that. The point didn’t really take, but things worked out OK eventually, with emphasis on the “eventually” part.
kay
People in finance misunderstand me. I don’t doubt that they made this money. I understand it traveled, legally, from point A to point B. I’m not even “envious” and I certainly don’t want their children to have to attend public schools.
What I don’t understand is why anyone paid them millions of dollars to destroy their own industry.
From what I’m reading, finance people wildly over-valued, um, people in finance.
Maybe they’re a little insular. They might need to get out and about more. Look at some other salaries, talk to some non-finance workers. Just take a stroll every once in a while. It couldn’t hurt.
Zifnab
@Paul L.: Paul. You still haven’t answered my question. At what point did Edwards or Biden demand six figure bonuses from their government subsidized failed businesses?
Seriously, this is very important and I need you to clarify it. At what point did the Edwards / Biden campaigns declare that tax money should go to afford them $750k above their standard pay checks because of the hard work they’ve done?
This is the crux of the issue. Jake DeSantis insists he worked hard to get his million dollar job and deserves a cash reward. How is this comparable to Biden or Edwards in their campaign stump speeches for elected office? Is DeSantis’s job an elected office? Are government salaries too low? Please explain.
Mike S
I guess that means that Joe the not Plumber is going to be king of the world. It doesn’t get more humble than being an unemployed liar.
BTW, I only noticed today that Tommy McGuire has a banner at the top of his blog saying “We’re all Georgians Joe the Plumber Now.” At least he’s honest about being a lying dipshit.
Tax Analyst
Instant Grits as a child. YOW! If I had but attained the crowne I woulde gifte it to thee.
But you’ll have to wrest it from that fuckhead Fuckhead instead.
Is there enough sugar in the whole world to make I.Grits palatable?
Mike S
Jeebus. Why does it show the strikes in preview but not on the post?
Nicole
And just to clarify the Randian world view- while a few of her male heroes started out poor, her heroines certainly didn’t. Dagny (AS) was VP of a railroad her grandfather founded and Dominique (Fhead) was the daughter of a rich architect and had no skills other than looking great naked.
(Actually, now that I think about it, only one of her heroes was a poor guy who ended up obscenely rich. And the heroine dumps him.)
Tax Analyst
What, no “Uncle Milty’s Ant Farm”? Just what sort of Americun are you, anyway?
Brachiator
@Church Lady:
Well, yeah. It does kinda work that way.
More lyrics!
Well now we’re respected in society
We don’t worry about the things that we used to be
We’re talking heroin with the president
Well it’s a problem, sir, but it can’t be bent
Uh yes!
— Respectable, The Rolling Stones
By the way, to be fair to Rand, her heroes were natural aristocrats whose talents and individualism elevated them from the herd. And the herd is not defined by its income, but by its need to conform.
DJS
Hitler and Stalin came from humble roots as well. They should be lionized according to the Kurtzians.
DJS
Hitler and Stalin came from humble roots as well. They should be lionized according to the Kurtzians. Yeah, they killed millions and displaced millions more, but it’s ok, because they didn’t come from the elite, and they MADE IT, dammit!
geg6
@Paul L.:
I don’t know why I’m doing this because I was never even a John Edwards fan. Nevertheless…
Rielle Hunter was allegedly paid that money by ONE DONOR to Edwards. Not the DNC, not anyone else.
And she had a child who, I believe, has been identified as Edwards’ (I may be wrong about that). So the payments were for the care and nurturing of a child.
Not for diapers for sex games or for prostitutes or for methhead blowjobs.
Pretty big difference there, dude.
As I said, I was never an Edwards fan and I really detest what he did to a very ill wife. But how he has lived his life, for the most part, is about a million times more admirable than almost any Republican currently on the scene.
Hugh Jass
I feel the need to defend Bob Somerby. I agree that his writing often is repetitive. I also agree that he gets obsessed with issues. But to be fair, if he’s losing his mind it’s only because he’s been speaking obvious important truths for nearly 10 years and has seen those truths almost completely ignored in the “MSM” (or elsewhere, for that matter). I think that could cause someone to get a little off-kilter.
