Only On MSNBC: Being A Hard Worker Is Bad Because Slavery Or Something
[guest post by Dana]
Oh, God, these people are just so utterly desperate to be relevant! And when they aren’t, because they don’t have an original thought in their heads, they just make crap up knowing someone, somewhere will buy it. Political correctness, in all its astonishingly dumb glory, is going to be what pushes rational thought and critical thinking right over the cultural cliff. And then there will be nothing left but the whiny drone of dumb, desperate people trying to out-relevant each other with their self-righteous indignation over whatever manufactured outrage they can come up with in that moment.
Cue MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, who embarrassed herself today, but sadly lacked the necessary self-awareness to realize it. (I, on the other hand, had plenty of self-awareness for both of us as I found myself inwardly cringing when she opened her mouth…)
Anyway, when conservative Latino activist Alfonso Aguilar sang the praises of Paul Ryan and noted that Ryan is a hard worker, Harris-Perry sounded the Social Justice Warrior alarm bell. Because slaves:
ALFONSO AGUILAR: But let’s be fair. If there’s somebody who is a hard worker when he goes to Washington, it’s Paul Ryan. Not only works with the Republicans but Democrats. You know very well that I work on [the] immigration issue, trying to get Republicans to support immigration reform. Paul Ryan is somebody who has supported immigration reform, has worked with somebody like Luis Gutierrez. Luis Gutierrez is very respectful, speaks highly of Paul Ryan. This is somebody who’s trying to govern.
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: Alfonso, I feel you. But I just want to pause on one thing. Because I don’t disagree with you that I actually think Mr. Ryan is a great choice for this role. But I want us to be super careful when we use the language “hard worker,” because I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall, because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like. So, I feel you that he’s a hard worker. I do. But in the context of relative privilege, and I just want to point out that when you talk about work-life balance and being a hard worker, the moms who don’t have health care who are working–
AGUILAR: I understand that.
HARRIS-PERRY: But, we don’t call them hard workers. We call them failures. We call them people who are sucking off the system.
AGUILAR: No, no, no, no.
HARRIS-PERRY: No, no. Really, ya’ll do. That is really what you guys do as a party.
AGUILAR: That is very unfair. I think we cannot generalize about the Republican Party.
HARRIS-PERRY: That’s true. Not all Republicans. That is certainly true.
Oh Melissa, you silly little fool. You know what hard work looks like, right here, right now? Hard work looks like character, responsibility, power, satisfaction, strength, pride, commitment and reliability in action. You know how I know that, Melissa? Because I worked today. I worked hard because I am that hard worker. Perhaps it’s a concept you are unfamiliar with, given that you spend your privileged days slumming at MSNBC creating mini-dramas and getting your SJW panties in a wounded wad, hoping to feel important and give your life some sort of meaning.
Friends don’t let friends make fools of themselves, Melissa.
Your friend,
–Dana
Hello.
Dana (86e864) — 10/26/2015 @ 9:19 pmA ditzy, dingbat, dingleberry she is! May the
Yoda (feee21) — 10/26/2015 @ 10:52 pmforce run over her azz like a Mack truck!
There is a huge difference between a “hard worker” and a slave (assumes that the pictures she has of “folks” picking cotton are of slaves)
Tom (1e059e) — 10/26/2015 @ 10:57 pmCue MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, who embarrassed herself today, but sadly lacked the necessary self-awareness to realize it.
In other breaking news, the sun once again rose in the east and set in the west.
JVW (ba78f9) — 10/26/2015 @ 11:09 pmThere is a huge difference between a “hard worker” and a slave (assumes that the pictures she has of “folks” picking cotton are of slaves)
Probably not slaves unless the pictures are really really old. More likely 20th century sharecroppers or hired field hands. Didn’t Al Gore bore us years back with his stories about how his pappy the Senator would take him down to the family farm and make him pick crops in the field all day?
And for all her caterwauling, does anyone want to see if we can find an online citation where Melissa Harris-Perry describes herself as a hard worker? But she’s just a one-woman clown car, that one is.
