Friday, June 29, 2007

Peckerwoods, suits, and sickos

So what do the people that Mimus Pauly so charitably calls "peckerwoods", the music industry suits, and the health care insurers covered by Michael Moore's new film "Sicko" all have in common? Simple: They all possess an unwarranted sense of self-entitlement that says that they're entitled, yes, *ENTITLED*, to make a living in the industry in which they've chosen.

I ran into it first hand working in the oil industry in the early 1980's. Affirmative Action programs had brought the first black oilfield workers into the shop. As far as I could tell, they were competent and did the jobs for which they were hired just fine, but that didn't stop the peckerwoods from grumbling that "goddamned niggers are taking our jobs". Like, the fucking stupid peckerwoods thought they were *entitled* to those jobs, like it was some natural born right or something. Now the peckerwoods are grumbling about how them goddamned cockroaches from south of the border are taking their jobs. Nevermind that the goddamned moron peckerwoods are stupid as a brick and time after time vote for the same goddamned politicians who set up the system that lets the Mexicans swarm across the border. Nevermind that the peckerwoods are lazy, intellectually interested only in beer and football, and do as little work as they can get away with, to the point where a lot of construction contractors I know will hire *legal* Hispanics over legal peckerwoods simply because the Hispanics will work their goddamned tails off while the peckerwoods just slouch around whining about how they're being picked on by "The Man" for, like, being expected to actually WORK. In the HEAT. In the SUN! Without being waited on hand and FOOT! But will they actually get out there and bust their butts to show employers that they're both capable and willing of working hard and getting the job done? Hell no. They prefer drinking beer and whining about Mexicans taking their jobs.

The recording industry suits are the same way. Rather than listen to the public when the public says that, like, firing 1/3rd of the recording artists and suing thousands of your customers is bad business, what do they do? Why, like buggy whip makers whining about that new horseless carriage, they whine that new technology is rendering their job obsolete and should thus be outlawed! It's the same goddamned mentality. They think the world has an obligation to give them a living. Sorta like the linotype operators at the New York Times who whined that the Times had an obligation to provide jobs for them despite all those fancy new computer typesetting widgets the Times had acquired. They went out on strike, the Times said "fine", turned on the computer typesetting widgets, and the linotype operators never came back from strike because, well, they had no jobs to come back to. Technology happens. When it happens, you either learn the new technology and make a living there, or you learn how to say "Do you want fries with that order, sir?". The world has no obligation to give you a good living in the industry you've chosen. Shit, musicians know that, that's why they have day jobs except for a very very few who are lucky enough to make their living at music full time. The suits are scared as hell that they're gonna join the ranks of barristas at Starbucks who work evenings as roadies on the local bar circuit.

Now we get the health insurance companies and their paid lackeys in the corporate media whining about Michael Moore's new film "Sicko" and his call for universal national single-payer health care. They whine, "what about the hundreds of thousands of Americans who work in the health insurance industry?" Oh cry me a river, you see this . ? Yeah, it's the world's smallest fucking violin. They're not goddamned *ENTITLED* to those fucking jobs. Let'em join the rest of us motherfuckers out here on the free market, who have to show that we goddamned *KNOW OUR SHIT* and work our fucking tails off to get ahead. And the same thing for the billionaire profiteers who own those companies. So their stocks in those companies become worthless? oh WAH! You fucking *CHOSE* to invest in the most evil companies on this planet, and now you're going to whine that your choice was a bad choice? It's your own goddamned fault, you stupid-assed bitches! You and your short-sighted asshole demands for moh profit, moh profit, moh profit at the expense of health care quality destroyed our health care system and kills thousands of people every year (*MORE PEOPLE DIE OF DENIED HEALTH CARE COVERAGE EVERY YEAR THAN AMERICANS KILLED IN IRAQ DURING THE ENTIRE WAR!*), so fuck you. Go jump off the goddamned top of a skyscraper or something, you stupid assholes. You deserve to lose all your money for being such jerks as to place profits ahead of people.

And to all of the people above: *THE WORLD DOESN'T GODDAMNED WELL OWE YOU JACK SHIT!*. *Nothing*. Nada. Not one goddamned thing. If you're too goddamned lazy, greedy, venal, and/or stupid to make an honest living, it's your own goddamned fault. Don't whine that I should bail your stupid lazy ass out because you're too stupid to move into the digital media market or too lazy to compete with Mexicans or too greedy to, like, fucking provide the goddamned health care that we pay and pay and PAY for (15%+ of our Gross Domestic Product, or about twice what a universal single provider health care system would require to cover every single American). Just shut your fucking mouth up and go get a job, you lazy slacker assholes, and quit bothering my fucking ass with your whine whine whine whine (oh do you want fucking CHEESE with that whine, assholes?). I'm tired of it. WAYYYY more than tired of it. Goddamn it, get a fucking CLUE, will ya?!

