Monday, August 11, 2008

See You in the Breadlines, Sista!

See You in the Breadlines, Sister!



Drumroll please…and the Corporate Welfare Queen Advocate of the week winner is:

Schenectady New York’s Daily Gazette!!!

Oh lookie here! Two fights against the American white collar worker going on all at the same time!

While a certain immigration law firm known as Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, is being audited by a certain government body known as the Department of Labor for
"possibly giving too much assistance" to corporate clients that seek green cards for foreign workers while posting questionable job ads, the law firm has fired back with a suit claiming that some of the department’s rules are unconstitutional. Could the Constitution actually have provisions to protect American workers? As one commenter explained,



“Law firms like this are one reason why America is becoming a low wage society.
Big business wants to flood the market with foreign labor to increase their profits. They want all the money and employees to be their slaves. Other countries are going to have to grow their own markets to employ their people and not leach off the US job market.”



In other news: Like many gate-keeping inspired corporate welfare queen advocates, some contributors to local newspaper editorials such as the Schenectady New York Daily Gazette appear to be the kind of writers who, by their own admission, take offense at any critiques of their writing styles and, as reflected by it, might appear happy to push their own mothers down a flight of stairs out of desperation for the chance to prove to the brass that they are one of them in order to cling to their jobs as staff writers during this escalating wholesale sell out of American white collar jobs (which includes journalists) for cheap, third world labor.


Last week, the Great Labor Shortage Myth reared its ugly head in upstate New York, where the Daily Gazette published a pro-corporate, pro-outsourcing series of articles by writer Sara Foss, whose August 7 piece "See you in the breadlines, sister" drew the ire of many with one angry e-mail comparing her to Tokyo Rose. Foss writes:



“The angry e-mails also suggested that I would soon be unemployed, because an immigrant with a H1B visa would arrive to take my job at the Gazette, and these e-mails marked the first time angry readers have exulted in my future unemployment. “Pretty darn soon you too will be out of job,” one person wrote. “Newspapers are failing across the country. Maybe that’s what it will take to get across to you morons who can’t see beyond the end of your nose. Your repeated efforts to undermine your own country and fellow citizens are disgraceful. You don’t mind giving your own job away to foreigners ... do you? See you in the breadlines Sister!”



Yours truly has a friend who is a journalist. She has managed to keep her job at ANOTHER Daily News Gazette in another state for the past twenty five years and would not know what to do with herself should she, like Sara worries, ever get the sack.



The stark difference between my friend, the journalist, and Sara, is that my friend would have made it a point to interview the locals and question why so many unemployed and underemployed educated Americans are being passed over for cheap foreign labor where Sara appears to have choked down the party line and offers no counterpoint in an area of the state where local citizens have been hit hard by job outsourcing. After all, if a journalist from a “Big 3” journalism school like my friend, can’t get the scoop, who can? Whether Foss chooses to admit (to herself or in print) that there is a war on the middle class or not -- her August 3 article in particular clearly succeeded in channeling the innocuous, tired media corporate welfare agenda pitch to the extent that one might even envision a gun to her head. (There is a tragedy in all of this denial -- not to mention denial’s ugly twin, censorship, which is what happened when Zazona’s Rob Sanchez’s comments were deleted. Thank you, Rob, for these links.) That surviving journalists these days, after all, are forced to churn out such blatant lies by omission surrounding the Great American Labor Shortage Myth from our Department of Propaganda is now commonplace. Even the blogosphere has shaken out the real McCoys from the Suckups, leaving only a handful of writers left with the mettle to research anything novel, intelligent, and cutting edge to offer in this increasingly incivil war on the middle class.


And what will happen to Sara Foss? Based upon her admitted obsession for repetition, she obviously would be thrilled – and luckier than most white collar Americans – to keep her job another threee-five years. But for now, Sara seems quite pleased with herself as her “See you in the breadlines, sister” slogan is at least keeping her on her toes. Who knows? maybe she’s working on a fictional novel with the same working title to tide her over through the dark days. Either that or she may indeed have friends in high places.


Remember: Don’t ask, don’t tell and don’t stop acting stupid and for Godsakes, don’t forget to party on, plebes! The Overlords love your blind faith. Suckas.

-2Truthy

2 comments:

Citizen Carrie said...

Thanks for addressing the Sara Foss issue. I'm glad she got hammered hard. I think she had no idea what she was in for when she wrote the story. Worker anger? In the US? Who'd uv thunk it?

I've noticed a lot of these worker shortage articles showing up in the smaller newspapers across the country. One could easily assume that it's part of an industry strategy to bring their case to all of the little nooks and crannies where us plebes tend to hide out. Or, it's just an easy way for a journalist to look like she's doing some hard-hitting reporting when in reality she's just dusting off a few other articles that were written a dozen years ago.

2Truthy said...

It seems there is such a corporate lock on local news editorials that dare *hint* at signs of any war on the middle class that are biased of course, toward corporate interests these days that it make you wonder if Foss wrote these articles with the expressed intent to draw public reaction?

For example, about one year ago, a local SJMN columnist wrote a very revealing and forthright article about an iconic, old vice president and his secretive ties to big business here. Fast forward one year later, and to this day, this guy has not written one insightful piece (when I left a comment on the SJMN blog, my comment never appeared.)

In fact, this formerly cynical SJMN writer with a zesty flair for investigative reporting seasoned with satire has downgraded to submitting pieces about the ether, with boy scout zeal.