As IF Times

D.C. marchers rally for jobs and justice – The Washington Post.

When Reverend Al gets into the fray, it generally confirms that whatever the cause he’s backing, it’s probably hysterical hyperbole.  Reverend Al, for those who are  unfamiliar with his career, sees racism in the most mundane things.  White lines on blacktop would arouse his keen sense of racial injustice if only he could convince anyone of its merit.   His affected indignation at anything involving perceived racial injustice to blacks is legendary and by now, he is essentially a comical caricature of himself, ironically taken seriously only by those in the white liberal media.  The media perpetuates Reverend Al’s influence by interviewing him whenever any issue involving blacks pops up.  As if Reverend Al is THE spokesman for a nation of 80 million blacks.  Imagine if something contentious was occurring with a white person and Charlie Sheen’s opinion was sought to get the white perspective.

We know he caters to a constituency of idiots or at least to those of very modest intelligence because of the way he frames his messages.  Rather than making articulate speeches, he prefers the classic nursery rhyme technique to drive home his compelling intellectual arguments.

Borrowing a page from the famous Johnnie Cochran of O.J. Simpson legal team fame, Reverend Al has taken the infamous ” if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit” tactic and adopted it as his own.  As the linked article details, his present campaign is ” if you don’t get jobs bill done in suite, we will get done in street”, in reference to both the recently nixed Obama jobs plan and the protests in the streets of New York.  It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but at least a few words rhyme, so for Reverend Al, it’s considered witty repartee.  He follows this with “this is not about Obama, it’s about my mama!”.  Pure gold.   It’s not exactly “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks”.  But this technique gets the job done.  His constituency can more easily remember his position if it can be repeated in rhyme than if it were articulated more prosaically.

It’s unclear to me why his followers wouldn’t be insulted by his condescending delivery, it’s as if he were addressing pre-adolescents.

Or maybe he’s just a master entertainer.

That would make sense since his entire shtick is part vaudeville, part church revival and part P.T. Barnum.  Like many of his other hypocritical colleagues in the liberal bleat-sphere, railing against poverty and oppression has, surprise, surprise,  made Reverend Al rich and famous.  This is like Al Gore bleating of global warming and living in a house the size of a community center or of  Michael Moore condemning capitalism while making millions off his delusional movies.

In the spirit of Reverend Al however, we’ve come up with some other slogans which are free to be used by any who may find them appropriate:

Give me a job, or I join a mob!

Given some time, what’s yours will be mine!

Give us da cash, or we gonna bash!

We want rights, we want justice, if we don’t get it, come and bust us!

And of course the most genuine chant:

Stop all greed, enough is enough, give us more money, give us more stuff!

link Peter Thiel: Were in a Bubble and Its Not the Internet. Its Higher Education. | TechCrunch.

At this time when we are witnessing “Occupy Wall Street” protests at various cities in the U.S., this is a topic worth exploring.  The topic is education.

There is a glaring incongruence between what the protesters are bleating about, ie: greed, corporate dominance, yada yada yada and the prevailing general wisdom about getting a higher education.  Virtually no one will argue that a “good” education is the foundation of success.  By success, that is implied to mean financial success,  an ability to provide for yourself and your future family.  For this path to financial success, people are increasingly asked to pay almost a lifetime’s ransom in order to participate.   For many people, this payment is achieved either by parental or family help or by guaranteed student loans.  In many cultures, outside of the Jersey Shore, an educated person is held in very high esteem.

It comes as a great shock to many graduates therefore, that their acquired skill sets are greeted with the sounds of crickets rather than boisterous swooning when applying for jobs in the real world.  It’s as if they were victims of the biggest con of their lives.  And in a real sense, they were. The hard hit of reality is painful for many.  What happened to the pot of gold promised at the end of the education rainbow?

The fact that this experience has become more and more of a reality for many will likely be the subject of another article, but the salient point of this piece is that if the “Wall Street” protesters actually represent more than the small handful of perma-discontents that they are, then what is the point of getting an expensive education? If there is no benefit to bettering your circumstances by excelling in some field in order to get a high paying job, why bother going  to school?  The whole premise is that by applying yourself in school, one can wind up with a sharpened skill set that will be sought after in the real world.

This principle extends to all aspects of culture.  Why does someone like Derek Jeter get paid millions of dollars for swinging at a baseball?   Why are genetic freaks in the NBA paid buckets of money just because they can drop balls into hoops?  Why do people pay hundreds of dollars to watch Justin Bieber sing for an hour or two?  Ok, that may have been a bad example.

The answer of course is that in the real world, there will always be those that outperform others in any given endeavour.   Society pays for excellence.  That’s the way it is.  While there may only be a few among us that have the natural physical gifts that allow them to play pro ball, most people are able to hone whatever intellectual skills they have by getting educated.  Of course, attending school and getting a degree in basket weaving or doing a PhD on the sex life of ants won’t necessarily propel you past someone with greater drive or greater street sense or greater connections.  Entitlement only exists in the artificial world created by those with the luxury of believing it.

While most are certainly better off by going to school than by not going to school, the cost/benefits of paying over $100,000 to get a 4 year degree must be weighed against the utility of that degree.  As the linked article suggests, the bubble of college costs may be about to burst.  Not all degrees are created equal but again, this may be a topic for another article.

Nevertheless,  according to the misguided cretins populating the recent protests, this will all be irrelevant,  since to them, the whole notion of success is tied directly to the notion of greed.  It’s only a matter of time before they start protesting schools as incubators of greed.   Once they make that connection, colleges all over will be the venue for protesters as well.  The only problem will be that they’ll have to hire someone articulate enough to make signs.