Happy Labor Day a Little Late; Michael Moore is Awesome
His response to Rahm E.’s alleged “Fuck the UAW” comment? Brilliant. For instance:
Did you know that back when I was a kid if you had a parent making a union wage, only one parent had to work?! And they were home by 3 or 4pm, 5:30 at the latest! We had dinner together! Dad had four weeks paid vacation. We all had free health and dental care. And anyone with decent grades went to college and it didn’t fucking bankrupt them. (And if you ever used the F-word, the nuns would straighten you out in ways that even you couldn’t bear to hear about).
Then a Republican fired all the air traffic controllers, a Democrat gave us NAFTA and millions of jobs were moved overseas (hey, didn’t you work in that White House, too? “Fuck the UAW, baby!”). Unions got scared and beaten down, a frat boy became president and, like a drunk out of control, spent all our fucking money and our children’s money, too. Fuck.
And now your assistant’s grandma has to work at fucking McDonald’s. Ask her for pictures of what the middle class life used to look like. It was effing cool! I’ll bet grandma doesn’t say “Fuck the UAW!”
Happy (late) Labor Day to anyone who’s every worked long hours at a tough job, or two tough jobs, just to make ends meet. I’m sure that includes just about everyone I know, since I don’t know too many rich people. Or, really, any, now that I think about it.
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Isn’t it a common theme of Rahm Emanuel’s to blow off the very people who are supposedly his constituency? It seems like every time I hear of him saying “Fuck the…” it’s followed by “…[people who voted in the administration I'm working for].” It suggests two things that harken back to your other recent post about being disappointed in Barack Obama: either Obama is as inexperienced as he was criticized as being (otherwise he wouldn’t have chosen Rahm Emanuel), or he isn’t quite the president most people thought they were voting for. I’m inclined toward the latter, because, interestingly, you’ll find that he was really quite clear most of the time about his intents. It was just hard to really see it behind all the hope and change. His presentation was simply irresistible, especially when compared with McCain.
You’re right, Hank. And I’m sort of inclined to say the latter, based on what I know about Obama. He’s no fool, and I think he knew exactly what he was getting with Rahm. And his administration’s whole thing (Gibbs’ rant about the left, etc) has been to alienate his core constituency. I think it’s a combination of Obama being more centrist than most people thought, and trying to win over Republicans and the media by “being tough” on his own. Either way it’s starting to really suck.
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Hank, I’m sure it’s the latter. Obama is incredibly intelligent and, like you said, clear about his intentions during the campaign. I knew he was a moderate and that he would ultimately disappoint all the people who got lost in the “hope and change” shuffle. He’s much more Clinton than Guevara and always has been. Our only other viable option was WAY, WAY worse. McCain would have been so terrifyingly awful.
That’s true that he still was a million times better than old man McCain. And will be a million times better than any candidate the Republicans run in 2012. I have to keep remembering that.
P.S. That Michael Moore quote is unbearably true.
The main reason I left in the former option is because I do sometimes wonder to what degree the president (meant generally, not necessarily this particular one) is merely a puppet. There are so many different government agencies upon which the president depends and I am sure that by the time information that originates within those agencies makes it to the president it has been condensed greatly from its original form. Plus, someone has to decide what information from whichever particular department is worthy of the president’s gaze at any given moment and what is not: who knows what his or her own particular bias is? And that person’s bias doesn’t even have to be conscious, it doesn’t have to be an intentional attempt at giving the president dis/misinformation or omitting important information, it’s just subjective judgment of what’s important and what’s that is very fallible. And I realize that sounds like a lot of real paranoid shit, because I mean, OMG WAY TOO MUCH PYNCHON/DELILLO, but really, that’s the way complex systems like our government work, is it not? It’s also the price of having an empire and I can’t say I’m not entirely sure that the point of that all that complexity isn’t precisely to keep the inertia of past administrations going in some ways.