Thursday, October 18, 2012

DERP OF A SALESMAN.. Rod fucking Dreher on "The American Advantage":
The other day I was sitting at lunch listening to some French and American expat friends talking about the business climate here in France. It was fascinating to hear. They talked about how rigid the situation is, how difficult it is to start a business in France, and how hard it is to get a job if you don’t have the right connections. They spoke about how so much depends on going to the right schools, and cultivating the right social connections within a tightly-circumscribed elite.

At one point I said, “Didn’t y’all have a revolution to do away with this kind of thing?” Everybody laughed, but the point was made.

The next day, a European friend who lived and worked in America some years back said, “You really do have such an advantage in America. In France, it’s awful. When we moved back to Paris from Asia in the 1990s, I thought it would be easy to get a job. I speak five languages... It took me a year and a half to find something.”

This afternoon I spent some time with an American-born friend who is now a French citizen, and is married to a Frenchman. She’s been here for 20 years. She and her husband moved back to Paris last year after some years abroad, in which he worked for a French multinational, and she told me that she’s having a hell of a time getting a job. Why? Same thing: if you’re not in the network, you are out of luck.
Not like the good old USA, where jobs are just hanging from the trees, eh? Dreher actually seems to think so:
Being here in France, and having this kind of conversation over and over with discouraged French people, has given Francophile me a new appreciation for what we have in America, despite our problems (especially our discouraging political class), and why ours is still a land of opportunity like no other. I wrote a piece about it for the November issue of TAC. I hope you’ll subscribe to the magazine to read it. You’ll also get terrific pieces like Glenn Arbery’s recent reported essay on a traditional farmer in upstate New York, and what he learned about community when his barn burned down...
Wait a second, I'm starting to smell tote-bags.
Journalism like you see in TAC’s pages, and on this blog, costs money. We’re not asking you to be charitable; we really have confidence that the reporting, analysis, and commentary we produce here every day is well worth your financial support. Please consider how much this magazine and this website means to you, especially as a voice of alternative conservatism, and consider taking advantage of our great new Election Special offer to subscribers...

And if you already are a subscriber, and want to help us even more on the mission to stand up to the welfare/warfare state, you can always make a tax-deductible donation.
To recap: After telling us that, because Freedom, the American economy is so much more robust than that of the European country he's always running off to and mooning over, Dreher tries to sell us a magazine and then begs for change.

Is there a level of self-awareness below nil?

69 comments:

  1. Halloween_Jack8:00 AM

    They spoke about how so much depends on going to the right schools, and
    cultivating the right social connections within a tightly-circumscribed
    elite.

    Not unlike, say, getting an in with Bain Capital and making enough money by raiding companies so that you can give away your initial stake--inherited from daddy--and thereby pretend to be a self-made man. Just to pick an example at random.

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  2. Not to be the grammar police, but for Rod, I'll make an exception...

    "how much this magazine and this website means to you"

    I think not. S/b "mean".

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  3. Doc Washboard8:10 AM

    People who use "y'all" in written communication need to be beaten. I guess that includes me now.

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  4. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard8:15 AM

    Why do I get the feeling that Dreher's French friends are as (how you say?) imaginary as this guy?

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  5. mortimer8:27 AM

    He called this "journalism." You gotta admit, the guy has a wicked sense of humor.

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  6. Derelict8:28 AM

    "...voice of alternative conservatism"?!?!?!


    I wonder what that might be, since Dreher's brayings seem indistinguishable from the rest of the demented right-wing nutpack.


    Also, too: Rod loves La France, but hates Le Frenchmen. Just like here in America where he loves his country, but despises both its government and most of the people who live here.

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  7. A year and a half without a job?! Truly, such a situation is unthinkable here in the good ol' US of A!

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  8. DocAmazing8:34 AM

    I think Rod's definition of "get a job" differs from that of his Stateside readers. To most of us in Post-Reagan America, get a job" means "obtain gainful employment", not "jump smack into the executive suites".

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  9. Is there a level of self-awareness below nil?

    Shirley if there is a square root of -1, there can be negative self awareness.
    ~

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  10. reallysmall fish8:55 AM

    I was struck by the same thing. After moving back to Paris from abroad, where the person was working for a French international corporation, I am guessing they weren't trying to find a position at Le McDonalde's.

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  11. Fats Durston9:04 AM

    "I can't just move from overseas into a place I haven't been in years and get a first-rate position? What a terrible culture."

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  12. Leeds man9:16 AM

    Pepé Le Pew was imaginary? C'est incroyable!

