Bring Back Those Crummy Jobs ...!

This video was recently posted on "The Onion News Service", a never ending source of sardonic hilarity:

 

Obama Promises To Stop America's Shitty Jobs From Going Overseas

Like many satires, this one carries a grain of truth at the heart of it....And that is:

We think we are too good to do the "shitty" jobs.  

How did we ever get there?  How did we go from the country of the "can do attitude" to the "sorry, I am too good to do it" attitude?  

We have just elected a president and first lady who are exemplars of the "I'm too good to do it attitude".  Mr Obama went to the finest private school in Hawaii and then to Harvard.  Mrs. Obama also went to Harvard.  Both of them have been heard to sneer about our country and its people .  Mr Obama, in an attempt to woo the San Francisco elite,  said "bitter people clinging to God and their guns " ; Mrs. Obama said "I have never been proud of my country until now."  Both play the race card when asked why they can't be proud of being a common man-even though Mr. Obama is half Scots Irish and Mrs. Obama is also the descendant of slaveowners as well as slaves.  

Well, I am not too good...  I have a PhD and I dumpster dived at taverns for cans to make my way through school.  I went to the field with the Army National Guard, delivered newspapers and sold china in a department store to do it. I went to one of the finest graduate schools in my field--and sorry folks, Harvard is NOT the best school in my field and I am not impressed with a Harvard education.  I turned one down.

The problem here is a populace who sees the political process as no more than a "Dancing With The Candidates" show.  We vote for those who are pretty, or we vote for a token candidate based upon some spurious notion of guilt from 150 years ago.  If we vote for a minority based on his race, that is OK , "cool" and "making history"--if we vote for a majority based on his race, well,  that is racist.  Go figure.  

What about hard work?  What about devotion in the face of torture, even to the point of breaking? That used to be the American way.  There used to be value in putting our hands in the soil, digging  and facing adversity through our own effort.  Even if we broke sometimes, well,  at least we had the courage to take the chance.  

Be that as it may, we need to move away from the "bread and circuses" model of governance and business.  We need to dismiss the notion that any of us are too good to roll up our sleeves and get down to the job. 

To comment on the video, I would like to offer this:

"Yes, I would like for the right for my son to have a shitty job.  My first ancestor in America, Christopher Reynolds, had a shitty job.  He came over as the indentured secretary to the governor of Jamestown in 1611.  He was a slave, had no toilets, bugs and mosquitoes, lived with stinky men, rampaging Indians, and almost no women--how shitty a job is that ?

His descendants farmed the land, worked the mines, marched through a gauntlet of machine guns to resist union and management control...And I as his descendant, flipped burgers, collected unpaid bills, served in two militaries, dived in dumpsters, delivered newspapers, worked with dangerously ill people and prison inmates...

And I am proud of that.  I am an American and I am never too good for any kind of work".

That was the way that made our country strong, and the lack of it, sadly, may be running us into the ground now.