Weekend Open Thread: Science Fiction Writer David Gerrold Goes Medieval on Minimum Wage Opponents

Tribbles

Had young David Gerrold been a more mature writer back in the late 60s, he would have just let the little beasties eat Shatner.

This happened in the land of Facebook:

Yes, I did unfriend you — why? You insulted the burger flippers and the counter clerks, as if your Big Mac, Coke, and fries, somehow makes you superior to thepeople who worked hard to make sure that your lunch was prepared in a clean environment and served to you promptly. If it weren’t for them, you’d have had to make your own fucking sandwich.

Guess what, the minimum wage is SUPPOSED to be a living wage. Anyone who works 40 hours a week should be able to provide a good home for themselves and their family.

You know what? You think being able to write a pivot table in Excel is so important? It isn’t. Not really. The human race survived for thousands of years without Excel. We built an industrial world without even electricity. And with electricity, we created global communications — without Excel. Excel is nice. It’s a useful tool — but it’s not the measure of intelligence or humanity.

You know what’s more important? Being able to grow a crop and bring it to market. Without that skill, we all starve. You know what else is important? Good plumbing. Without clean water, we die of cholera and typhus. You know what else is important? People in service industries — because they make it possible for you to have a clean room in the hotel, a meal served to you in a restaurant, a ride to the airport, and all the other thousands of little chores you take for granted.

They are not your flunkies, they are not your slaves, they are not your servants — they are your partners in a technological civilization, they make it possible for you to live inside your pampered white bubble, isolated from the daily chores of existence. That you — you flaming asshole — think you have the right to be abusive to any other human being for any reason at all — that reveals more about the failure of your parents to teach you social skills and your own lack of compassion for your fellow human beings than it says about anything else that falls out of your mouth as “opinion.”

Yes, I’m angry. Because I knew some of the men and women who were beaten in the thirties and forties by corporate goons so you could have a forty-hour work week, a weekend, access to public education, social security, and other benefits hard won by the labor movement.

The only thing you are required to say to that burger flipper or that counter clerk is simply, “Thanks!” And mean it!

Telling them that you disapprove of their life choices is not an item on the McMenu. And if it were — you couldn’t afford it.

So, yeah — you’re an asshole and I defriended you.

Harsh — but a good kind of harsh!

This is your Weekend Open Thread.  Talk about that, or whatever else you’d like, within reasonable bounds of decorum and discretion — or go beyond them if you’re a famous writer like David Gerrold!


About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)