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  13. tigrismus9:42 AM

    help us even more on the mission to stand up to the welfare/warfare state, you can always make a tax-deductible donation.


    Hmm, looks like when you divide self-awareness by zero, cognitive dissonance approaches infinity.

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  14. GregMc9:43 AM

    I love it when conservatives bring up the French Revolution and imply that they like the idea. How much guillotined? Sooooo much. They'd raise the thing up a couple of hundred meters just so the blade could get a good running start. Also, too, throwing Edmund Burke under the bus! All's fair.

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  15. Well, Rod's probably never thought about it...

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  16. True, but like the square root of -1, it would be imaginary.

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  17. GregMc9:56 AM

    Somewhere a CEO has just finished reading Dreher's article and has summoned binders full of expats.

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  18. Halloween_Jack10:01 AM

    Incidentally, the link to Lindsay Beyerstein in your blogroll should point to
    http://www.inthesetimes.com/duly-noted .

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  19. Bet those binders full of expats get jobs before the binders full of women.

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  20. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't recent studies shown that class mobility is now greater in "Old Europe" than in these here United States?

    Anyway, got to get back to my unpaid internship -- these contacts don't introduce themselves you know.

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  21. GregMc10:32 AM

    Why do you hate America?

    (class mobility, average life expectancy, average height, amount of free time, etc. also hate America)

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  22. Turn in your "AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!" card right now.
    ~

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  23. Derelict10:59 AM

    And your point is what, exactly?

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  24. Poseur. Real Americans don't need "AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!" cards, because reading is elitist. If Fox News on the teevee was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me.

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  25. Ellis_Weiner11:16 AM

    "Everybody laughed, but the point was made."

    Surely you lot recognize a fabulous new meme when you see it. Is there an incident in Rod's life in which it *doesn't* hold true? Puh-leeze.

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  26. XeckyGilchrist12:00 PM

    Yeah, and I'm sure he knows all about finding a job without having any connections.

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  27. "Is there a level of self-awareness below nil?"


    Ya it's known as GOP

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  28. I noticed in the news yesterday that the 1% were falling all over themselves to buy a pair of Marie Antoinette's slippers that were being auctioned off. You would think they might pause for a moment and consider the implications, but no they bid it up to many times what was anticipated.


    Bring on the guillotines

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  29. Oh, ya got me.

    I should have said your "AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!" flag pin
    ~

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  30. Become a sustaining member today, you fucking moocher.

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  31. The Dark Avenger12:52 PM

    There are imaginary taxi drivers, the ones that the Mustache of Understanding runs into now and then, and then there's Mary Rosh imaginary friends, I suspect that Mr. Crunchy Con favors the latter because he's in Godless France.

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  32. Ah, the imaginary conversation with the friend in French intelligence! I've thought about that post often since then. Does he realize how implausible his story sounds? Does he care? Truly, it is a story rife with mystery.

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  33. Yep, clearly the military-industrial complex was designed for the benefit of poverty-stricken minority families.

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  34. Nah, your usage of it as a quote makes it sort of a non-semantic artifact. It's like the difference between a chemical weapons truck and a drawing of a chemical weapons truck.

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  35. aimai1:32 PM

    I actually had a similar conversation with a (real) French guy a couple of years ago in Paris. I mean, not exactly like this but it was odd the way certain aspects of their history as as obscure to them as our history is to us.
    The guy is a high up in a huge energy business sort of thing and he was bitching about how Priests couldn't get good jobs teaching in the public school but communists could. There was some story about how religious stuff was banned but political stuff was not but his priest friend was so nice. I said--uh? fucking anti clericalism, how does it work? You do realize that your educational system and the entire idea of a public education dates back to the Revolution and to Napoleon. There is a parallel religious school system which he can fuck up. Why don't you take up anti clericalism with them? Or maybe you should take it up with the catholic church which has rendered Priests nearly as radioactive as other, non religious pedophiles. This went over very well!

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  36. bstar1:48 PM

    Wait what you get a card?

    Mine must have been lost in the mail...

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  37. ♫ I'll tumbrel 4 your comment ♪
    ~

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  38. The annoying thing about creating a secular government is that a century or two later, people will forget why.

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  39. KatWillow1:55 PM

    Off all the jobs I've had, only 2 were NOT gotten through friends or family. I'm talking "pink-color" jobs, secretary, mail clerk, DONUT maker, etc. One of the 2 I didn't get thru connections I got thru a Temp agency, after working as a temp for 2 weeks.

