Still, Kevin D. Williamson at National Review lays it on a bit thick. His "Red Monday" column (subtitled "We don’t need this quasi-Canadian, crypto-Communist holiday") reads like some bright kid tried to forge a P.J. O'Rourke column but couldn't manage the humor part. "Highly paid union men," for example, are hypocrites because they shop on Labor Day while retail workers must punch the clock; I guess Williamson's never heard of RWDSU. And his big payoff is that "as a terminus of summer, Labor Day is disappointing," because it's still hot outside. I don't think Jerry Seinfeld in his prime could have put that one over. But the really creepy bit is this:
The Canadian typographical workers had been demanding a 58-hour work week and the repeal of anti-union laws. Parliament obliged, and of course the unions’ immediate response was to press for a 54-hour work week, and then a still shorter one, and so on, until everybody was French.I mean, at least when they used the slippery slope argument against gay marriage, it led to some juxtapositions that were actually humorous.
They must have some idea how normal people would react to this if they saw it. But, come to think of it, how would that ever happen?
The funniest thing here is that there is actually a wikipedia article entitled "Rick Santorum's Views on Homosexuality".
ReplyDeleteParliament obliged, and of course the unions’ immediate response was to press for a 54-hour work week
ReplyDeleteGive 'em an inch, they'll take a sick day.
...A Wikipedia article that seems to be better sourced than some of them.
ReplyDeleteParliament obliged, and of course the unions’ immediate response was to press for a 54-hour work week, and then a still shorter one, and so on, until everybody was French.
ReplyDeleteDon't you get it? FRANCE! Truly sir, you are the pinnacle of wit.
Seriously though, why is it that every right-wing "humorist" article reads like the worst Erma Bombeck column ever? Yeah, she was funny, but she also wasn't an asshole. If you're going to be a dick, you can't do it in half-measures. Go Hicks or go home.
How about passing the Conservatives' contempt for the 40-hour work week on to your asshole brothers-in-law and uncles and Facebook friends. Sure, there will be some Randian true-believers and racist "punish those people more than me and I'll deal with my suffering" dead-enders out there, but it could dissuade some of them from voting GOP.
ReplyDeleteIf there is anything we learned from the 20th century, it is that Communists love a parade.
ReplyDeleteYo, check this out! Communists march like this; and capitalists march like !
Why would Williamson care about worker's rights? Writers for propaganda rags never have to worry about losing their job, no matter how shitty the writing, as long as they load it up with buzzwords and hacky metaphors. He probably came into work muttering about communists and French people, punched out 600 words to that effect, and was on the golf course by 10:00. Mort Walker has a harder job than he does. If we all were as lazy as the average NR writer, 90% of us would be out of work. The point of union labor is to show bosses that workers aren't interchangeable, which right-wing agitproppers make a mockery of by their very existence. You could probably replace them with algorithms at this point.
ReplyDeleteThey negotiated...twice?! What?! I thought you had to make one offer and never make any more if it was accepted! Can they do that?
ReplyDeleteGo Hicks or go home.
ReplyDeleteThat's what the comment sections are for. "If you're in a union or work in the public sector...kill yourself."
ONLY 54 hours a week?! My GOD, they probably get bathroom breaks too. When will business come out ahead?
ReplyDeleteSo I ventured forth and sampled the emanations of Brother Williamson, and happened upon this very gem:
ReplyDeleteContrary to their indolent reputation, French workers are, on paper,
among the world’s most productive, outperforming U.S. workers on a
GDP-per-work-hour basis. There are many possible explanations for that,
the most likely of which is lying.
Yes, Brother Williamson, France's GDP is a lie. The quarterly reports from Total, AXA, Carrefour, Peugeot: lies. Their labor statistics and tax records: all lies. Is there no end to the perfidy of the French?
Then again, this is the National Review, where they believe Paul Ryan is an economic genius because he's offering to kick the poors, the olds, and the sicks: those lazy moochers will undoubtedly straighten up and fly right once they've been chastised sufficiently. I suppose if I were that stupid, I'd rather believe that the entire planet has conspired to make France look better than the USA.
North Korean People's Army Funky Get Down Juche Party:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwoSFQb5HVk
Snoopy and Garfield are obviously commie secret agents.
ReplyDeleteFun-kay!
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I exactly miss the days when conservative pundits felt obligated to highlight their own early work experiences in mines, warehouses, or something of the sort, but I sure notice they're gone. Williamson appears to have basically handshaked his way from one cushy gig to another. He's all for telling other people to pull themselves up by their jockstraps, but if you asked him if he's ever had to do the same, he'd stare at you like you'd just asked the stupidest question in the world.
