Whatever Your Job, Read "Work Won't Love You Back"

 

My first thought when reading Sarah Jaffe’s masterful explication of the modern workplace “Work Won’t Love You Back” was about me and my disabled roommate living in a dump and being poor, but when people hear we can be at school without work or loans(mostly because we traded years of our lives for benefits.) and people still told us we were “so lucky”. I often thought I’d write a similar book about what was wrong with work, looking from outside, and call it “So Lucky” but I didn’t have the chops, then.
In the intervening years, though a disabled author wrote a searing psychological thriller called that, which is not very relevant to this particular discussion, but a good read, nonetheless.

Jaffe’s hypothesis is that “labor of love” and “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day,” are myths that swept in to fill the gap as the modern workplace became more and more precarious.Similar memes, including the requirement of even low-wage workers and interns to act out their “passion” for their work. Which doesn’t sound that awful, except if the job goes wrong, the worker might be tempted to blame herself and/or rob energy from other parts of her life to dig up more “passion”.

Another important thing I got from this book is to reconsider my image of what “exploitation” is. While it still happens in factories, mines, and other jobs that leap to mind as being dirty or other ways back-breaking, Jaffe points out elements of exploitation in jobs in the arts, retail, and sports, among others, since the money clusters at the top.
The internship chapter brought back painful memories of when vocational rehabilitation told me I had to choose between an internship and their paying for my degree for another year. I have spent a long time thinking that I should have gone with internship over sheepskin, but the interns in this book ended up having to organize for better conditions, along with most of Jaffe's other interviews.

Smart Women, Foolish Senators...

 

I used to be impressed that I was in a class with Krysten Sinema. I found out later, of course, she was finishing up her third or fourth degree at the time, so it would be more distinctive in Arizona colleges to matriculate without encountering her. The class was Women’s Studies so there was a lot of Sharing(she was always way up to speed on the reading) so it was easy to feel close to the small class.
I remember that she said somebody at the statehouse, if memory serves, now gone after his own sexual harassment scandal, found out she was bisexual, said explicit things to her.I remember an almost boundless optimism and faith in the ability to change the system from within.(If your Bohemian Crip had been the GIF-saving type, she would find one for “We’re Not Worthy!” right now.)

But that’s what you get for hero-worshipping these people and being too attached to the hip, femme trappings on the outside. Years later, $8 million campaign later, she’s making promises that have the potential to hobble the future of the Democratic Party, if not the future of the planet.
Who is this for? I think the system rubbed off on Sinema more than her aggressive femininity has left a mark upon it.

Representation Affects A Trope on Young Sheldon...

 Since Sheldon wants to hear Stephen Hawking give a talk, the "Everything Makes Me Think Of What I Want" montage included a guy in a wheelchair on "The A-Team" and someone in a special scooter on Star Trek"

Can you Relate?

 

My friend Leonard likes to keep an eye on the stupidity on the internet, which does occasionally make me ask when he has time to do the organizing stuff that he does, but, to be fair, he usually stays out of things involving celebrities and cats.Some of the snark is not obvious to me either, as it involves things from his city, to which I’ve never been more than a tourist(remember being a tourist? Hard as it is for me, I miss the option) or finer points about socialism I don’t understand yet. This week, though, he found a guy that insisted that he only watched things where he could  absolutely relate to the struggle of the protagonist.Even for a white abled man, this still seems like a narrow view, even if , on the other hand, many of the current big movies make even live-action feel like animation. I do think more stories about people trying to save *their* world should be more available than big splasy spectacles….who knows what will surive the pandemic. Maybe being less of a superpower will affect art. Past a certain point, though I like a strong hero, I think we are depriving ourselves if we look to art to teach us morals...art can provide the chance to explore hidden sides of ourselves.

I tried to leave aside the fact that that would leave me little in mainstream culture but trying to “read” disability into being fat, or crooked teeth, or whatever tiny flaws are still permitted in the media-consolidated environment(there is a reason I’ve seen most of the “ Criminal Minds’ with the hacker in it, right?) I could always see “The Other Side of The Mountain” again, or one of the many fine FDR documentaries or docudramas,but of course, they don’t reflect my experience, either, just maybe coming a bit closer than some thing with a lovely protagonist, who’s really just such a klutz.

I have to get outside my experience or end up watching “Crip Camp” on a loop—it’s good, you should watch it once, though.