JVW (ba78f9) — 10/26/2015 @ 11:15 pmShe didn’t say anything about slaves. She merely pointed out the obvious truth that when we talk about someone in a white-collar job “working hard” we don’t mean the same thing as we do when we talk about a miner or a bricklayer — or a cotton-picker — working hard. Herding cats in an airconditioned office is not comparable with the work of a lumberjack or a blacksmith. And I suppose it is valuable to keep that in mind from time to time. What it has to do with Ryan’s merits is another question.
Milhouse (8489b1) — 10/26/2015 @ 11:22 pmOh Lord save us from these ingrates.
mg (31009b) — 10/27/2015 @ 12:27 amLike she even has a concept of what hard
Dan Kauffman (11707a) — 10/27/2015 @ 2:06 amwork feels like
So, Melissa Harris-Perry hears the words “hard worker” and immediately her mind runs to cotton fields and race. And she keeps a picture on the wall, not of lumberjacks, not of bricklayers, although those would do if she merely wanted to remind herself of what hard work looks like instead of what “relative privilege” looks like, and only laboring in the cotton fields will do for that, to reinforce this pathological way of thinking.
That reminds me of someone.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/28/vester-flanagan-used-innocent-words-as-a-catalyst-for-murder/
Melissa Harris-Perry needs to be watched carefully. Her thought processes mirror those of a psycho killer.
Steve57 (a0050a) — 10/27/2015 @ 4:21 amMilhouse, I can guarantee you that if you had a picture hanging on your wall of a miner emerging from underground dirty and grimy after a long day to remind you what hard work looks like, and Melissa Harris-Perry saw it, she would accuse you of racism.
How do I know? Because that happened recently at a college frat costume party in California. The theme of party had a strong relationship to the 1849 Kali Gold Rush. Some of the partygoers dressed up as old west miners, complete with make-up to simulate dirt on their faces.
The were reported to the school administration by saner people than Ms. Harris-Perry, but still nucking futs, for racism since they accused them of wearing blackface.
Steve57 (a0050a) — 10/27/2015 @ 4:35 amit depends a lot on your cotton quota I’d think
happyfeet (831175) — 10/27/2015 @ 5:19 amI see Milhaus’s point. My parents worked a lot harder than I ever did. And a lot harder than Ryan, too. But that PMSNBintC is not the one to talk about it. The heaviest lifting she’s done is hanging tampons on her ears.
nk (dbc370) — 10/27/2015 @ 5:39 am*Milhouse* not Milhaus. Blame Trump.
nk (dbc370) — 10/27/2015 @ 5:42 amSo to Melissa Harris-Perry hard labor is the only legitimate hard work? I could name a thousand people who worked hard, very hard day and night and were not coal miners or lumberjacks. To associate hard work with only physical labor is to ignore the value of contributions by guys like Edison, Carnegie, Salk and thousands of others who labored tirelessly at their fields and fortunately for us they were not digging coal or chopping down trees.
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie™ (f4eb27) — 10/27/2015 @ 6:39 amReverend, a look at Dr. Harris-Perry’s biography suggests that she has never actually seen manual labor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Harris-Perry
I see this kind of thing on campus all the time.
I call these folks “Marxists in 300 dollar shoes.”
Sigh.
Simon Jester (c8876d) — 10/27/2015 @ 6:53 amAhhh yes, Simon Jester. Harris-Perry, formerly Harris-Lacewell (I guess the hyphenated name goes with the air of privilege). Her father was the usual professor of Africa studies (i.e. never worked a day in his life ) and her mother ” went on to work for non-profit organizations that provided services such as day-care centers, health care for people in rural communities, and access to reproductive care for poor women.”, I other words directed poor black women to Planed Parenthood to kill their babies.
The entire family sounds like a bunch of elitist snobs who went through life on Affirmative Action specializing in the easiest classes, careers and positions they could find. Now if only they’d pay their taxes!
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie™ (f4eb27) — 10/27/2015 @ 7:18 amso “lazy” is racist and “hard working” is racist.
Remind me, what manual labor have the MSNBC hosts been involved with?
seeRpea (a87a34) — 10/27/2015 @ 7:18 amseeRpea, with leftsts everything is racist.
I imagine shoveling their daily sh!t could be considered manual labor. BTW, “manual” labor is racist, it’s Mexican.
