[Big Red Clay]

I share your cautious skepticism at that quote and certainly agree with the rest of your statement.
My family was solidly middle middle class. My parents both worked and since I was the youngest of 4 they had enough money that we were always comfortable by the time I came along. My dad, however, was a child of the Depression. He was dirt poor growing up just like most everyone else was at that time and practiced frugality as an art form. He stressed to me and my siblings the value of hard work for hard works sake. As a kid, I scooped snow, mowed yards, did yard work and assisted my brother with remodeling houses. I got my first "real job" at 13 and have only been unemployed once (outside of high school football season) during the first semester of my freshman year of college. I flipped burgers, threw hay bales, farmed, worked in a beer distributorship and a packing plant during the summer and in the press room of a newspaper during the academic year. There were no cushy "internships" involved. One of the things I thanked my dad for on his death bed last year was for instilling me with a WORK ETHIC. My wife had a very similar experience growing up and we are pretty successful now, as are all of my siblings.
Rove's purported statement makes me sick. It is one of the reasons that I am feeling more and more alienated by the Republican party. As a kid who grew up during the Reagan administration, I took the Republican tenets of hard work, rugged individualism, and working hard to achieve your dreams to heart. This statement and the whole illegal immigration situation makes it seem that the party is turning into one of elitists who will sacrifice the good of the country so their kids won't have to ever crack a sweat or bust their ass during their lifetime and then learn the value of that experience.
Sad, very sad.

[Enterprise]

Thanks! I suspect that many FReepers have also lived and worked as honorably as you. Any suggestion that hard and dirty work is somehow beneath doing is anathema to us.