Childish Labors

 

Update: Gingrich released a clarification of his child labor comment from yesterday, and I thought oh God damn it, I spent an hour writing this snark and he torpedoed me.  Turns out I needn’t have worried, his clarification is just as stupid as his original comment.  Thanks, Newt, you’re a piker.

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It’s been an entertaining week, hasn’t it?

And by entertaining I mean entertaining like getting tazed in the onions, sure there’s dancing and wild hooting involved but you’re going to be sore as hell the next morning.

A bunch of drunken rednecks booed the first lady on national TV in an outstanding show of classy Southern sportsmanship while she was at a NASCAR race to promote jobs for veterans returning from war. In defense of these mouth breathers, corpulent swollen carbuncle in the sweaty ass-crack of humanity, Rush Limbaugh, called the nation’s first African American First Lady “uppity” and then tried to pretend as if that statement wasn’t blatantly racist. Here’s a question for you, if “uppity” isn’t racist then how come you’ve never heard anybody, ever, refer to a rich white man as uppity? There’s a word that always follows “uppity,” whether it’s spoken out loud or not, it starts with an N. Ten points if you can figure it out, Good Ole Boys help the Yankees.  Rush fans claim his words were taken out of context. Heh. Maybe they should be taken that way, because taken in context it’s abundantly clear that he was defending the hecklers specifically because an educated black woman had the unmitigated gall to suggest that their overweight diabetic chicken-fried butter eatin’ and soda swilling kids should maybe have a salad or two and, you know, exercise.

Probably a good thing she didn’t suggest that they read a book or stop doing drugs, Limbaugh might have had to organize a good old fashioned non-racist lynching.

Students at UC Davis got a painful lesson in the abuse of power. Creepily cadaverous Anne Coulter, without a shred of self-conscious shame publically suggested that the campus police should have just shot a few of the student protesters instead of hosing them down with military-grade pepper-spray.  Apparently the mere sight of young Americans exercising their constitutional right to assembly and speech was so gut wrenchingly offense to Coulter that summary executions for sitting on a sidewalk are in order. She should move to Alaska, Lurch and Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan could rub hot sauce on each other and be best friends forever. Here’s another question for you, how come a great American patriot like Anne Coulter, who talks endlessly about freedom and liberty and the Constitution, suggests that the correct response to unarmed peaceful protesters is the same one employed by the Communists at Tiananmen Square? When did it become morally acceptable in America to shoot people as an example to others?

Here’s something I’d like cleared up: how come it’s terrorism if a guy named Muhammad suggests shooting Americans, but it’s not terrorism if you’re a conservative?

The Congressional Super Committee deadlocked.  Afterward, certain members of the committee admitted that they never actually intended to reach an agreement anyway. In fact, for the last month they mostly watched football and tossed off to pictures of Grover Norquist. This was a surprise to absolutely nobody, since the conservative side of the table was manned by people who think that “compromise” is defined as: give us what we want or we’ll start shooting the hostages. You can not reason with people who are not reasonable people, it’s really just that simple. These are folks who hold their oath to the Constitution and the United States secondary to a promise they made to a self-serving lobbyist who was never elected to any position by any American citizen. These are the kind of people who shoot hostages just to make a political statement and then don’t have to live with the consequences. Besides, it’s important to note that this congressional failure is somehow apparently the President’s fault. Question: Where you work, if you were assigned a critical task, nay, strike that, you volunteered for the task, and you not only failed to complete it in a timely fashion you actually took the job under false pretenses never intending to finish it at all and in fact actively prevented anybody else from completing that task while goofing off on company time, should you still get paid? Or should you be terminated immediately and escorted to the door by security even if you blamed the CEO?

Another question, what should happen to the supervisor who is such a lousy manager and poor judge of character that he assigned a self-serving disingenuous scumbag like you to a critical task?

In a stupefying bit of irony, Michele Bachmann accused NBC of sexism after Jimmy Fallon’s band played Fishbone’s Lyin’ Ass Bitch during her appearance on the show. Granted it wasn’t the classist move Fallon could have made but sexism? Please.  Bachmann should be thrilled that they finally found a band other than Ted Nugent who isn’t offended to have their music associated with the Tea Party. Besides, it’s Jimmy Fallon on late night NBC, honestly who besides his mom actually watches the show? Question for all the folks outraged over this: why isn’t it sexism when Michele Bachmann says that God wants women to be subservient to their husbands? How come Jesus gets a pass on misogyny?

And why the hell isn’t it sexism when Rush Limbaugh calls a black woman uppity? No really, since he didn’t mean it in the usual racist fashion, he must have meant it because she was a women, right?  What? I’m just asking is all.

I could probably have written full post mortems on any of those things, because honestly, when Rick Santorum is the second Tea Party candidate to call Africa a “country” in less than two months and Mittens Romney claims that the only way to prevent Iran from getting nukes is to elect him president, the jokes pretty much write themselves (see the previous post on Rick Perry, talk about taking candy from babies, or rather millions from lobbyists to use a more apt metaphor).

Yep, I could have written about those things, but then Newt Gingrich rolled out his jobs plan and it was like a pure divine white light from Heaven split the clouds and illuminated the landscape to a holy chorus of hot naked angels singing I Can’t Get No Satisfaction. 

I tell you, if nothing else I’m grateful this Thanksgiving for politicians like Newt, because he makes political humor fun. 

Apparently, according to Newt, America’s current economic woes stem from two sources: greedy middle school janitors and unemployed children.

Newt’s solution? Fire the janitors, hire the kids. 

Like chocolate and peanut butter, or feeding the homeless to the hungry, kids and janitorial work naturally go together.  It’s just so, so obvious when Newt points it out, isn’t it?

Fire the janitors, hire the kids.