ReplyDeleteIt is abundantly clear that M'sieur Williamson has not observed American workers in their native habitat. When their employers are too cheap to pay them decent wages or spring for vacation time, they will--'ow you say?--run out the clock, making merde of GDP-per-work-hour.
ReplyDeleteRemember the conservative principle, "Those people are not supposed to win [anything]."
ReplyDeleteThe day we let those Commie-Muslim-leftist-liberal-fascist-crypto-atheist-lazy-overpaid-poor-undeserving union thugs have their way, is the day we all become French.
ReplyDeleteNo, I didn't mean that in a, like, "I'll eat my hat" sort of way, I mean that if we raise the minimum wage, we will literally all become French. We'll let our armpit hair grow out, eat cheese and baguettes all day, and worst of all, we won't go to war with Iran! Those French, I tells ya, you don't want to be like them.
I'm curious as to who he thinks is 'lying', and how they're pulling it off. The French government? Government and big business? The whole damn 70 million people in the country? They're all in on the scheme to make American capitalism look bad? Not one dissenter willing to spill the beans and do to France what Mark Steyn does to Canada?
ReplyDeleteI mean, GDP, hours of labor, etc: these are all measurable, quantifiable numbers. Numbers that are carefully tracked by a variety of sources. My guess is that Kevin, doing his research for the article (i.e. skimming the Wikipedia listing of productivity), scrolled smugly down to the bottom, expecting to find France wedged in between Tonga and Madagascar, and got more and more flustered as he scrolled back up, only to finally see his target-in the top 10! He then said "Nonsense! I'm a conservative libertarian-we're never wrong! Clearly, this is a hoax!" And then just wrote whatever the fuck he wanted to write. Like I said, sweet gig.
They must have some idea how normal people would react to this if they saw it.
ReplyDeleteI often ponder the whole stupid, evil, or crazy thing with these guys (the ratios, the potency, etc.) It's not just that Williamson, like almost every movement conservative/libertarian, identifies with management and despises labor – he genuinely doesn't understand labor, perhaps not even on an effective-agitprop level, not to mention a whole huge swath of life experiences. But that's pretty definitional for conservatism – it ranges from cloistered ignorance of other perspectives and life experiences to proud hostility toward them.
You may have noticed that most national conservatives don't talk about their hard, pull-themselves-up-by-their-bootstraps upbringings. They talk about their parent's struggles (Marco Rubio) or their grandparent's struggles (Santorum) as if that means they themselves haven't been privileged. (Hell, Brian Williams and other media types often do something similar.) Their defining trait is still that they're assholes, but there's some genuine ignorance there, too. (Hence all the Romneybot jokes; the guy could not simulate being human or having "the common touch." And Santorum has attacked both the term "middle class" and the idea of going to college as elitist, despite the popularity of both with the general public.)
In Williamson's case, maybe he just knows his audience, and like most conservatives, can't pitch to the rabid faithful and a general audience at the same time. But perhaps not. Sometimes, these pundits are just preaching to the converted, or shilling for the rubes, but sometimes they've convinced themselves that they truly are the real Amurcans and the crap they spew is accurate. (If nothing else, it makes the pitch more convincing.) After all, Mitt Romney truly believed (and still does!) that recycled 47% crap. Rush Limbaugh has become a multimillionaire by selling aggrieved white butthurt to his audience, telling them they're simultaneously superior and victimized. As a performer, he believes it all when he says it, even when it flatly contradicts what he said yesterday. Call it "epistemic closure" or the "right-wing echo chamber" or the "Ayn Rand Masturbation Society," but among conservatives, the love labour's lost has been channeled into industrialized wanking.
Williamson has never heard of UFCW, either.
ReplyDeleteAlso, from Uncle Google, on the International Typographical Union:
During the Great Depression, the ITU introduced the 40-hour work week across the industry at no cost to employers as a way to share the fewer jobs available.
Something for Williamson to put in his hookah and smoke.
Conservatives don't even know what work looks like. What they want is frantic people, getting in each other's way, and being good and afraid of being fired.
ReplyDeleteGDP is an insufficient measure of respeckt..
I have to view Williamson's column as progress for the Right. After all, he's bitching about a union pushing for a limit to the work week as though the very idea of limiting working hours in any way is an affront to civilization. That is progress as he's extending the concept of slavery to encompass ALL workers, not just the blahs.
