BY Debbie Galant | Monday, Sep 05, 2011 8:50am | COMMENTS (45)
Labor Day.
Workers rights. No more whites.
Crowded shore. Fun no more.
And, for me, 23 years ago, the day I became a mom.
Happy Labor Day, Baristaville. Get out and enjoy the day early. The rain’s supposed to start around 2.
Photo of Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Protest from the National Archives.
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As we shop for BBQ fixins, beer and drinks, and last minute what’s-its we must have, say “Thank you!” to the person working on this day off. And leave an extra nice tip for the person serving you brunch so your day off can be even more relaxing!
The great days of the labor movement in this country seem long, long gone. Even the once-feared Teamsters seem somewhat toothless these days. (But then, DOJ pressure will do that.) And certainly neither the teachers’ unions nor municipal employees and transit workers are hardly universally belonged.
It’s probably all for the better. (Pete Seeger singing about “union maids” is but one step removed from his similarly fatuous and misgudied musical paeans to “Beloved Uncle Joe” Stalin, after all.) Still, it’s worth taking time today to reflect on the many job and benefit improvements that union pressure bestowed on ALL of us, because they are considerable.
Paterson was once a center of such union ferment, especially among the workers in its silk factories. And though it may now be under water or closed, there was for a long time a Museum of American Labor or some such in next-door Haledon. It’s even worth visiting if still open.
(Should read “universally beloved,” not ‘belonged’ above. Sorry!)
Kristin please don’t feel sorry for all the people who work this labor day. Many get time & 1/2 or double time. Others get to chose a belated holiday & take a day of their own choice later on (like the day after Thanksgiving.) And among my food server friends, many are happy to work a holiday because more people than usual are dining out.
Obama:
“And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud,” he said. “It should be because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country.”
Obama being introduced at union rally today:
“We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war,” Jimmy Hoffa Jr. said to a heavily union crowd.
“President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong,” Hoffa added
Oliveoyle, you are correct in that many restaurant personnel get overtime pay and can choose another day in replacement. However, most work for minimum wage. Ask your food server friends how many of them get health care, or any other benefits. And, we should not forget that police, fire and emergency medical workers are also working today. I hope you don’t NOT feel sorry them either.
ROC, what is it, exactly, you’re trying to say by putting those two quotes together? That Obama’s supporters are blood-thirsty animals, that there’s no war on workers, that Obama should preach civility…what?
RoC’s trying to show you that when people’s backs are against the wall, they ain’t gonna reach out and shake their aggressor’s hand.
Politics is a partisan issue and Obama’s trying to get re-elected. The Teaparty wants to take him out, the problem is they have no one of any gravitas to become the next POTUS and the Republicans are still scratching their….heads.
I once belonged to the Amalgamated meatcutters union and never cared one bit about it at the time. But today with Corporations being controlled by their shareholders and Wall St., American workers might need some union safety nets to keep them from becoming slave labor on our own soil. Never thought I’d see the day.
PAZout
In case anyone thinks they’re living in the land of opportunity…..
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/05/140115617/bumps-on-the-road-back-to-work
What does “under-employment” mean?
When’s Prof “Bootstraps” Williams going to be allowed a voice again on B’net?
That was quite a speech that Hoffa gave. I can hear it now, being played over and over during the upcoming months, to great effect in galvanizing the opposition. Now, did Obama use his faux southern accent in Patterson yesterday, or was it deemed to be specifically effective in Detroit to drop the g’s, for some reason? Using a bogus accent strikes me as rather condescending.
ROC, you’re getting strange. The USSR is gone, Al Qaida is weaker, so now you need a new mortal enemy for real Americans to rally against – and you pick -
A son of a dead union leader?
Yeesh.
“POSTED BY nickcharles | JANUARY 09, 2011 @ 4:15 PM
[Palin] No, she’s not. Did someone say she is? We’re merely saying she’s an ignorant, irresponsible jackass who thinks it’s appropriate to tell her followers to take out politicians, then backs away like a coward when one of them listens. Far from Osama bin Laden, but is that really the standard she wants to be held to?”
http://www.baristanet.com/2011/01/all-eyes-on-tucson/#comment-247170
Nick, I’m sure Obama condemned the “Let’s take these son of bitches out” part of his introduction, right? I’m sure of it. Perhaps you can help me find a recording of his condemnation?
Let’s see if the author of this quote will fess up to it:
“There’s a difference, Hildy, between using a war metaphor in a political context, and telling followers than political opponents need to be “taken out” (as Sharon Angle said about Harry Reid last year).”
Hint: His nom de plume is taken from a detective played by William Powell.