But I don’t think that his Olbermann/Maddow/Cox posts are evidence of any insanity. He’s just calling-out these liberals for the same BS (with a different spin) that the Fox crowd has been throwing for over a decade. I see little difference between Olbermann and Hannity, except for their ideological viewpoints. I can’t trust anything either one says, because both are too connected to their “team” to give me a straight story. Therefore, it’s more and more difficult to justify spending time watching or listening to either one.
To be honest, I see a lot of that in the comments in this blog, and elsewhere in the liberal blogosphere. (I also see it in the conservative blogosphere.) Facts matter. Nuance and context are important. It doesn’t help anyone to pretend that certain people (with “R” or “D” next to their names) are inherently wrong, evil, stupid, etc. That’s what Limbaugh and Hannity do, and that’s what Olbermann and Maddow appear to be doing.
The whole teabagging thing is a good example. Whatever you think of the people who organized it (I think that they are hypocrites without any credibility who are more interested in being anti-Obama than anti-tax), the public should be concerned about what’s going on and how much money we’re spending. These things matter, and making fun of protesters is simply avoiding the issue.
Somerby’s point is that when the media and government engage in the “shirts vs. skins” game that they increasingly like to play, the public loses because it gets distracted by unimportant things.
The recent scandal involving Jane Harman shows to me that the Democrats aren’t “the good guys” any more than the Republicans are “the bad guys.” Rather, they’re like the WWE, play-acting roles for the public while, behind closed doors, they negotiate the important decisions that get overshadowed by the media’s obsession with bullshit.
Just Some Fuckhead
Maybe when “journalists” began pulling down six and seven figure salaries?
JK
@cleek: Somerby actually has not stopped bitching about the 2000 election. Whenever he discusses any member of the Washington Press Corps, he always includes a quote or reference to that reporter criticizing Clinton or Gore. I agree with his point that their criticisms of Clinton and Gore were often unfiar or inaccurate, but at some point you have to let it go already. I hope Somerby gets the mental care he clearly needs.
OT, I just visited your blog. You must be the first person in the blogosphere to ever mention Barry Manilow and King Crimson in the same sentence. Crimson’s debut album is one of the greatest albums I’ve ever heard and “I Talk to The Wind” is probably one of the most underrated rock songs of all-time. Glad to find someone else who appreciates a band that never received the recognition they deserved.
KG
I think Comrade Dead hit it on the first comment. Our history is chock full of guys coming out of nowhere to be something important. Hamilton, Franklin, Lincoln, Reagan, Obama, and about a million others. Take your pick, the story arc is always the same: humble beginnings; hard work/perseverance; big ambition; lucky break or two…
That part of our mythos is probably a good thing. But the bastardization of it, like we’re seeing here, is a horse of a different color. The idea that just because you once did something menial means that you are not part of the establishment is just stupid. You may not have been born into the establishment (like a Hilton or a Kennedy would be).
cleek
you might be right. i’m the first non-junk Google hit for “Barry Manilow” “King Crimson” . i think i’ll put that on my gravestone. :)
schrodinger's cat
but is it more important than being earnest?
GregB Formerly GSD
My 40 year old pet sea-monkey attacked a neighbor after a night of hot tubbing and wine drinking.
The Coast Guard had to shoot it with a harpoon.
I’m still very traumatized.
-G
Sad_Dem
Songs? How about:
I still get angry
I still get sad
And the losers still drive me mad
And I wonder
If I have anything to say anymore
Oh yeah I wonder if i have anything to say
Except the masses are asses
They’re all asses
Things still piss me off
And things still make me cry
Poetry’s in motion but not in mind
Poetry’s in motion but not in my mind
Poetic justice will come in time
And I just have to laugh
I just have to laugh
Because the masses are asses
We’re all asses
Masses are asses every day
Masses are asses in every way
Woo woo
JK
@Hugh Jass: Obsessed is putting it mildly. Sure, he has some valid criticisms. I don’t appreciate the clowning that Olbermann and Maddow all too frequently indulge in.
