Sunday, February 1, 2009

Obama's stimulation as it relates to testicles on the chins of men

10 comments:

Unknown said...

Good ol' salt of the Earth. We'd all be better off if we did things their way.

w1ndst0rm said...

1. Wow. Preach it, brother.
2. Watching this at work has a great layer or two to it.
3. And even though you won't believe me Karri named my 'guys' Anagnorisis and Parapetia back in college.

Looking back I wonder if she was picking on me or lamenting herself?

Qhorin said...

I'd like to have a job where I could work peripetia into the conversations.

andrew said...

I can't tell if you are being serious or sarcastic Gus, although I do have my suspicions.

To avoid the risk of putting words in your mouth, please elaborate.

Unknown said...

The guy's story as interesting, but rendered kinda lame as ammunition against no-nothing organizations, the liberal elitism of Hollywood and random other hated targets of business. Honestly, if I was a farmer/Joe six-pack kind of guy I'd be as offended by this kind of pandering as I would be to those who looked down their nose at me. Simplification in either direction is counter-productive.

And, honestly, the guy lost me when he went apeshit over the farmer who feeds his pigs with leftover food. Awesome idea, yeah, the guy got rich off of it. Good on him. But using it as data to undermine the idea that people should follow their passions is pretty weak.

avk said...

I think he was talking about following passion as it relates to a career. Presumably, most of the people he's talking to (at some kind of tech conference) are passionate about their careers. Plenty of farmers and factory workers (and salarymen and cubicle farmers, for that matter) aren't- for many of them it's just a way of making a living and they go about it as well as they can.
This is not to say, however, that they don't have passions or don't follow them. They simply do so outside of their careers.

If I were a farmer/joe sixpack-type, I wouldn't be offended. I'd be too busy either working or waxing my snowmobile, building a ship in a bottle, feeding the poor, or whatever my free-time passion was to worry about what some folks who have soft hands are saying about me (Gus and avk included).

Hose Juan said...

I think Mike Rowe makes an interesting point about how we value jobs & work in America. Our culture teaches that "blue collar" is not a desirable path. What's glorified is the businessman, the athlete, or the celebrity. In fact it even goes beyond blue collar. It's most jobs that are not "glory" jobs. This includes scientists, engineers, secretaries and so on.

w1ndst0rm said...

Part of Gus' elaboration feels a lot like his well known knee-jerk reaction that rears it's ugly head every time someone dares to make a less than edifying comment about his beloved Hollywood.

Unknown said...

Believe me, I have no love for Hollywood. I just find the rift between supposedly liberal Hollywood and plain-talking, everyday, but oh-so-wise red states stupidly divisive and in no way expressive of the real complexity of American life.

andrew said...

I am in agreement with AVK. Someone needs to tell the kid who plans on being a famous singer (because singing is his/her passion)

"Great, now get a job that reliably pays the bills and sing at your local church/gay men's chorus."

I don't see any sort of red-state/blue-state divide here, and I see the criticism going well above and beyond hollywood (note Gus, pop culture is not EVERYONE's passion)

Is it an oversimplification? Actually no. What he is saying 'Hey, I think we are wrong, we should look over here some rather than totally ignoring it.'

If you look at his policy suggestion, that's just a kernal of the beginning of an oversimplification, and not the message. This is neither a policy video nor an online shepherd's training course. Judge it by either standard and of course it will fall short.

P.S.

I always like it when P.E.T.A. is wrong.

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