Prof seems to be making himself at home on the It-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named blog.
thanks ROC, for enlivening a calm holiday with yet another of your gang’s favorite tactics, the False Equivalency.
Let’s see:
1. Hoffa, unlike Palin, is not seeking higher political office (oh, that’s right, Palin isn’t running for anything—she’s just been hanging out in Iowa and New Hampshire all summer…)
2. Hoffa, unlike Palin, didn’t provide a handy map with crosshairs to help supporters find their “target”.
3. Hoffa, unlike Palin, isn’t in the habit of being filmed promotionally while shooting animals from a helicopter as a way to appeal to a particular stripe of the electorate.
at least you had the courtesy to not commemorate the day by trashing teachers unions for the one millionth time. wasn’t that in the talking points today?
Specifically which post was prof banned for?
I’ll go with “false equivalency” over cognitive dissonance every time. What baloney.
Could this have been a strategic faux pas by the Baristas? I feel there is a slight malaise here since they banned the Prof.
Yeah, I’m pretty annoyed by it also PAZ
deadeye, the Prof was banned for one week, because of his comments on several Barista Kids posts, but also because of a longtime habit of hectoring commenters and writers alike. His week is up and he is free to come back if he wants.
So the Prof was banned for commenting on parenting and sand candles?
Prof, apparently BaristaKids is only for Mommies, back away from the sandbox and hang out with us in the Cafe!
Olive, I don’t feel sorry for people with jobs. I just remember what it was like during holiday brunch time during the years I worked in food service. It was busy, and people were often much more demanding because, you know, it’s their day off. I don’t need to feel sorry for someone to appreciate their work. An aside: I never got paid extra for holidays as a line-cook or a waitress – although I’m sure some do.
Debbie, that’s a poor excuse for banning someone. Who’s next?
“Hectoring commenters and writers,” eh? Isn’t that practice what made this site locally famous in the first place? Isn’t it also this site’s very bread and butter? Writers have to expect to expose themselves to such, and surely the good prof’s comments are generally quite gentle.
If hectoring commenters is to be an offense here which leads to at least temporary Amish-style shunning, then allow me to suggest that the Baristas watch the posts of, say, croiagusanam, very carefully in the future. He in particular only seems to bother appearing when he in fact has “hectoring” in mind. But what constitutes the line between simple oppositional comment (usually but not solely because of political differences) and hectoring? (Which seems more a product of street mobs during the French Revolution or in medieval Florence.)
Actually, however, there’s something “off with their heads”-ish about this banishment. It smacks of a desire to assert too much control over a site which began to be successful because (as so many once liked to note here) it did not come with the strictures and built-in low expectations of, say, the Watercooler. And this also comes at a time when it seems plain on a daily basis that Baristanet is simply never “edited” in the sense that serious journalism usually is, that its writers are seemingly never overseen in such normally crucial areas as fact checking and good grammar. In other words, the quality of the writing and “reporting” here has clearly, steeply declined over the years. (As the site’s founders have personally written less and less over those years, I note.) Even as questionable choices have been made via such matters as “sponsored” posts, an unwarranted attack on the editor of a rival site as inauthentically local and that mystifying piece of self promotion last week by a developer.
In such an environment the “offenses” of the good prof hardly count, are but, in Bogart’s phrase in “Casablanca” about his romantic issues, “a hill of beans.” I also note the apparent decline day by day in the number of posts on this site, and I have to wonder if it’s merely coincidental. How are comparable advertising revenues at Baristanet these days, I wonder. Up? Down? Stagnant?
Not at all surprising that cathar should offer up my name as someone to be “watched”.
“I saw Goody Proctor with the devil”, says our courageous defender of free speech.
As for me, I like being “watched”. Now cathar, you might want to swing by the police station with your list of cars bearing late registrations.
ROC and deadeye, the problem with getting all your news from Drudge is that, inevitably, it’s going to end up as misinformation.
What Hoffa said yesterday, sans FoxNews editing: “Everybody here’s got to vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong! Thank you very much!”
Can you still interpret Hoffa’s “take these sons of bitches out” statement as a literal call to violence? I guess so. You probably will. But since the literal beginning of the sentence urged people to vote, I think it’s more than fair to say he was talking about voting, not about shooting people.
I’m going to assume you’ll disagree. That’s fine. But I feel comfortable saying there’s a difference between saying, “Let’s vote and take these sons of bitches out” and saying, “If I don’t get my way at the ballot box, I’ll take Harry Reid out using my Second Amendment.”
Let’s all agree to disagree and on rare occasions to agree heartily!