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  40. KatWillow2:01 PM

    It might be true-ish. His 5-language speaking pals probably were not looking for jobs as Tour Guides or Museum Gift Store clerks, or hotel Concierge's. Likely they wanted six-figure jobs and were having difficulty in this world-wide recession. At least in France you have a decent social safety net. I doubt Dreary's jobless friends were living ("camping") in State Parks as opposed to Walmart parking lots or alleys behind liquor stores.

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  41. KatWillow2:05 PM

    I don't recall the French Revolution being all about easy access to high-paying jobs.

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  42. BigHank532:37 PM

    All I know is that after I read some of Rod's work, I start wishing I was great deal less self-aware. Like, unconscious.

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  43. GregMc2:38 PM

    You've never heard of the march of the "sans coolyachts"?

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  44. Another Kiwi2:50 PM

    And she has a great article about the violentacrez troll creep asshole.

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  45. tigrismus3:22 PM

    Just like entrepreneur, there's no word in French for laïcité.

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  46. Leeds man3:31 PM

    Bravo, sir.

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  47. AGoodQuestion3:40 PM

    Same here. My current job was the result of getting a temp assignment where the employers liked me enough to (after 1.5 years about) take me on full time. All my other jobs after school have been either through agencies or friends. If there's a place where you can get good work without connections - something I am not rich in - I don't know where it is.

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  48. AGoodQuestion3:47 PM

    Like Rod's French friends?

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  49. montag24:33 PM

    Just read a bit more of it. It's bound to put you to sleep.

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  50. zencomix4:39 PM

    "And if you already are a subscriber, and want to help us even more on the mission to stand up to the welfare/warfare state, you can always make a tax-deductible donation."


    Rod assumes the missionary position for the warfare state while in France? I didn't realize he was on a mission in France. You know who else went to France on a mission?


    Maybe if he sells enough magazine subscriptions, he won't have to shit in a bucket anymore.

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  51. geraldfnord4:42 PM

    Reading? It's not just élitist, it's only for fags.

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  52. geraldfnord4:43 PM

    A kiss on the gland can be quite Continental
    But binders are a girl's best friend

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  53. Pope Zebbidie XIII4:46 PM

    Or a satellite photo of a truck that you claim is a chemical weapons truck. And also a rape-room and meat-grinder.

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  54. Pope Zebbidie XIII4:50 PM

    Connections man, connections.

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  55. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard5:32 PM

    Stupid, lazy gubbermint workers!

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  56. Halloween_Jack5:35 PM

    Speaking of lands of opportunity (and how ours needs to be more, uh, opportunistic), Atlas Shrugged II: Shrug Harder is out.

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  57. BigHank535:47 PM

    The grinding of my teeth keeps me up, unfortunately.

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  58. Malignant Bouffant6:32 PM

    Me three. All through friends/friends of friends, or temp work where they took me on permanently. One gig after I said no, thanks, I'll keep temping & did for a while longer before going full whore.

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  59. Malignant Bouffant6:41 PM

    Founders
    Patrick J. Buchanan
    Scott McConnell
    Taki Theodoracopulos
    The American Conservative is more overtly racist, yet less in favor of foreign intervention. Including intervening against Hitler.

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  60. Malignant Bouffant6:44 PM

    The point is that USA #1 comes in behind many Euro countries in the above categories.

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  61. redoubt7:02 PM

    Wow. Dreher thinks that "we don't want nobody nobody sent" is a European invention.

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  62. "Unconsciousness is your best entertainment value" - The Church of the SubGenius

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  63. aimai9:29 PM

    Thanks for that link. Fascinating. I think I always have Mikva confused with someone else, maybe Fortas.

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  64. Substance McGravitas9:42 PM

    Well, they're really really old by then.

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  65. Substance McGravitas9:49 PM

    Hooray for government-funded opposition!

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  66. If you make your living on wingnut welfare, of course America is the land of opportunity!

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  67. Halloween_Jack9:34 AM

    I can't say that I've gotten all of my jobs through personal connections, although the exceptions were noteworthy, as they either required cross-country relocation or other heroic measures (I got my first library job by taking a civil service exam, but had to interview nine times for separate positions before I found someone who would hire an entry-level clerk with no experience).

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  68. Gerald Fnord2:37 PM

    I remember working with some French engineers (or 'Frenge-ineers', Peter Serafimowicz insists) with jobs similar to mine. They reminded me of someone else, some other group of people...as we were leaving for the airport, I realised whom: all the born-rich people I've ever known. They didn't seem obnoxiously entitled-feeling, but I believe that they, like the American natives of The Money River, had the aspects of people who have never worried about starving, going without medical care, living on the streets, or going to prison for petty drugs crimes......

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