After reading his100th blog post assailing their lack of professionalism, I get the fricking point already. He’s just flogging a dead horse.
I’d have more respect for him if once a while, he wrote some posts in praise of a blogger, journalist, magazine, webcast, etc doing good quality journalism from a liberal or progressive perspective who merits my attention. I’d like to see him cite someone some of his readers had not heard of, shine a spotlight on him or her, and say hey folks take a look at this. Instead, Somerby rather spend his time throwing rocks at the same targets day after day and yelling he sucks, she sucks, he sucks, she sucks…
tripletee (formerly tBone)
cleek wins the Intertrons, again.
To JSF: Grit magazine? Real Americans read “Boy’s Life” in their youth, you elitist poseur.
MR Bill
I think it odd that conservative commentators use Horatio Alger, confirmed bachelor and pederast, as an example of anything: see
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/29266/?page=1
His novels, all have the same plot mostly, and Larry Beinhart gets it:
“They feature a boy just at, or on the verge of, puberty, from the country or the slums. He comes to the center of the big city. He does work, but he doesn’t work astonishingly hard, certainly not as compared to the majority of other working children in the days of legal child labor. He doesn’t start his own business or invent a better mousetrap or find the Northwest Passage.
What really happens is he meets a rich older man who takes quite a fancy to him and sets him up with money and educates him and teaches him how to dress and conduct himself. There is, indeed, a “meet cute” in which the boy does something that draws that nice rich man’s attention. It’s usually something heroic, like stopping a team of galloping horses that’s dragging a coach that is carrying the rich man’s daughter.
This action is referred to in the books themselves and by people like those at the Horatio Alger Society as a sign of character. It is also a chance for the older man to notice how this boy stands out from the other boys. He has that forthright, noble-boy quality. Which is very, very attractive. Eager, earnest, shining. It’s what draws priests to alter boys. In addition to the convenience, of course.
I do not understand how an adult can read Alger’s stories and not realize that these were homosexual pedophile fantasies. Actually, it’s a single fantasy repeated over and over again.”
And Little Dorrit is great. Dickens would see someone like Mr. Madoff as like his Mr. Merdle, and with a name that is almost as revealing. In Hard Times, the canting businessman Mr. Bounderby brags about how awful his early life was, how he was abandoned by his mother. In the end, we are shown that Bounderby’s mother was quite respectable and raised him in a decent middle class school. His comeuppance is one of the great Dickens comic scenes..
And I grew up on a dairy farm so I don’t want to hear it.
JasonF
My favorite “Average Joe” song is “Worker’s Song” by Dropkick Murphys
Yeh, this one’s for the workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead
In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We’ve often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they’ve streamlined the job
And with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed
[Chorus:]
We’re the first ones to starve, we’re the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
And we’re always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat’s about
And when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who’s given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
Though we’ve never owned one lousy handful of earth?
[Chorus x3]
All of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
We’ve been yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can
JayDenver
That’s one way of putting it.
CT
Somersby gets some props in my book for pointing out that the left media has its share of personality-driven infotainment, especially as regards Olbermann, IMO. The repetitive, cutsey segments (Worst Person, Bushed, etc.) have made the show unwatchable-do we need daily updates on Bill O’Reilly? Rachel’s Talk Me Down segment turned me off during the campaign-“OMG, this one cherry picked poll shows Obama only leading McCain in PA by 6, at this rate, McCain will win by 20 points!” She certainly smart enough to know better, but she did it anyway to pump fake drama into things, just like all the other hacks we like to mock.
That said, neither are anywhere near Hannity territory. He invited every wackjob he could find to hammer the sleaziest accusations about Obama the whole election season, over and over. He is ONLY about demonizing Democrats by any means necessary. Olbermann and Maddow are certainly partisan, and can be hacky, but they still hew much more closely to the facts, and are willing to take on Dems at times-Olbermann has been very pointed in his criticism of Obama on torture prosecutions, and Maddow has been all over the Geithner plan. Hannity, et al over at Fox wouldn’t dream of speaking so boldly against a Republican.