You miss the point Nick. Hoffa’s comment, like Bachman’s (or Palin’s map) are all in bounds marshall political lingo. What bother’s me is the hypocrisy and faux piety of some.
“If I don’t get my way at the ballot box, I’ll take Harry Reid out using my Second Amendment.”
I love it! You decry the lack of an ellipsis as inaccurate and then simply make up a quote whole-cloth!
PAZ, I have to say I just adore your new avatar. Don’t know what it is exactly, but it sure is cuuuute!
I read “no more whites” and had to laugh – I never knew that “shoe rule” until I moved here.
I think we’ve all been hectored here by someone, at one time or another… and that’s what makes it fun (well, sort of, unless you’re a non-confrontational softy like me. Er, that is, non-confrontational unless it involves bad driving or school district nonsense.)
We have published 14,912 posts and 258,567 comments since Baristanet began in May, 2004.
As a rule, we have tried to be very hands off with comment moderation, and certainly we are much more open than the Watercooler.
However, there are certain posters who continuously push the limits of civility. Although it is hard to enforce a comment policy with perfect fairness and consistency, we run out of patience with certain commenters who seem to go out of their way to be nasty, both to us and to others in the community.
Cathar, you have talked about slow news days and the decline of Baristanet’s journalistic quality, yet you continue to come back. If you go to the Great Notch Inn, sit at the bar, complain about the quality of the drinks and the decor continuously, are they thrilled to have you as a customer?
Solemnly intone all you want about rhetoric, ROC.
I’m just glad that Christie is showing measured leadership lately –
1. Calling out the right wing nuts who had a problem with his Moslem appointee.
2. Creating a working team with President Obama on flood relief.
Looks like he broke 2 of the 10 Commandments of Tea Party orthodoxy in the span of one month. Not bad.
Of course, with certain commenters, even God doesn’t catch a break.
I love it! You decry the lack of an ellipsis as inaccurate and then simply make up a quote whole-cloth!
Well, I’m not a news agency, ROC. I was writing a comment on a local-news blog. Maybe you can see the difference? Meanwhile, the paraphrase of Sharon Angle’s “2nd amendment remedies” quote was not far off the mark:
Angle: I feel that the Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry. This not for someone who’s in the military. This not for law enforcement. This is for us. And in fact when you read that Constitution and the founding fathers, they intended this to stop tyranny. This is for us when our government becomes tyrannical…
Manders: If we needed it at any time in history, it might be right now.
Angle: Well it’s to defend ourselves. And you know, I’m hoping that we’re not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.
She’s saying if Harry Reid loses, her voters should consider “2nd Amendment remedies.” That’s pretty clear, right? Whereas Hoffa told supporters to take candidates out by voting them out of office. I see the difference. You don’t? Fine.
What bother’s me is the hypocrisy and faux piety of some.
Of who? You’re the one who seemed to be condemning Hoffa’s (edited) comments. No one else here mentioned them. Seems like the faux-piety is riding on your side, sir.
Deb, I think you have to decide what kind of blog you want to be. Not every comment can be positive. You need contrarians to keep you real and keep our politicians real and in touch with the working class. When you have guest bloggers then just cut off the reply column if you’re worried about them getting hammered. You have posters who like to deal with facts and most who deal with feelings, moods. Yin/Yang….Babeee!
If your generation wants to write in this fad style of being facile, edgy and tongue in cheeky then you reap what you sow.
If I come to B’net every day and see more & more “customers” banned then I think it weakens your cause and waters down the energy level. You’re not serving Guinness, you’re serving up commentary and we’re sitting at the bar waiting to give our opinions, raw, cooked or half-baked! Go with the flow, add some extra skin and stay in the game!
Kay….That’s my little Fleecy 2, who was found in an Antique mall by my daughter in upstate NY last week. I carried this rubber toy around but I lost Fleecy after my mother passed when I was nine. Now she’s back! I guess you could say she’s my Rosebud avatar?
PAZ, we love contrarians and strong viewpoints. We are trying to curb out-and-out nastiness.
“You’re the one who seemed to be condemning Hoffa’s (edited) comments.”
I didn’t condemn his comments. I condemn the lack of criticism of our Bullsh*tter-in-chief who’s obviously not interested because he can’t score political points.
sorry badly phrased.
I condemn the lack of criticism on the part of our Bullsh*tter-in-chief who’s obviously not interested because he can’t score political points.
RoC….That’s funny! Take out the L’s and we have our previous Commander-in-Chief.