Brilliant.

First we recoup billions in janitor salaries.

Those goddamned janitors and their outrageous salaries. Who can forget those greedy maintenance men commuting to school each morning? Their private helicopters landing on the roof of the gymnasium, flying in from the Hamptons after a weekend of booze, blow and hookers? Their chauffer driven limos blocking the school bus loading zones?  Oh yes, let us never forget who caused this financial disaster, them with their 24K gold handled mops and gilded toilet plungers while our children could barely afford to chew gum and stick it to the bathroom mirrors? I tell you, nothing chaps my ass more than when those key-twirling broom jockeys took billions in taxpayer bailouts and then gave themselves millions in bonuses. Personally I think it’s a Goddamned outrage that they get taxpayer funded lifetime pensions and golden parachutes even after being found guilty of ethics violations and forced to resign from their jobs. Honest to God, folks, how many more countries could we have invaded if these jumpsuit wearing sons of bitches weren’t bleeding us dry? How many more faith based programs could we have funded? How many high school girls had to graduate because those damned janitors stole money for abstinence only birth control classes? How many aircraft carriers could we have built?  Ask yourself this, how many more tenured history professors could we have hired if we hadn’t had to pay those stinkin’ greedy Janitors? Hell, we could have filet mignon and caviar in the Congressional lunchroom three meals per day instead of, well, ok bad example, but I think I’ve made my point here.

Next, says Newt, we put kids to work.

Nothing says First World Superpower like child labor, boy howdy. Think of the valuable lesson those kids will be learning – say like how even if you work really hard in a thankless job for shitty wages and do your best, some rich greedy asshole in a Brooks Brothers suit and a thousand dollar tie will inevitably dream up yet another shiny business model which somehow always seems to involve outsourcing your job to a labor pool that consists primarily of children.  The lesson being, steal whatever cleaning supplies you can now and sell them on Craigslist, because it’s every man for himself.  Learn that lesson well, kids, and you too can be a former Speaker of the House some day.

Now, at first blush, Newt’s idea to throw school janitors under the bus appears to be self-serving election year bullshit that solves a problem that simply doesn’t exit, instead of actually addressing, you know, the actual problems faced by actual Americans in the actual real world.  But let’s not dismiss Newt out of hand, frankly, there are a lot of advantages to putting kids to work.  Like say if they were working after school they wouldn’t be under foot all of the time. So, and I’m just spitballing here, there would be more time for getting to know their MILFy moms – say if you were looking for a fourth wife or something. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Think about it, if the little parasites started paying into Social Security and Medicare in, say, tenth – or maybe even second grade depending on how patriotic their parents are –  that would go a long way towards making a down payment on the next war. 

Here’s something I bet you liberals didn’t think of: kids in the workforce could commute on the school bus, freeing up valuable space on the highway and saving gasoline. Why that’s downright Green. Put that in your Prius, Al Gore, you tofu smoking hippy.

Now, if the whole janitorial pilot program works out, I’ve got some ideas for other places kids could start filling in:

Flight Crew:  Airlines could eliminate unionized employees in favor of children.  Sure. They’re small, they could squeeze around the drink cart a lot easer than a full sized Stewardess. Plus they could sleep in the overhead bins during layovers and subsist on a bag or two of peanuts, saving the airlines money on hotel and lodging fees.  They can get in tight spaces easier than adults and they’re fascinated by shiny parts, airline ground maintenance seems like a natural fit.

Likewise, companies should hire kids as business travellers. Think about it. They’re small, you could get two of them into a business class airline seat, or maybe they could even ride for free on the laps of other travellers. Huh? Huh? Seriously, airlines could attract business travellers by calculating business fares based on weight. This in turn would drive the next business trend towards smaller and smaller businesskids.  Leading in turn to little tiny business hotels and smaller conference rooms.  Everybody wins.

Computer Programming:  Programmers are paranoid anti-social types with poor hygiene who think the way to meet members of the opposite sex is to sit around dark basements in pajamas drinking Mountain Dew and talking about Star Trek. Anybody who has a teenager knows what I’m talking about here.  It’s a natural.  Trust me on this, I’ve got a degree or two in computer science, I’m going to let you in on a little secret, computer programming is really mostly just gibberish anyway.

Sex Workers:  I know, I know, but bear with me on this. Child sex workers can learn a valuable skill which would then allow them to move directly into paying internships with collegiate sports, the clergy, or conservative congressmen.

Child Soldiers:  Once you wrap your head around the sex worker thing, sending kids into battle is easy.  Plus, we wouldn’t want to say that a third world country like Africa has us beat in the number of miniature Marines would we?  It’s the missile gap all over again!  Plus, kids are small and hyperactive, they’ll be harder to hit than full sized soldiers and they’ve been playing Gears of War since the womb, we won’t even have to send them to boot camp.  Hand them a BFG and drop them out the back of a C-17 into the warzone.  Hell, once the Republicans outlaw abortion we’ll have an unlimited supply.

Whoa, here’s an idea! How about Congress?  It’s a perfect fit! Kids are good at arguing, avoiding responsibility, making a big mess, blaming somebody else, spending money, and they think they know everything. Take the Super Committee, they sat on their asses for a month and couldn’t agree to anything. Mostly all they did was lay around playing video games, watching TV, and eating junk food. Hello!

 

What? Ok, just think about it, that’s all I’m asking.

 

Of course, there’s a downside – I mean besides the whole eventual Logan’s Run thing where the kids kill off everybody over twenty-one and take over the world.

Sooner or later, kids will take over all jobs, putting Newt Gingrich out of work.

Maybe he can find a job sweeping up.

In fact, maybe if Newt spent some time as a high school janitor he’d learn a little humility and then maybe he’d be a little less uppity.

Then again, maybe not.