IMO, what makes Somersby so tiresome is that he has one point of view-the media are all twits, all the time, so that’s all you hear about from him-minor disagreements about how Rachel Maddow phrased a question become an indictment of her as a complete hack.
gopher2b
Way to selectively leave out the rest of the paragraph:
There are some serious haters on this blog.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Oh, what the Hell. The obvious Tom Swifty…
“Necrophilia might be fun,” he said in dead earnest.
MR Bill
From Wikipedia:
Alger would go on to start his literary career after moving to New York, having his first success with Ragged Dick. By all accounts, he was very interested in poor working youths..
The Moar You Know
If I’d ever “made it big”, I would be an insufferable prick. Anyone would. That’s how people are.
These reporters have all “made it big”, ergo…
Dennis-SGMM
Write what ya’ know.
John S.
It’s an old yarn that we’ve all heard before:
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
There are many variations and interpretations, but I think you could accurately say that it means people who “make it big” become insufferable pricks. I work in Boca Raton and have a lot of very affluent clients, and they all seem determined to prove the veracity of that statement, with little exception.
Just Some Fuckhead
God, they make it sound so hot.
Just Some Fuckhead
@The Moar You Know: I think congratulations are in order.
JK
@CT: I agree largely with your assessment. There are many valid criticisms to be made against both Olbermann and Maddow.
Reading Somerby, you’d never learn that
Olbermann has been very pointed in his criticism of Obama on torture prosecutions, and Maddow has been all over the Geithner plan.
I don’t think Olbermann and Maddow are mirror images of Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. I think they have higher regard for truth and facts. Yes, they make Mistakes. So does every other person who has ever lived or will live. It’s called being human.
I think Somerby paints Olbermann and Maddow with too broad a brush. He points every mistake, no matter how trivial, but is very sparing when it comes to giving praise. I think it’s gone beyond journalistic standards or issues of policy. I think Somerby has become unhinged regarding both of them.
I’ve also read posts where Somerby has taken shots at Markos Moulitsas, Josh Marshall, Steve Benen, Kevin Drum, and Amy Goodman.
Does this guy ever have a positive thing to say about anyone? Yippee, he says something nice about Naomi Klein today. Daily Howler is unrelenting, non-stop negavity.
Nelson Algren had his rules: Never play cards with anyone named Doc and never eat at a restauarnt named Mom’s – both of which I endorse.
I have a rule too. Be wary of any person who always refers to himself or herself either in the 3rd person or using the plural pronoun. Somerby never writes “I think” or “I read”. It’s always “we think” or “we read”.
Betsy
@Nylund:
Moreover, the idea that people born with money and privilege somehow DON’T go to state schools is absurd on its face. Most of the wealthiest whitest kids in my high school went to University of Texas or Texas A&M, because most of them, despite that privilege, weren’t able to get into higher ranked schools. (Confidential to Kurtz: Just because A&M stands for “agricultural and mechanical” doesn’t mean the rich kids who go there have ever in their lives done anything agricultural or mechanical.)
On the other hand, some brilliant folks I knew also went to those schools because it made so much more sense financially, and have done quite well for themselves. Going to a state school is evidence of neither non-establishment roots, as Kurtz would have it, nor intellectual inferiority. Those schools have 40-50,000 students – you’re going to get all kinds.
Oh, and BTW Paul L: the problem wasn’t that Palin went to the University of Idaho, it was that she emerged with such an undistinguished record there (of anything, not merely academics). Oh, and also the fact that she’s a hate-filled, vicious, incurious, proudly ignorant embarrassment to the people of Alaska. That too.
Paul L.
@geg6:
Edwards has claimed the child is not his and Hunter has refused to allow a DNA test to establish paternity.
Now this could be BS.
Federal Grand Jury Investigating John Edwards Possible Misuse of Campaign Funds to Pay Off Mistress
Nice strawman.