ReplyDeleteWho says rightwingers don't have egalitarian views?
Kev has obviously never attended a Memorial Day parade... OR a rodeo. mumbleF*ckingcommiemumble...
ReplyDeleteWhen you come down to it, they really are just fucking anti-American creeps. The image accompanying Williamson's godawful shitstream is a bastardized version of the famous "We Can Do It!" poster from WWII, produced at a time when genuine patriots celebrated workers -- especially women -- for their contributions to the war effort. Of course, the NatRev assholes had to remove the positive American message and substitute a Soviet Socialist red commie background, because what the hell, Russians, Americans, who cares? Workers are just commie moochers regardless, right?
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of reducing hours worked, this Dean Baker article is apropos in every respect. Among many tidbits:
ReplyDelete- In Germany, where the unemployment rate is just 5.4 percent, the average hourly wage, adjusted for inflation, has risen by more than 4 percent since 2010. By contrast, in the US real wages have barely moved for more than a decade.
- The average worker in Germany today puts in fewer than 1,400 hours a year, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. By comparison, an average worker in the US works 1,790 hours a year.
- If German workers suddenly had to work the same number of hours as workers in the US, and their pay did not change, then employment would fall by 22 percent.
Kevin D Williamson - isn't he the one who heroically stole the cell phone of some lady at the theatre?
ReplyDeleteBut will I be able to drink red wine and eat long lunches and still be slim and elegant? I'll take it.
ReplyDeleteOh, I doubt that. I think, rather, that he spent hours and hours cogitatin' and figurin' and ruminatin', flipping his theasaurus open and consulting the Wiki, loosening his tie and mussing his hair, and dashing down to the water cooler to share some of his pithy chestnuts with the other pundits, and finally polished up this turd of a column after an agonizing day's worth of work. No, this one wasn't a toss-off; this one took some good hours crouching over the bowl.
ReplyDeleteUniversal health care, too.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_France
~
This is what happens when you stop treating Atlas Shrugged as entertainment or even a philosophical thought experiment but as an actual instruction manual. Those one percenters will just use the force of their will to create superior products! No need for messy employees! I don't know where Mr. Williamson thinks his food comes from or his poop goes to, but I could assure him that both of those necessary but boring tasks require workers to do them...and they will want to be compensated for their tedious, menial, and frequently smelly labors.
ReplyDeleteApparently Mr. Williamson never grokked the True Meaning of Christmas Labor Day.
ReplyDelete...Presents. Ahhhhh.
Union-made presents.
If we had more celebratory elements to Labor Day maybe more people will take it seriously. There'd at least be more business for the greeting card/gift industry.
Once upon a time:
ReplyDeleteBut, but, France is our ally now! They want to bomb Syria. It's French Fries and Freedom Muffins now!
ReplyDeleteBut only 40 hours of bombing per week, I guess.
Yeah, how can a guy make a buck with a workforce like that???
ReplyDeleteBut France is only following the lead of the Obama White House, so they're not really "our" ally if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
ReplyDeleteI didn't bother to look this year, but I'm sure it must have popped up in one quarter or another - that would be, rightwingers bitching about how we have a Labor Day for all the moochers who make shit (including profit) but no MOTU Day for all the job creators.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a long piece on Labor Day last year that I won't reprise here, but basically it was all about how the history of this country has essentially been a history detailing the theft of labor. That's what's going on at Wal-Mart and in the fast-food industry now - theft of labor via undercompensation, so that the truly deserving - the heirs and the "investors" - can take a larger share. Williams knows his job - to try to convince the stupid that forcing employers to pay any wage at all is vile oppression. That the workers would again become slaves to satisfy the avarice of the wealthy doesn't enter into it; only the worthy are capable of being oppressed. For the rest of us, it's to be considered a part of the natural order of things, the way Jesus wanted it.
Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to leave work just because their hand got chopped off by the machinery. These people just ask for the moon, y'know?!
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, when conservatives suffer as laborers, the only lessons they take away from it are a) if I'm suffering, everyone should have to suffer, and b) one day I'll pull myself up by my bootstraps, and anyone who can't do the same deserves to continue suffering.
ReplyDeleteI mean, how stupid do you have to be to say something like this?
Every day is MOTU day.
ReplyDelete(Though I never really bought that line of reasoning when my mom used it on me...)
Unless you're in the military, in which case you're a hero. I mean, until you come home and start expecting decent healthcare and psychological support. Fuckin' leech.
