Reader A sent me this classic, which is more timely now than ever:
“No one predicted the disappearance of the middle class,” said Dr. Bradford Elsby, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “The danger of eliminating workers’ unions, which had protected the middle class from its natural predators for years, was severely underestimated. We believe that removal of the social safety net, combined with rapid political-climate changes, made life very difficult for the middle class, and eventually eradicated it altogether.”
One of the 15 permanent exhibits, titled “Working For ‘The Weekend,'” examines the routines of middle-class wage-earners, who labored for roughly eight hours a day, five days a week. In return, they were afforded leisure time on Saturdays and Sundays. According to many anthropologists, these “weekends” were often spent taking “day trips,”eating at chain family restaurants, or watching “baseball” with the nuclear family.
[…..]Others among the 99 percent of U.S. citizens who make less than $28,000 per year shared Chavez’s sense of disbelief.
“Frankly, I think they’re selling us a load of baloney,” said laid-off textile worker Elsie Johnson, who visited the museum Tuesday with her five asthmatic children. “They expect us to believe the government used to help pay for college? Come on. The funniest exhibit I saw was ‘Visiting The Family Doctor.’ Imagine being able to choose your own doctor and see him without a four-hour wait in the emergency room. Gimme a friggin’ break!”
I just hope this museum wasn’t funded with gubmint money.
Cris
See, now, the Onion doesn’t really come off as hyper-partisan, but they certainly don’t seem to traffic in false equivalencies.
Sockpuppet
Schaumberg, Illinois?!
God, Detroit can’t catch a fucking break no matter what they do. Douche move, Ford Motor Company, douche move.
Brachiator
This reminds me of the classic line delivered by Maggie Smith in the PBS series Downton Abbey.
Southern Beale
Nooooo! NOOO!!!! Not the tired old “Nobody could have anticipated” canard again! Noooo!!!
I think some Dirty Fucking Hippies like Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky predicted this. Maybe not. Seems like I’ve been hearing about the disappearing middle class since the 80s.
Southern Beale
Okay. I clicked the link. It’s satire.
Now I get it.
I just really hate the “nobody could have predicted” thing. But of course The Onion uses it best.
I’m going to drink wine and make dinner now.
{ shuffles away in humiliation }
kdaug
The funny don’t live here, does it?
Violet
@Southern Beale:
The best satire is based in reality and is so good you can hardly tell the difference.
colleeniem
@Brachiator: Holy crap, that is all I thought about too! It helps that I just watched it.
Small voice/again/small voice
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Southern Beale: Well, in your defense– it is pretty fucking difficult to satirize Greater Wingnuttia.
JPL
@Brachiator: You can stream Downton Abbey on instant now. We haven’t really come that far. The scene where one of the maids was learning a skill so she could rise in status was excellent.
Monala
Man, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read this, especially with the guy choking up at the end because he remembers when his family used to be middle class.
This is the best (worst?) part:
Thirty-five Booker T. Washington Junior High School seventh-graders, chosen from among 5,600 students who asked to attend the school’s annual field trip, visited the museum Tuesday. Rico Chavez, a 14-year-old from the inner-city Chicago school, said he was skeptical of one exhibit in particular.
“They expect us to believe this is how people lived 10 years ago?” Chavez asked. “That ‘Safe, Decent Public Schools’ part was total science fiction. No metal detectors, no cops or dogs, and whole classes devoted to art and music? Look, I may have flunked a couple grades, but I’m not that stupid.”
Look at everything they fit into those two paragraphs: Booker T. Washington school (as in the namesake’s “if blacks pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, then whites will respect us” mentality), 5,600 students in one junior high, the sad fact that metal detectors and cops are present, and art and music classes not, in many schools now–and the fact that the middle class is completely wiped out when the museum opens circa 2014.
Stentor
For some reason, I’m reminded of the speech Judge Doom gave at the end of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?:
“Of course not. You lack vision, but I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night. Soon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it’ll be beautiful.”
If Judge Doom were a real person, he’d be a Tea-bagger.
Brachiator
@JPL:
Yep. Wanting to become working class, as opposed to the settled role of a servant in a defined class system, was essentially revolutionary. And strangely, we have the Tea Party people actively working to undermine the middle class.
Will
With the news of this fakey phone call and the all-there-but-the-fat-lady-singing corruption floating around this governor, maybe it’s time for some of the protesters to start calling on the governor to resign.
Big signs:
RESIGN
CORRUPT
GOVERNOR
jl
I volunteer to curate the fat guy sleeping in the Lazy Boy exhibit. I’m an expert.
How do I contact them?
IronyAbounds
When did The Onion stop doing satire and start doing factual stories, albeit a few years early.
Jager
I remember it like yesterday, my middle class Mom, driving my friends and I to the swimming pool in her bright red ’53 Mercury convertible. She’d drop us off, do a little shopping, have coffee at her best friend Betty’s house and be right on time to pick us up at 4:30. Then back home to make a hearty dinner for dear old dad and me with enough time left over to pop some brownies in the oven!
Ecks
Reader A? Reader A? It was me!
I send Doug the linky. I demand credit!
There, much better :)