-- Badtux the Rude Penguin

As usual, I cross-post my best stuff over at The Medley...

12 comments:

  1. Damn fine rant. Nothing really to add to that, that wouldn't be anticlimactic. Good on ya.

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  2. Whew! That's a mouthful. I don't know that I could rant that well even in my prime. But, honey, you're right. No one is entitled to a job - not even Daddy's or Mommy's scion in a family run business. Even Patty Hearst crawled back up the ladder in the business. You go, penquin!

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  3. I have no problem with helping the truly disabled and incompetent. But the rest of them are just a bunch of leaches.

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  4. Maybe Americans should stop whining about universal health care and just give up health insurance altogether. Fuck it, if we're going to compete with illegal aliens coming into this country who don't have anything to lose and will risk working here for no insurance then maybe we should eliminate insurance for all Americans so US companies can better compete with the world market in this country. No retirement benefits, no insurance coverage of any kind, and fuck all that crap like the American Disabilities Act, OSHA, Worker's Comp. and all of that shit. You're right, Americans have gotten soft and fat from being coddled for far too long and it's time we leveled the playing field.

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  5. Whoa there, Mr. Grimm and Mr. BBC. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water. Just because I don't think government should be in the business of guaranteeing that people get to make money in a particular business doesn't mean I think folks should just get thrown out on the streets to die. I think we do have at least some obligation to our fellow man. A job, however, isn't one of those obligations. Do that and you end up with the Soviet economy, where entire sectors of the economy actually had *negative* productivity because they existed to provide employment to now-redundant populations. And we all know how that one worked out.

    As for immigration, I've written about that elsewhere (check my tags). Suffice it to say that I'm for legal immigration of Mexicans to the United States, against the slavery of "illegal" Mexicans, and for reasonable limitations on the number of Mexicans that can enter the United States. My suspicion, however, based upon what I see in the construction industry locally, is that legal Mexicans will *still* be preferred by contractors over peckerwoods because the peckerwoods whine and are lazy and steal everything that isn't fucking nailed down and some things that are. One construction site in rural California that was forced to hire peckerwoods because of a shortage of Mexicans therebouts had to institute armed guards at all the entrances and exits to the work site because they were literally losing thousands of dollars of equipment *PER DAY* that the peckerwoods were stealing. I had peckerwoods actually *bragging* to me about how much shit they stole from the Big Freaking Chemical Company over the years. The Mexicans generally don't do that crap. They come to work to work, not to whine, not to steal.

    There's a reason why our entire factory floor at my (former) employer's is staffed with (legal) VIetnamese and Laotian and Filipino immigrants, and it ain't because white people aren't available to do those jobs (our factory is down the street from a trailer park). It's because the goddamned peckerwoods simply are too lazy, venal, and, well, *STUPID*. Even some Hmong straight from the Laotian highlands is ten times the worker of the least slack of the peckerwoods....

    - Badtux the Common Sense Penguin

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  6. Outstanding, BT, and dead on!

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  7. Hello, Mr Penguin.

    "Both... pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces...

    "Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's... unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'
    "

    ---Abraham Lincoln
    Second Inaugural Address
    March 4, 1865

    Have to feed the penguin a bit of history every once in a while (it's Lincoln, so it's low-fat).

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  8. My job is already obsolete. It's just a matter of time before the industry realizes it. No clue what I'll do for a living then, but I'll think of something.

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  9. What I wonder about is the low level of ability to learn that exists among the peckerwoods - not just lack of intelligence but ignorance and not being taught how to learn. When jobs are eliminated or taken over by others willing to do manual labor more efficients, job training programs don't do much good because those who lose their jobs don't know how to learn and are usually unwilling to move from their current abode.

    Ability to learn new skills and technology as well as the willingness to be mobile are keys to continuing a high employment rate in the face of a changing workplace.

    I'm suggesting that our schools are too busy teaching tests to teach our young people how to learn, how to change, how to be flexible. These are skills that will help them survive as the world change accelerates.

    Most immigrants that I know are people who want to learn, who have been mobile, who are excited about change. Maybe we need to really do something worthwhile about our schools.

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  10. That's going to be another post, Sharecropper. Let's just say that things have changed somewhat since you and my mother grew up in the Deep South... and it ain't got nothin' to do with the schools, other than that schools are a reflection of the societies that form them.

    -BT

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  11. Thank you for an excellent and well-thought out rant!

    Mixter

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  12. I'm looking forward to that rant, BT; I have one of my own that may be similar.

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