When did I defend the six figure bonuses? I was pointing out two Democrats who assume the mantle of the common men in response to these question.
wasabi gasp
All the shitheads I’ve ever known had humble beginnings and are on a trajectory for humble endings. How does shining shoes have anything to do with not being a complete fucking asshole?
Zifnab
@Paul L.:
And so you’ve quickly and neatly dodged the entire point of the blog posting. The guy’s company went bust and he stomped his feet demanding massive compensation at taxpayer expense. Part of the defense for his childish conduct and obscene request was that he was once a blue collar guy. Cole asks how this is a defense – how does being a brick layer in your youth suddenly forgive you for being a spoiled brat in your later life.
Your response has been to decry Biden and Edwards for using their working man credentials in their own favor. Yet, you never get to the actual offense. Biden and Edwards aren’t demanding tax payer money in the form of massive bonuses. They’re not being spoiled little brats. In your rush to defend Wall Street whiners, you’re trying to equate a couple of lawyers-turn-politicians canvasing for votes with a mega-millionaire banker demanding government money.
The differences are stark. You just don’t choose to acknowledge them.
Blue Raven
Ok, I’m trying to find where I may have gotten the idea that Federal subsidies were part of what Rose Lane edited out of Laura Wilder’s books, but I’m not finding it easily. Either my Google fu is weak or my memory took the accurate remarks in this thread about the railway work and other stuff mentioned and transposed it with something else. It’s quite true that along with the usual tricks in a fictionalized biography, characters were merged and edited and events changed. Also some telling details of how Pa really kept the family together, with The Long Winter being a story that always made no sense to me and would’ve if Lane hadn’t been such a Libertarian. Figured I should make note of my inability to back what I thought was an accurate statement.
Blue Raven
@wasabi gasp:
One guy who works as a shoeshiner near my employer’s offices is at least a really cool guy while on the job, so how does what you have to say have anything to do with the complexity of reality?
wasabi gasp
@Blue Raven: Say what? The point was: a humble beginning and being an asshole aren’t mutually exclusive.
Bill Teefy
@gopher2b: I am not seeing the selective editing as regards to the point raised. That point being there seems to be an underlying idea or concept that humble origins make you outside the establishment. And further this point seems to be pushed by those who contrarily posit that part of American greatness is that anybody can become part of the establishment.
Certainly that paragraph makes Desantis less of a caricature but I think the mocking here is about Kurtz and this faux man of the people shtick.
Anyway, what your calling hate I would call mocking and rude observations.
bago
Also.
Blue Raven
@wasabi gasp:
As you phrased it in the first place, I read it as saying being a shoe shiner and being an asshole are mutually inclusive.
2th&nayle
@Tax Analyst: Try non-instant grits with butter, salt, and pepper, like nature intended. As Fuckhead said, they’re great with fried eggs! Didn’t you learn anything from “My Cousin Vinnie”?
El Cid
From sociologist of American class & power, G. William Domhoff (Dec 2006):
El Cid
I used to be able to do paragraphs in blockquotes not being bolded by doing [angle bracket] p [/angle bracket] at each paragraph start.
Now that doesn’t work any more. Is there a new magic code?
Govt Skeptic
You know, Howard Kurtz is right. He didn’t grow up in the bosom of the establishment, and he’s not actually part of the establishment. He is, as alleged, a rabid defender of it though.
The painful truth is that Kurtz is just new-money. The real establishment folk have Big Boats and collections of Faberge eggs. Kurtz (like so many others) is just a self-loathing dick who desperately wants people to notice that he wears expensive shoes.
And the truly wealthy thank him for his service.
wasabi gasp
@Blue Raven: I suppose my initial phrasing was somewhat awkward. But, I did get a laugh out of your notion that I was intentionally opening a global can of whoop ass on shoeshiners. :)
Bill Teefy
@El Cid: At least you didn’t go all CAPS!
I think losing the first Battle of Death Taxes was a significant blow to opportunity in America. Combine that with the Capital Gains Tax cuts and I would say Bush Generational Win.
