Comma Abuse

They, Too, Sing America

By CHARLES M. BLOW

Published: July 15, 2011

Last week I spent a few days in the Deep South —

New Jersey?

a thousand miles from the moneyed canyons of Manhattan and the prattle of Washington politics —

A thousand miles equidistant from Washington and New York? That’s Canada.

 talking to everyday people,

A term so condescending that Blow probably doesn’t realize just how douchy he sounds. It’s like the Peace Corps for pretentious urbanites.

blue-collar workers, people not trying to win the future so much as survive the present.

In other words, people a step above welfare, but who still don’t have any discernable skills. Please note, most “blue-collar workers” are considerably above this social stratum. Blow just wants to pimp out the impoverished because he’s super-classy.

They do hard jobs and odd jobs — any work they can find to keep the lights on and the children fed.

It’d be interesting if your brain only allowed you to write in clichés. I wonder what that must be like.

No one mentioned the asinine argument about the debt ceiling.

I know. These people are Democrats. They don’t know anything.

No one. Life is pressing down on them so hard that they can barely breathe.

Life is doing this to them. I get it. That way, they’re absolved of any responsibility for poor choices that landed them there. In reality it’s almost impossible to be truly poor in America unless a) you have a child out of wedlock, b) you are convicted of a crime, or c) you develop a drug addiction.

They just want Washington to work, the way they do.

I thought they didn’t mention the debt ceiling. Clearly they’re not paying attention to the political goings-on.

Rugged individualism, however, is dead in the lower class. The Democrats have choked it from them and replaced it with a mentality of entitlement. More likely, these poor folks want a dues ex machina to skirt the financial restraints of economic reality to give them more money. They can’t be bothered to care about the particulars; Dancing with the Stars is on.  Blow and his cohorts use this lack of awareness to imbue sound bites and bumper sticker slogans as a smokescreen for the perpetual lurch towards statism.

They are honest people who do honest work —

Use the word “folk.” It sells the down-home platitudes better. Also, stating that the entirety of the lower class is honest is just an outright lie.

crack-the-bones work; lift-it, chop-it, empty-it, glide-it-in-smooth work; feel-the-flames-up-close work; crawl-down-in-there work — things that no one wants to do but that someone must.

Check the table attaching this article and you’ll see that he’s talking about home health aides, customer service representatives, food preparers, personal home care aides, retail salespersons, office clerks, and the like. Indeed, the only intense manual labor comes towards the bottom of the list with “construction laborers” and “landscaping and groundskeeping workers,” both of which have (intentionally vague) “low” salaries—as opposed to the “very low” salaries of food preparation workers and retail salespersons. Indeed, when you have valuable skills, even within these “salt of the earth professions,” like a licence to operate heavy machinery, you are highly valued. Kind of amazing how that works.

I’m pretty sure no one’s sticking anything into a fire or crawling into a hulking industrial machine. This isn’t a Dickens novel.

They are women whose skin glistens from steam and sweat,

 I hope she’s not in food preparation.

whose hands stay damp from being dipped in buckets and dried on aprons.

Aprons sounds an awful lot like food preparation. Now I’m nervous.

They are men who work in boots with steel toes, the kind that don’t take shining,

Who shines any steel-toed boots? What is wrong with this guy?

the kind that lean over and tell stories when you take them off.

This is starting to feel like a high school lit project. He can’t possibly be serious.

They are people whose bodies melt every night in a hot bath,

Man, I’ve never understood baths. Who actually takes baths other than bored housewives with a surplus of bath salts? I’m sorry, I’m so bored with this article that I’m getting off track. What the hell is the point of this printed handjob to the poor?

then stiffen by sunrise, so much so that it takes pills for them to get out of bed without pain.

I think I said something earlier about drug addiction. Just saying.

They, too, sing America.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

NO! Just no. You don’t get to use commas anymore, Charles Blow.

But they’re the ones less talked about — either not glamorous enough or rancorous enough.

They are talked about. Incessantly. And glamorized. There are television shows and movies about these people and their lives. Deadliest Catch. Ice Road Truckers. Swamp Loggers. Ax Men. Dirty Jobs. Ren and Stimpy. As opposed to the wealthy, who get portrayals like The Young and the Restless and Arrested Development.

They are the ones without champions,

Seriously? Is he actually serious here? They have the entire apparatus of the federal government bleeding the economy dry to provide a safety net, thousands of charities across the United States—the most charitable country in the world. There is virtually nothing that a poor family has to provide for itself. Education for the kids? State-provided. Job training? There’s a charity for it. Food? They’ve got their own stamps. Taxes weighing you down? Don’t pay them; the poor simply aren’t asked to.

You know who doesn't have a champion? Those who refuse to defer to the moral superiority of poverty like the rest of these genuflecting left-wing social cultists. 

waiting for Democrats to gather the gumption to defend the working poor with the same ferocity with which Republicans protect the filthy rich,

HEY! You don’t get to use commas anymore! This is especially poignant, since you should have used a semicolon here, you colossally incompetent asshole.

waiting for a tomorrow that never comes.

I can’t imagine writing this little gem without having given up all claim to original thought and writing talent.

People think of them as somehow part of America’s past.

The poor? We’ve moved from stupid platitudes to demonstrably false accusations against “people.” No worries, I’m kind of phoning this one in too.

But not so. No, most aren’t STEM workers (science, technology, engineering and mathematics workers),

Um…I never said they were, Charles. Neither did anyone else.

 who grow up high where all can see.

Ah, we’re all one big tree, now. Gotcha.

 But they are the root, underfoot and out of sight, growing just the same.

So, now that our economy is somewhat shaky, shouldn’t we all be blaming the roots? You might want to rethink that metaphor.

The Economics and Statistics Administration of the Department of Commerce issued a report this week that touted STEM jobs as “driving our nation’s innovation and competitiveness,” having higher wages, and projected to grow “by 17 percent from 2008 to 2018, compared to 9.8 percent growth for non-STEM occupations.”

Excellent. Let’s teach kids math!

But there’s another side to that story.

There really isn’t.

As the Bureau of Labor Statistics points out, half of the top 30 occupations expected to see the largest job growth over the same period, and seven of the top 10, are low-wage or very low-wage jobs.

That doesn’t surprise anyone. This isn’t at all related to the statistics presented about STEM workers. That was about wage growth. This is about job growth. Charles, buddy, this is bush league.

Only eight even require a degree. Most simply require on-the-job training.

Why do people still go to college? The jobs simply aren’t there for college graduates, whereas many moderately intelligent people would be better off financially if they went to vocational schools to learn trades like welding and carpentry. Is it the lack of awareness to acknowledge moderate intelligence?  East Bemidji State can still find students to fill the classrooms, even if those same students can’t find employers that respect their degree.

And yet, in the irony of all ironies, postsecondary teachers and teacher assistants are both on Blow’s list of growing professions. Stop going to college, America!

The people who work these jobs are the backbone of this country,

I thought they were the roots.

and will continue to be. In fact, Washington could learn a lot about backbone from listening to them.

I’m pretty sure your objection to Washington is the existence of a Republican backbone, not the absence of one.

We would all be better served by politicians who work as they do — willing to do the things that no one wants to do but that someone must.

…out of desperation and a complete dearth of better options available. Dream big, America.

Can I stop yet? This was just depressingly stupid.