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie™ (f4eb27) — 10/27/2015 @ 7:24 amThe proportion of parasites — e.g. idealogues, apparachiks, and kommissars — in relation to productive workers is much higher in Marxism than it is in feudalism, let alone capitalism. Marxism was invented for the benefit of the shiftless. Marx, himself, was one one. He did not work; his family lived in miserable conditions (one of his children died from lack of nutrition and medical care); and he was supported by handouts from Engels while writing Das Kapital.
nk (dbc370) — 10/27/2015 @ 7:31 amnk, do you know this one?
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
So very true. Sigh.
Simon Jester (c8876d) — 10/27/2015 @ 7:37 amAnd in Inferno he added the secret police. He has Benito saying you cannot have a bureaucracy without a secret police. 😉
nk (dbc370) — 10/27/2015 @ 7:47 amDoes she notice the camera operators, the editors, the various crew members who get her show on the air?
Fifi (ebf01c) — 10/27/2015 @ 7:53 amAbout as much as she notices the doorman who opens her Central Park door for her in the evening.
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie™ (f4eb27) — 10/27/2015 @ 8:01 amThis is one of the quotes that got Dr. Zhivago banned in the USSR as subversive, even though at firs glance it does not appear to be:
Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: I told myself it was beneath my dignity to arrest a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man, and the party was right: One man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic. Five million people desperate for fuel will destroy a city.
Because it’s so easy to get to the broader principle. One shiftless, lazy bum is pathetic. Fifty million shiftless, lazy bums will
nk (dbc370) — 10/27/2015 @ 8:06 amvote for Obamadestroy a nation.europe is about to take firewood pilfering to a whole new level this winter lol
happyfeet (a037ad) — 10/27/2015 @ 8:09 amShe is mentally ill.
Rodney King's Spirit (ab8c0d) — 10/27/2015 @ 8:50 amI don’t watch MSNBC because for years now it’s been an arm of the progressive/liberal/Democrat movement in the states so I generally rely on blogs to keep me informed of Ms. Harris-Perry latest blunder or racist rant. Everytime I laugh at her antics I figure she can’t get any worse and everytime she proves me wrong and lowers the bar some more. She hasn’t disappointed me yet. Here she is throwing the race card down to warn off a guest about using the term “hard work” when describing Rubio and bringing race into the dialog. Since he’s the Democrats latest and best pal I wonder if she got a call after the show giving her own little warning.
scr_north (04a89b) — 10/27/2015 @ 9:22 amI can’t imagine how difficult daily life must be with a brain wired in such a manner.
JD (34f761) — 10/27/2015 @ 9:36 amActually, JD, I imagine it’s quite easy to breeze through life dumb as a box of rocks while leftist throw jobs, money, degrees and accolades your way just for being black. Her brain is wired just like that of any other leftist, socialist or communist: I’m special, I deserve.
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie™ (f4eb27) — 10/27/2015 @ 10:03 amHey come-on, Harris-Perry is a bloomin’ idiot. This is the type of stuff bloomin’ idiots say. She’s just mad that no one ever accused her of “hard work.” Also, consider the source, MSNBC. It’s the type of stupid stuff you expect to hear from them. All in all, a normal day in MSNBCland.
Bill M (906260) — 10/27/2015 @ 10:53 amThis country is in DEEP trouble if this trend to aspire to victim status — not to escape it, not to overcome it, but to aspire to it — continues.
L.N. Smithee (e750c1) — 10/27/2015 @ 12:41 pmSteve at 4:21 and 4:35, I agree with your informed speculation, but there’s nothing in what she actually said to support it, or even to object to. What she said was reasonable, and if a reasonable person had said it you would agree. You’re just reading her words in the light of what you know about her from elsewhere, and you’re probably right.
Milhouse (8489b1) — 10/27/2015 @ 4:13 pmWhat reasonable person has ever strung these words together in this order?
True, I know she was an African American studies professor at Princeton. At Wake Forest she is among other things the founding director of something called the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South.