“Cathar, you have talked about slow news days and the decline of Baristanet’s journalistic quality, yet you continue to come back.” The unique personalities of some of the more forceful posters draws me back to this site. Nastiness, after all, is in the eye of the beholder. The give and take between croiagusanam and cathar can get dicey. So too, cathar’s slow news day comments and his challenges to your writers or Spiro’s style is a major part of Baristanet’s appeal. I read the prof’s offending comments and wondered about his banishment. I believe many of your readers wonder as well.
Actually, DagT, it appears cathar and Spiro are getting along better these days, for reasons unbeknownst to Spiro (although I could trace it back to Spiro agreeing with cathar that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton aren’t so great – that seemed to make a difference – also cathar’s correct belief that Spiro likes Catholics ( some of my best friends…….)
Fortunately for Spiro, there’s still Ice and herb to kick stuff back and forth with. I look forward to Ice’s “white men are persecuted” topics, and herb’s hatred of old growth forests, fondness for fusty stereotypes, and, I suspect, contempt for broccoli, bean sprouts, and mung beans.
Yes Spiro I did notice cathar’s invite to you to go partying with him. I do like it when boys play nice!
But I suspect that it’s also your fair judgement of Obama and the big guy at the helm in NJ that has cathar throwing those roses at you.
Croiagusanam, you’ve really got to work on your reading comprehension. While all you do when you do appear (and it wasn’t always this way for you) is hector, I’d certainly be opposed to having you shunned for a week. (Ritual stoning is quite another matter, however.) You’re also simply not that important to me.
But you do seem a sour old rotter, with brine if not actual bile roiling your innards. And your appearances do seem to define what Debbie found as just reason for punishment of the good prof. You know, croi, if they “come” for the prof, then perhaps someday soon….
DagtT, yes, it is the personalities that draw me back to this site. But Baristanet will never win any journalism awards, I suspect. Too bad, because it was once headed in that sort of direction.
Debbie, the attempted linkage of me to the Great Notch Inn’s interesting crew of late afternoon regulars (as I recall them) was rather base of you, I trust you’ll agree. In keeping with the spirit shown by your failed attempt at a weird form of “nativism” via the dismissal of the editor of Montclair Patch as non-local (for which you don’t ever seem to have apologized here), sure, but otherwise low and a display of nastiness which seems to come from being cornered. I haven’t even set foot in the Great Notch Inn in several years, dear.
As for Hoffa’s remarks in Detroit yesterday, it is useful to note that Detroit is, as James Taranto ably pointed out in today’s WSJ, a city in real trouble and even more decline than, say Paterson. Its population has dropped, for example, from something like 1.9 million in the early 70′s to less than 800,000 today. I really hope that Obama doesn’t imagine that attending a rally there called by the son of one of America’s worst and most corrupt union leaders ever signifies anything other than clear desperation on his part.
Spiro, those weren’t “roses” I tossed verbally at you in the spirit of amity. Rather, they were mums and they are decidedly seasonal flowers and it is a short season at that, particularly given our current weather. And why do you write about yourself in the third person? Not even St. Augustine did that.
I hate mums, cathar. They’re stiffer than a dry martini. Send me the liquid instead, with extra olives, if your heart is so inclined.
Well, its an ill wind that blows no good. Sure, it can be rough being an early riser on days like this one. The dogs don’t want to go out and they pace and whine until driven out with a firm hand. There’s some water in the basement again. And I forgot to top up the milk yesterday so the tea will be black and bitter.
But, speaking of black and bitter, there is the joy of another post from cathar! And this one is especially diagnostic as far as getting to the core of this peculiar old bird.
First, there is the third grade “your reading comprehension” shot. That fits in well with the earlier picture we have of him crying to the baristas that I should be “watched”. It can put a person in mind of a young 10 year old cathar, dressed in his starched white short sleeve shirt and clip-on tie with St. Stephen of Verbose badge, eagerly informing Sister Margaret of all of the infractions that occured whilst she was down the hall.
We then have the complaint that all I do is “hector”. This from the man who has made verbal war with lasermike, spiro, JG, mike91 and, well, me. In addition, he takes any and all opportunities to dismiss the postings on the site, the editing of same, and the overall tenor of the enterprise. But it is I who “hector”.
We can then see the aggrieved cathar decrying the “base” and “mean” treatment he has received from Debbie. All of this only a few sentemves removed from “sour old rotter” and “bile” applied to me. You know, if I gave a $#%, I might consider THAT mean.
We then get a bit of Niemoller “if the come for….”. Of course, cathar is no Niemohler. He’s more of a Niedermeyer, from ANIMAL HOUSE.
But by all means, old sod, keep coming back for the “personalities”. We’d miss you if you went away!