CSotD: Misdirection
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It's Labor Day here in the US, and Bill Day didn't get the memo about hot dog jokes, so inadvertantly did an editorial cartoon on the actual topic of the labor situation in the US.
It's always been possible to demonize labor, and times when it was easier than others: Blowing off bombs on Wall Street was attention-getting but didn't necessarily produce a lot of public sympathy, particularly since nobody claimed credit. It was simply attributed to bolsheviks or anarchists or someone, as had been the Haymarket riots several decades earlier.
But it was hard to defend the anti-strike violence in the miners camps, where women and children died alongside the working men. The Ludlow shootings having occurred between Haymarket and the Wall Street bombing, all I can say is that it must have been a fascinating time to be alive.
What seems clear, from this distance, is that labor and management were seen as two different things, opposed to each other, and the conflicts between labor and government in the 30s and 40s were genuine conflicts. Even into the 60s, if one union struck, other unions honored their picket lines, and a factory could be quickly brought, if not to its knees, at least the the negotiating table.
Today, most workers don't seem to think of themselves as "labor." Not sure why.
Well, I remember when the paper didn't publish on Labor Day, but, then, I remember when the paper didn't publish on the other holidays, either.
I'm not sure you can pass it off as disrespect for labor so much as disrespect for laborers.
Speaking of respect, disrespect and misdirected anger
Clay Jones suggests that those who get in a froth over Calvin (Colin, ed.) Kaepernick's exercise of First Amendment freedoms might better spare a little outrage for the rape case in which Brock Turner served only three months for sexually assaulting a girl who had passed out from alcohol.
I'm going to suggest that, in both cases, there's a lot of misdirection going on.
The Kaepernick stuff we have come to expect: We salute freedom until someone actually uses it in a way we don't like. We've been through this with flag-burning, we went through it with sit-ins.
The Brock Turner thing is more complex.
Start here: We might not be aware of the number of police shootings going on if social media were not giving them prominence. It's not that the MSM "refuses to cover them" but it simply isn't as adept at stringing together individual incidents and pointing out that sort of trend.
And that's a good thing, because what Kaepernick and others are protesting is something that should not be happening.
Similarly, there have always been alcohol-fueled sexual assaults, but it is the rise of social media that has created an awareness of "rape culture" on campuses.
And that's a good thing, too.
Social media shouldn't take all the credit: Young black men have for generations been warned about rogue police, and young college women have long been counseled to be cautious.
But it's hard — make that "impossible" — to ignore the way social media has focused attention on those issues and demanded solutions.
The bothersome point in the Brock Turner case, for me, is that it shouldn't be about Brock Turner.
It should be about the justice system and, in that specific case, about that specific judge. And I could quickly look up the judge's name but I won't because the fact that Turner's name, rather than his, springs to mind is the problem.
The latest news out of the case is that protesters, some of them armed, have surrounded the Turner house. The discussion in the comments at Jezebel are interesting, because there is a sense that, much as people hate the crime and wish he had been given appropriate punishment, many of them seem aware that a lynch mob is not the ideal answer.
Singling out the case is helpful, because the issues are very clear: There isn't the gray area of two people being drunk together and who said what and how they ended up in bed.
In this alcohol/party area of sexual assault, you couldn't ask for a clearer example of lack of consent by the victim and clarity of purpose by the perpetrator.
But making it about Brock, putting him on the end of the mob's rope, suggests it was an anamoly, when the valuable argument is that it isn't that unusual, that this stuff happens way too often.
It's not about him. It's not even about her. It's about the judge, it's about the system.
There is an old story about a group of people picnicking by a river when they see a small child being swept downstream. A man tears off his clothes, leaps in an rescues the child. Then, as he's catching his breath, another sweeps by and he leaps back into the river.
But when yet another sweeps by, instead of jumping into the water, he begins running up the river bank. "You rescue that one," he shouts to his friends. "I'm going to go find out who's throwing them in."
Go thou and do likewise.
Perfect moments
Another thread in today's comics has been that it's finally time to wrap up the "back to school" gags, which have gone on for two weeks or more. But, despite the indistinctness of the actual start of school where people live, Labor Day is pretty much it.
Frazz is being generous: Some kids have been back in school for two weeks, some probably more. What's never mentioned at this time of year is that some of them will be out for Memorial Day, others will be three weeks into June.
In fact, I remember a kerfuffle when I lived in Colorado, when the school year began just before Labor Day and ended just after Memorial Day, and parents accused Education of cooperating with Tourism to keep everyone in state for both holidays.
In any case, summer has ended and Red and Rover introduce a moment of zen.
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