But even if I didn’t know that about her, even if I didn’t know she is an MSNBC host which in and of itself raises about the same red flags, if she was just a nobody I overheard in Starbucks, I would have arrived at the exact same conclusion just because she used the phrase “relative privilege.”
Those words have a definite meaning to the race, gender, sexual orientation, trans whatever justice warriors who use them. And they are the only ones who use them. I’ve never seen a precise definition, but here’s how it goes. There is a spectrum of suffering, discrimination, or effort people experience and if someone is going to “contextualize” (read MHP’s words carefully) one person’s experience compared to another, that can only be done by comparing relative levels of privilege between the two parties.
A straight Christian (culturally, not necessarily practicing) white man has the highest level of privilege. Therefore he can not have experienced as much suffering in life, can not have had to work to get where he is in life, and by definition can not have experienced any discrimination since he is at the top of the power structure.
So a straight Christian black man would have suffered more, worked harder, and experienced more discrimination than the straight Christian white man, but not quite as much as a straight Muslim black man. In this white, patriarchal, heteronormative, Eurocentric theocracy the Christian black man has more privilege relative to the Muslim black man.
When I hear her use certain key phrases I know exactly what she means. I’m not reading anything into them. I don’t have to. I had some experience with them in college, and more than I could stand when I was in the Navy and these began to seep into mandatory Equal Opportunity training. It’s worse now than it was when I retired in 2008. And I know people who are still in, who keep me posted on the latest outrages.
http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2014-01/deckplates-do-not-use-job
The title of this article is taken from the caveat at the start of the chapter of the E.O. training called “Power and Privilege.” The whole manual is a train-the-trainer guide, but the other chapter are supposed be worked into the classroom training as well. Theoretically this chapter is only included for information purposes only, not for actual classroom instruction, so it carries the warning “FOR TRAINING PURPOSES ONLY” and “DO NOT USE ON THE JOB.”
And then the chapter proceeds to tell the adviser how to work the training into their lesson plans. So they are supposed to use it ON THE JOB, they’re just not supposed to let their students know what they’re doing to them.
Apparently the concepts of “white privilege” or “white male privilege” were too confining for people who spend every waking minute of the day obsessing over race, gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, class, and the social “power structure.”
So now we can be treated to the spectacle of the differently “privileged” communities go to war over who the power structure has given fewer privileges (less is always morally superior).
Steve57 (a0050a) — 10/27/2015 @ 11:33 pmre #33: ooph.
seeRpea (6e8254) — 10/28/2015 @ 8:00 amseems to me that this mindset is all for making gains via bringing other people down.
Steve, you have it exactly. Ayn Rand spotted the beginnings of this ideology, when she wrote that suffering does not create a claim on others.
Milhouse (8489b1) — 10/28/2015 @ 10:22 pmThank you, Milhouse. I really wasn’t reading anything into MHP’s words.
As an aside, I know of no reasonable person who has a picture on their wall to remind them of what hard work looks like.
When I was sixteen I used to spend my summers working in the “fields” clearing brush to make way for new home construction. Later I loaded moving trucks. Have you ever loaded a moving truck in Fresno CA in the height of a central valley Kali summer? I got to do that day after day, week after week, crawling into bed at 11:00 p.m. knowing I got to do it all over again at 4:00 a.m.
Which isn’t to say that I had a particularly rough life. It is to say that I don’t need a picture on my wall of a moving truck, to remind me that working inside a sheet metal box in what must have been 130 degrees is harder than working in an office, like Paul Ryan.
If you need a picture on your wall, like MHP does, there is something very wrong with you. Starting with, you’ve never worked hard at manual labor.
Steve57 (79b135) — 10/31/2015 @ 9:41 amPhysical labor and intellectual work are each “hard” in their own rights. In order to legitimately compare them, it is necessary to recognize the context (e.g. location, age, physiological and mental development, etc.), and partition their effects on the body and mind.
n.n (55ea47) — 10/31/2015 @ 10:05 amConcur, n.n,
I should probably clarify and say that really grueling manual labor is harder on the body. But then, really only in some respects. The stress of grueling intellectual labor can also shorten your life.
But none of this has to do with the warped point that MHP was driving at.
Steve57 (79b135) — 10/31/2015 @ 10:26 am