ReplyDeleteNo! Universal healthcare is a horrible evil! Because, uh, reasons. Reasons that are most assuredly not racist or classist, no sirree.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that Ayn Rand never considered AS as mere entertainment. It's more like the literary equivalent of castor oil, as in "READ THIS, MOOCHER... IT'S GOOD FOR YOU!"
ReplyDeleteYou might think this reasoning is stupid, but the constant repetition of it has convinced huge swaths of America to adopt it. This is why you hear so many people bitching about "those damn [teacher/fireman/police/government workers/auto-industry workers] unions and their greedy [wages/pay demands/days off/pensions]! Nobody deserves that!"
ReplyDeletePeople today looking at their middle- and working-class fellows who might be doing a smidge better, and their first impulse is not to strive for their own improvement but to tear the other guys down. Meanwhile, they sing the praises of Donald Trump as the acme of America.
The Canadian typographical workers had been demanding a 58-hour work week
ReplyDeleteI would say this is an example of Williamson kicking the poors, but America has gotten psychotic about work hours all the way up the food chain.
Somehow the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism adopted the ethic of the Order of Penitents.
Well, he's a big fan of Churchill:
ReplyDelete"We shall fight on the internets, we shall fight with the waitresses, we shall fight in the newspapers and magazines and Regnery books, we shall defend our wingnut welfare, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight in the movie theatres; we shall never surrender."
Completely OT, but WTF is going on w/Balloon Juice? I keep getting an "account suspended" page when I go to the url.
ReplyDeleteOkay, you people here are starting to get me concerned. What on earth are you worried about Ayn Rand for? All you have to do is go to the bloglist on the right, and click on "The Underground Bunker" (It's all the way at the bottom)
ReplyDeleteLimiting a work week 54 hours? What ever happened to the 40 or 35 hour week?
ReplyDelete"They must have some idea how normal people would react to this if they saw it"
ReplyDeleteThey sure as hell do! it's been tested and confirmed: Right-wing screeds allow the person reading them to think a lot better about the worst part of themselves, and that's always good.
"There are many possible explanations for that,
ReplyDeletethe most likely of which is lying."
I really doubt that. After all, over 50,000 Frenchpersons worked on those statistics. They can't be wrong.
Um...far be it for me to defend a guy like Williamson, but it's kind of a dick move to write this as though he didn't provide corroborating evidence. My French is basically nonexistent, but I could glean from the employment ministry's report that the actual work week in France is close to 40 hours and that it appears lower because companies have been lying and exploiting loopholes to skirt the law.
ReplyDeleteSo he's probably right on this point.
I'm curious as to who he thinks is 'lying', and how they're pulling it off.
ReplyDeleteBusinesses. It's all right there in the article Williamson linked, along with the ways they dodge the law.
"You might think this reasoning is stupid, but the constant repetition of it has convinced huge swaths of America to adopt it"
ReplyDeleteAnd, as I mentioned (you probably weren't listening, but I'm used to that), right-wing reasoning allows the reader to think that the worst aspects of themselves are the most admirable.
Yep, I noticed all the Repubs are cheering Obama on in attacking Syria. And you know<>/i> that Bohener, McConnel etc. have only Obama's interests at heart.
ReplyDeleteWhat a chump Obama is. Oh well, if he wants to be the fall guy for Bush that's his affair.
Not much exaggeration there. I once worked in an auto repair shop in the `70s run by a classic petty tyrant, and due to an absence of safety equipment, got a small steel splinter in my eye--in the center of the pupil, small enough not to be visible, but with just enough of it protruding so that every time I blinked, it both scratched the inner eyelid and irritated the eye further.
ReplyDeleteBy the next morning, it looked like someone had shoved an orange under my eyelid, but, I managed to drive to work and persevered until noon, when I could no longer stand the pain and said I simply had to see a doctor.
As I was walking out the front door, said petty tyrant screamed after me, "what are you doing going to the doctor on my time?! Come back here!"
And, because I had not done as he demanded, and because said injury was covered by workman's comp, my punishment was to work on a car outside (in NW Michigan) in November for several days.
Quitting that job was one of the smartest things I've done, even if it cost me four months without unemployment insurance or a paycheck.
I'd really, really, really love to see some mass worker's movement set up a "lazy commie moocher parasites day" in which all the producin' is left to the superpowers of the Great Galtian Producers/Job Creators. And a comparison of the profit margins on that day to the profits generated on the average work day.
ReplyDeleteHuh? Their work week is 35 hours now (unless they've changed it back to 40 recently).
