Usually George F. Will is the most readable writer in syndication. His work sings off the page and should be used in writing classes to illustrate how tight, powerful, and expressive a column can be. It's almost always deftly crafted to perfection, to the verge of being imperious and cheeky. Most often I disagree with his conclusions, but I never challenge his mastery of ideas and command of English.
That might be the reason I'm thrown by the injudicious piece he wrote about John Edward's post-election anti-poverty work.
Usually George F. Will is the most readable writer in syndication. His work sings off the page and should be used in writing classes to illustrate how tight, powerful, and expressive a column can be. It's almost always deftly crafted to perfection, to the verge of being imperious and cheeky. Most often I disagree with his conclusions, but I never challenge his mastery of ideas and command of English.
That might be the reason I'm thrown by the injudicious piece he wrote about John Edward's post-election anti-poverty work.
In his glib and wandering column you can't tell if his main point that Edwards is still attempting to have a political career, or that Edwards is wrong about poverty. Either way, his conlcusions about the rich and poor come through - malformed and unsupported by objective fact - with crystal clarity.
Edwards has a 1930s paradigm of poverty: Poor people are like everyone else, they just lack certain goods and services (housing, transportation, training, etc.) that government knows how to deliver. Hence he calls for a higher minimum wage and job-creation programs...But the 1930s paradigm of poverty was alive in 1968 when the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, created in response to urban riots, thought this would be an imaginative cure: government creation of 2 million jobs. This, at a moment when the unemployment rate was 3.7 percent.
This collection of bogus letters sends my mind calculating the inestimable number of things wrongly stated. It's such a compound clusterfugdge I hardly know where to start.
He goes on to say...
The 1930s paradigm has been refuted by four decades of experience. The new paradigm is of behavior-driven poverty that results from individuals' nonmaterial deficits. It results from a scarcity of certain habits and mores -- punctuality, hygiene, industriousness, deferral of gratification, etc. -- that are not developed in disorganized homes.
Let's deal with his imperceptive notion that poor people are not like everyone else. Do they have tails? Do they grow horns at night and run naked through the woods singing Cat Stevens songs?
Having worked with a range of job seekers, from those on welfare to scrubbed and polished executives, I might have a little to say about human behavior where vocation is involved.
Will assumes that "nonmaterial deficits" such as "punctuality, hygiene, industriousness..." and the time honored "deferral of gratification" create a "behavior-driven poverty," without assuming that those in the middle- and upper-middle-class exhibit those same behaviors. To quickly discount that aristocratic mindfart one only need to speak with human resource executives, staffing professionals, and college placement counselors - you'll find that these "nonmaterial deficits" not only exist in the mainstream, they are becoming a national issue.
"The combination of extended childhood, self-esteem, a recreational mindset and living with parents can make younger gens incredibly large management problems. But there are ways to deal with them." - Denver Bizjournal
I've literally worked with hundreds of middle-class job seekers who had terrific lapses in professionalism and anti-vocation attitudes. They didn't want to pay their dues or accept market-rate salaries. Too many movies and affluenza had raised their post-college expectations beyond business reality. They thought that sitting in four years of classes had somehow bought them a life time of high paid recreation that would not require them to wear a tie, show up to work on a set schedule, or restrict their "mental health" days to the weekends (how's that for "deferral of gratification"?).
"HR professionals reported that overall professionalism, written and verbal communication skills, analytical skills and business knowledge are lagging for workers entering the workforce. Overall professionalism, for example, was something that 59 percent of respondents cited as the area in which candidates most lacked competency."
Author Eric Chester furthers the point...
What they don't have is a strong work ethic, he says. Social attitudes have changed from "Work hard and get ahead" to "In order to win in life, you've got to get more than you put in." Get yourself a piece-of-cake job that doesn't require much effort for a paycheck.
The main difference between these folks and the welfare folks is not one solely of work ethics because there are hard working poor folks and lazy executives in this world. The glaring difference is that those in poverty didn't have parents or connections to subsidize their arrested adolescence. They don't have middle-class affiliations that would lead to new jobs and mask their personal imperfections.
Sure, you can argue that the culture of poverty has created a larger group of people who society is finding no use for: Those with poor language skills, inappropriate personal styles, and lack of intuitive action toward vocation. Still, you cannot credibly argue that the success of other individuals has nothing to do with where they started out in life.
Will - and those with his snobby opinion - forget that we are a nation with a president who failed at every business he owned, could not keep a job, was a "C" student, and got drunk until he became an adult at age 40. His reward for a life of "non-material deficiencies"? The top job in the world.
Similarly touched by the hands of money, our Vice President was spared a trip to Vietnam six times. Meanwhile, planes were returning home daily packed with underclass individuals who would never be the same again. Post traumatic stress has a way of shattering a family. Just like King George (Bush, not Will), Dick Cheney was a "C" student who got in the back door of an Ivy League college.
What both of these examples prove is that you can have the worst personal habits and still succeed in life, as long as you have money or friends with money. Unfortunately, those in generational poverty have not had such a luxury, thus their deficiencies lay naked on the alter of conservative columnists.
The core philosophy that Will attempts to discount as being outdated rests on the idea that jobs matter, and a thriving business community within range of those who desperately need work is vital. None of the job creation programs Will aims to discredit failed. Who can argue that policies in the 1960's had everything to do with promoting a black middle-class? The doors to post office jobs and colleges and fire departments swung open and a range of impoverished people rose out of the lower rung of society.
Today we're seeing the dual America people predicted years ago. There is an observable division between those blacks who got out into the burbs and those who were left behind in areas with eroding tax bases, disappearing industrial jobs, and decaying schools. We're seeing the split between whites and blacks who clearly have had two different economic paths through all of American history. And we're seeing the split between the pessimistic and misanthropic opinions like Will's and the positive, motivated, and pragmatic ideas of John Edwards.
Will's haughty disassociation from humanity is part of the problem. Edwards sunny opportunism could be part of the solution.