Bush-a-nomics should have made the cloth coat Republicans blanche. Think about hard work getting you to a six figure income and your paying about 1 2/3s or more in taxes than someone with a trust and they also don’t pay all of the other taxes associated with a paycheck. But instead you have some $40K (if he’s lucky) pseudo-plumber railing about socialism…err fascism.
Doctor Science
Two lit’ry comments:
1. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books are some of the best windows into late 19th-c america and the Frontier around. They’re also well-written enough that an adult can read them aloud more than once without wanting to spork her eyes out.
It’s the reading between the lines that’s the trick. So when aimai refers to, “the bizzaro world libertarian messages in The Long Winter” — what I really got out of it was how close their libertarian ideas brought them to total disaster, and how it took non-libertarian communalism to get them through it, and how much better off the community would have been if they’d all been living in one longhouse (or the hotel) like sensible people (the Indians).
I don’t know who edited what when, but the Little House series as it stands is one of the more honest accounts of the Frontier in existence. Once you pay attention (like, say, if you’re an adult reading it aloud to a succession of children) you can’t help noticing things like: the Ingallses *never* are self-sufficient for food, they always depend on an industrial structure. And Laura shows how conflicted their feelings for the Indians are, how they veer between Ma’s hate/hate and Pa’s love/hate. Laura is also never sentimental about how hard Ma has to work, about how bad (and violence-ridden!) the schools are, about how much Pa loves the wilderness even as he destroys it.
Doctor Science
almost forgot, the other lit’ry comment:
2. It’s one of the ironies of … something or other … that David Copperfield was a real impetus toward Child Labor laws and improved conditions for truly poor children. Ironic because what Dickens conveyed was not “how awful that children have to work so hard!” but “how awful that such things could happen to a gentleman’s son!” David Copperfield (and Dickens) fear and hate the truly poor children in the blacking factory — but it was they who would benefit from the movement Dickens helped start.
CT
@JK: I would only add that one should never play pool with someone named after a state, nor borrow money from someone with “the” as their middle name.
Brachiator
@El Cid:
I love stuff like this because it explains a little, but is totally insufficient to explain the American (or any other country’s) economy.
To describe the majority of Americans as “the bottom 80%” denies the existence of the middle class, and to lump managers, professionals and small business owner’s together is weird and confusing.
And although I largely agree with the author’s take on death taxes, I don’t see a progressive tax system which doles out government “services” as a strong antidote to a supposed concentration of wealth.
And one thing that the citation totally misses is mobility within income classes. There is not much of a hereditary oligarchy in America and the richest families around 1900 are not the same as the richest families in 2009 (and here I will give some credit to progressive taxation and the estate tax for helping to prevent the formation of a permanent upper class in this country).
El Cid
@Brachiator: It may seem “weird and confusing” to the average American to discuss the severely upper-class dominated U.S. economy, but our choice is to either be head-in-the-sand irrationalists and deniers of basic reality in order to make the “bottom 80%” feel better, or to understand how wealth and power actually function in this society.
You apparently feel better reading things which tell you of the importance and value of the non-elites of American society. That’s fine.
But the idea that sociologists of U.S. society should never focus on the clear, demonstrable, and influential concentration of wealth in the U.S. because it makes some people feel awkward about their role suggests that everyone in the “bottom 80%” are weak, frightened people who prefer to avoid basic truths.
MH
How did we get this many ‘working class’ song lyrics and not mention Common People, most notably the Shatner version?
Rent a flat above a shop,
cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool,
pretend you never went to school.
But still you’ll never get it right,
when you’re lying in bed at night,
watching roaches climb the wall,
if you called your Dad he could stop it all.
You’ll never live like common people,
you’ll never do what common people do,
you’ll never fail like common people,
you’ll never watch your life slide out of view,
and dance and drink and screw,
because there’s nothing else to do.
…
laugh along with the common people,
laugh along even though they’re laughing at you,
and the stupid things that you do.
Because you think that poor is cool.