ReplyDeleteBut, I imagine that the French military is happy to work overtime, just to get back at the Arabs for kicking them out of Algeria.
I'm trying to imagine Der Pantload working as a janitor or a doorman at David Koch's apartment building.
ReplyDeleteThe whining would be nigh on unbearable.
"Limbaugh has become a multimillionaire by selling aggrieved white butthurt to his audience...."
ReplyDeleteWell, hell, wouldn't you, too, like to avoid the draft and make millions on a pilonidal cyst?
I've seen this Galtian drama play out in real time. My last job was at a manufacturing plant. In an orchestrated effort to create a strike that the foreign owner could then use as an excuse to close the plant (presumably to make way for the introduction of their own version of the product in the U.S.), they began contract negotiations with the union by demanding a cut in the basic wage from $9.37/hr to $6.00/hr.
ReplyDeleteThese were large items, with a normal production rate of about twelve per week. At the beginning of the strike, the plant manager assembled all the non-union employees, and said, "we'll show the union what we can do! We'll have a unit out in no time at all."
The strike went on for thirty days. Not a single finished product went out the door. Actually, they weren't even close to finishing one. But, the Galtians won a Pyrrhic victory--the quality control manager ran down one of the picketers in his car as he entered the parking lot, claiming she was on private property.
They took what they could get.
Well, just a quibble, but, it's the literary equivalent of diarrhea, but with much the same proviso you describe: "EAT THIS, MOOCHER... IT'S GOOD FOR YOU!"
ReplyDeleteChurchill was also a big, big fan of poison gas.
ReplyDeleteJust more evidence that they were no more honest in 1956 than they are now, and that projection was as much an issue then as it is today.
ReplyDelete(IIRC, the Young Republican Labor Committee was pretty much a shell organization which was part of the Eisenhower campaign.)
Except his "point" wasn't just that France's reports of hours worked may be falsely low, it's that they're the only ones that are falsely low: he says Americans must be working fewer hours than they claim, because (unlike citizens of any other country) they're spending part of their work day goofing off on the Internet. His overall claim about comparing the GDP-per-hour statistics makes no sense without that bogus assumption.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's unremarkable to note (without fanfare of any sort) that Hostess has reformed itself into a union-less enterprise and begun making and selling Twinkies again. Hallelujah for free enterprise!
ReplyDeleteSo instead of 2,500 workers (1,900 unionized) they'll now have 1,800 non-unionized workers total - which is clearly a good thing because according to management (and dutifully reported by the CS Monitor) these 1,900 former employees were apparently responsible for Hostess' debt of $860,000,000, or more than $450,000 per union worker.
Now Lord knows I hate and despise workers and a living wage as much as the next Galtizod but given that the most senior workers at Hostess (20+ years) were making less then $12 an hour when the plant was closed even I'm having a hard time swallowing the assertion that all of the company's failures came from overpaying unionized workers.
Isn't this the same ballheaded twerp that was all proud of himself a couple of months ago for slapping a phone out of some lady's hand?
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing his picture then and thinking "here's another one who has never done an honest day's work in his life by the looks of him."
Holy shit, after I wrote that out I couldn't quite believe that that was really his argument, so I had to go back and check-- yup. In Williamson's world, if I'm hired to work a 40-hour week, and in that week I produce 40 widgets, whereas a Frenchie working 35 (but maybe really 40!) hours produces 50 widgets, I should still win because I probably spent 20 hours checking Facebook.
ReplyDeleterightwingers bitching about how we have a Labor Day for all the moochers
ReplyDeletewho make shit (including profit) but no MOTU Day for all the job
creators.
I believe Mitt Romney did that last year, didn't he?
Hey, the wingnuts are doing everything they can to encourage a reduced-hour work week, to keep workers from getting health benefits!
ReplyDeleteExcept that in France, 35 hours is legally full-time (and... everyone gets health care whether they're working or not). Here, it's just a way of screwing the worker.
ReplyDeleteI cringe to say this, but your statistic doesn't strike me as outlandish, if the debt Hostess was worried about was pensions. A trust generally pays about 4% a year, so the present value of a pension paying $40000/yr is about $1M. Saying that the pension had to have $450K on hand per employee sounds...actually a bit low.
ReplyDeleteThis is not to excuse away the fact that (assuming it is an issue of pensions) they ought to have damned well funded it properly (we have actuaries for a reason, people!), and I can't stand it when mismanagement is used as an excuse to get out of contracts with labour, whereas contracts with investors are sacrosanct, but the raw numbers seem to work out.