Nice cups, no brains
Posted on 11/06/2015 10:08:25 AM PST by Kaslin
One of my favorite characters, drawn by one of my favorite writers, is Will Freeman, the bachelor protagonist in Nick Hornby's1998 novel "About a Boy."
Living off the royalties of his deceased father's one-hit-wonder, Will confronts the disappointment his many female conquests express when they learn he doesn't have to work for a living.
While this may sound at first like the stuff of science fiction -- in what alternate universe would anyone bemoan a life of leisure? -- the reality is that we respect hard work and are suspicious of its absence.
For evidence, see: real life. Yes, most of us have to work. But the very rich -- Oprah, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett -- still choose to. We've invented semi-retirement to get around not working. Heck, even the British royals work these days.
An almost religious esteem for hard work, described by Max Weber as "the Protestant work ethic," has been central to Western civilization's self-image -- so incontrovertibly that Americans have decided it's time we argue about it. Oh, us.
Meet MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, whose routine discovery of controversies that don't actually exist would make the Bigfoot hunters jealous. Last week, she stumbled upon the Patterson-Gimlin film of fake controversies, declaring the term "hard worker" offensive.
This was in response to a Republican guest calling Rep. Paul Ryan a hard worker who would make a good Speaker of the House.
"I want us to be super careful when we use the language 'hard worker,' " she warned out of nowhere, "because I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall, because it's a reminder about what hard work looks like."
While there's no danger of anyone taking her advice to "be super careful" when using the term "hard worker," many rightly pounced, including hard work aficionado and CNN personality Mike Rowe.
"This business of conflating hard work with forced labor," he wrote, "not only minimizes the importance of a decent work ethic; it diminishes the unspeakable horror of slavery."
Also, it's just boneheaded.
Less egregious but equally inane, the actress Rebel Wilson this week launched into a screed against the Kardashians. "Their careers aren't really based on talent," she told an Australian radio station where, I assume, this particularly ancient thought nugget hasn't been masticated into a soup yet. "I'm all about personality and working hard to get where I am," she boasted. "Kim Kardashian got famous from the sex tape, and I just went to acting school and worked really hard."
Now, we don't have to compare acting to slavery, but we can and should compare it to virtually any other job when evaluating how hard it is. But more importantly, who could say the Kardashians don't work hard? Plenty of D-list celebrities have made sex tapes, and yet none besides her seem to have managed to turn them into a $300 million empire.
Not surprisingly, the definition of hard work is also being parsed on the campaign trail. It should be uncontroversial to say thatCarly Fiorina had to work hard to go from a secretary to CEO of Hewlett Packard, and yet her detractors insist, not so fast.
Painting her as a privileged debutante, Mother Jones' Kevin Drum writes, "She did work as a receptionist for a few months, but it was just a short bit of downtime while she dithered about what to do with her life." Even if you ignore the rank sexism (I doubt he'd describe the five years President Obama spent community organizing before law school as "dithering"), is her rise to CEO any less impressive?
Donald Trump also faced some questions after telling a crowd, "My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars" when starting out. He paid the loan back and inarguably went on to become immensely successful. Nonetheless, for receiving a loan many of us will never get, Trump's hard work is dismissed as different from yours and mine. Which is true -- he's probably worked a lot harder.
In an age when everything from breastfeeding to gender pronouns have been turned into political landmines, it's no surprise that the concept of "hard work" has finally met the same lamentable fate, where even saying the words is obscene. Yet despite attempts to redefine hard work, Americans are too smart for this. Because, much like obscenity, we know it when we see it.
Clearly, golf is the hardest.
Somebody who needs a picture of slaves picking cotton to remind her of what hard work is has obviously never done any herself.
Nice cups, no brains
Because white people never worked long hours in fields picking cotton or harvesting other crops barely making a living. /s
I'll bet after this incredible nitwit made that comment, many of her liberal co-workers put their hands in their heads and wondered why they ever hired such a dope.
What did she write that you disagreed with?
I frequently work 80 hour weeks, and I frequently work 30 days in a row. I am far away from home most of the time. I have skills I must continuously update, and I have worked long and hard to be the best, and there is no way I can be replaced by hiring some monkey off the street. Not only do I have the skills, but I have 25 years of in depth knowledge about all of our processes, and every one of our plants world wide. There is no way in this world that anybody will ever consider me part of the “working” class. Isn’t that ironic?
Yes, she’s even been abandoned by the village idiot.
Wrong woman.
Is picking cotton harder work when slaves do it than when other people do it?
Rebel pretty much get it right.
I worked 7AM to 11PM yesterday (and many times over the last 3 months including weekends). I wouldn’t say it was “hard” work but starting a new company can take “a lot” of work.
What’s “hard” is hiring employees and even harder is firing them if I make a mistake in the hire.
I have the clients/work to hire 2-3 employees now and many more with a little effort. But getting through all the mostly-governmental BS to hire them is “hard” so I’d rather work many 16 hour days myself and have fewer clients and less income. Plus I can take Friday afternoons off if I start by 7AM (then work Saturday & Sunday)
In other words, being a “job creator” is “hard work” which I’ve done a number of times over 20 years and have had enough of. Democrats don’t believe there’s such a thing as a “job creator” so they don’t understand.
My thought exactly when I saw the headline.
That would depend upon your definition of "Working Class," which I have always found suspect as a concept.
I grew up on a tobacco farm. It goes on from there. I don’t need any pictures.
If you love what you’re doing and get paid for it, it does not count as work. If you don’t like what you’re doing but do it to get paid it’s work. If you hate what you’re doing and come home sore, tired and dirty and pi$$ed off but do it to get paid, it’s hard work.
If you need to ask what hard work is .....
Actually it is honorable to be called a hard worker. Melissa Harris-Perry is an idiot. But we knew that, didn’t we?
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