Posted on 09/08/2009 11:10:16 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
How can you tell that we’ve gone from a Republican to Democratic administration? Reading the New York Times provides readers an instructive guide for unemployment coverage. Gone are the snarky references to “McJobs” in a Republican recovery, when unemployment was at 5.4%, or political criticism disguised as pseudointellectual etymology when it was at 5.8%. Now, the NYT highlights the blessings of unemployment when it reaches 9.7%, especially to community organizers-cum-politicians (h/t Geoff A)
The work is often mundane: Investment research analysts are now making cold calls to voters, and headhunters are handing out leaflets at subway stations and supermarkets.
But the experience, coming at a time of crisis in their lives, has been surprisingly powerful for many of them. Volunteering, they say, restores some of what they lost along with their jobs: a place to go every day, a reason to put on a clean suit, people to work beside, a sense of purpose.
And for some of the jobless, the experience has triggered a profound reassessment.
Yukyong Choi, 36, a former litigator who has not worked in a year, is now an unpaid volunteer for P.J. Kim, a City Council candidate in Lower Manhattan.
“One thing that I’ve discovered through this process is I don’t really want to go back to that life,” Mr. Choi said. “That was a life filled with 18-hour days, and having to work with people you may not enjoy. It’s not the money anymore; I want to do things that will have a real effect on people’s lives, as opposed to just trying to get a company out of a situation.”
During the Bush administration, the Times and other media outlets routinely disparaged job creation as somehow beneath the dignity of the workers, even as wages rose and unemployment fell. The work was demeaning and mundane, and the pay inadequate. Every chance they had to use anecdotal complaints about supposed burger-flipping or paper-shifting wound up in front-page stories about how deceptive the Bush recovery was.
Now that the Obama administration has utterly failed to control job losses through its stimulus package, the Times shifts gears. Now work itself was demeaning, and unemployment is liberating. People can volunteer for political campaigns and come home tapping their toes and singing a song! The jobless can now have “profound reassessments”!
Did the New York Times acknowledge in 2003 and 2005 that so-called “McJobs” also gave people a “place to go every day, a reason to put on a clean suit, people to work beside, a sense of purpose”? What’s more, those jobs paid people to do all of that. Private enterprise didn’t just restore a sense of purpose, they gave people a way to pay their bills and contribute to the economy. Somehow, though, that’s more demeaning than doing all of these menial tasks for no pay whatsoever.
What’s next? A series on the joys and liberation of homelessness?
Wasted away again in Obamaville.......
On the wind power thread, I suggested these wind turbines that kill hundreds of birds can provide shredded poultry for Obamavilles.
Soon we will see articles from the state-run media telling us how Obama is saving us from a world of grief. Gone are the pressures of having to plan a nice retirement including selecting a beautiful locale, worrying about how many world cruises in a year is the right number, and worrying about whether the post office will forward our mail to some low tax more sunny state.
Thank you Zero.
Oh Windmill Farms with a secondary function as a Tyson Foods plant.
Thats good. I like that.
No doubt. next week we will be treated to an expose' on the joy-filled lives people living in all those tent cities that have sprung up on vacant city land around all the abandoned industrial areas where smoke stacks are no longer spewing out all that "evil" CO2 that was the hallmark of the evil capitalist Bush era.
Now there is blue skies during the day, little sparrows beg for bread crumbs right out of the hands of the unemployed and homeless who have found joy and a peaceful tranquility they never knew existed when they were working 12-18 hours a day just so they could buy "stuff".
Now, they no longer participate in the consumer rat race, no longer need all that "stuff", just a cheap tent and a sleeping bag, and crank up led flashlight to curl up and read the harry potter series books that are circulating around the tent city, books they would never have had the time to read if they were still in that evil consumer rat race.
Why, there are even little gardens popping up here and there, and some tent city residents have a goat, some have chickens which provide their owners with fresh wholesome eggs which they eat or trade for a cup of goats milk, or a couple healthy, organic vine ripened tomatoes, which they eat along with their fine scrambled egg breakfast, while they talk and tell stories with tent city neighbors of the terrible life they had living in the evil consumerism rat race, How they lived in horrible $250,000 houses, drove $100,000 cars, ate nasty prime rib steaks and drank fine wines--- blah! /s
The NYT lib articles never cease to amaze me..maybe the next article will be: “getting a date at the unemployment office”.
How about the people that were working at that company? Defending against unjust lawsuits did not help them?
because they don’t want capitalism. They want everyone to join one large ‘kibbutz’ where everyone just works to provide the basics and that’s it.
Thanks for the reminder, I need to season a couple of rib eyes for the grill about now...
Oh, the rest of your post was great too!
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