Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Republican in Tennessee Says 'Unemployed Should Just Find a Job'

Benefits about to run out? Too bad. You lazy folks should shut up and find a job.

From the Young Turks:

Posted by Brian at 12:34 PM  
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5 comments:

Andre said...

Oh come on! Give him a break, AI. Clearly, all those people who claim not to be able to find jobs haven't look for one underneath the sofa. I mean, that's where the jobs are, right?

Sigh. These Republicans are nuts. Heartless, idea-less nuts.

4:17 PM
Mikhail Silverwood said...

It's good to see that this affair, and the video, has gotten media and blogospheric attention. All people connected with the net heard about it.

Unfortunatley, the issue isn't being discussed properly. And because the debate has been failing, the conclusions aren't being made.

People are viewing this as a simple case of 'an out of touch Republican has no connection between the elite political Washington and the real world with ordinary people'. To its relative degree, this is true.
But the Republican didn't make it just because he's elitist and out-of-touch.

This goes deeper in the big and powerful right wing political weaponry. Whenever there is a victim of some sort, the classic argumentative technique is to 'assert the opposite' and 'blame the victim'.

Instead of taking sympathy for these poor people, attack them, accuse them of the reason they suffer.

Unemployed: lazy.
Welfare recepient: dole cheat.
Rape-victim: asking for it.
Domestic violence: weak whinger.
Affirmative action appointee: reverse racist.
Unintelligent (cause by the underfunded education system): naturally stupid.
Etc.

Once you can blame the victims for their sufferings, there's nothing stopping the rich and powerful from control all means of political and economic wealth in society.

7:42 PM
Paradigm said...

I absolutely agree Mikhail. Unfortunately the right is extremely astute at playing this card. They have every country boy and girl w/ a pitch fork and a tractor thinking that they have their best interests at heart while a closed door meeting sent millions of jobs oversees never to be seen from again in the form of free trade agreements and the world bank.

Even Nixon dawned a pair of overalls to try to appeal to the "common" folk and it worked. But they know where their bread is buttered: fear of a minority run country.

The only glimmer of hope I see is that it's not just minorities who are seeing these staggering unemployment rates, its the majority. Those country boys and girls are out of work too. Not just "those people". The GOP may be overplaying their hand a little.

8:44 AM
rikyrah said...

these clowns need to be exposed wherever they are.

9:57 PM
Mikhail Silverwood said...

The reality is clear: working class Americans are losing their jobs because of the rich and powerful, big business. Having structured unemployment helps keep wages down; having a worker in America is far too expensive than a worker in Latin America.

The myth: you working class people don't have a job because they're all being taken by... gays and illegal immigrants and men-hating lesbian feminist women and liberal elites and communist social Marxists and racist black people and Latinos out for revenge and ... damn, who else can we blame, uh, scientists who are making up climate change for some secret plot.

5:53 PM

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