In my Indiana-North Carolina postmortem, I noted my hatred for the term “working class” because “it implies that those putting in 60 hours a week at high paying jobs don’t work.”
Recently promoted full professor Dan Drezner, who is about to enjoy three months off from work (“if you don’t count editing one book, writing part of another book, prepping two grant proposals, drafting two additional articles I’ve committed to writing, and refereeing a few articles and book manuscripts”) is more blunt, calling Hillary Clinton’s linkage of “hard-working Americans” to those “who had not completed college” “complete and utter horses**t.”
He’s reminded of a scene from “Airplane” but, not being a full professor at a fancy pants elite Yankee school, I’m more in mind of an Aaron Tippin song that was popular when I was in grad school. The chorus:
Well, there ain’t no shame in a job well done
From driving a nail to driving a truck
As a matter of fact, I’d like to set things straight
A few more people should be pullin’ their weight
If you want a cram course in reality
You get yourself a working man’s PH.D.
It was funny on a whole lot of levels, not least of which that he was making a whole lot more money for singing that song than any of my professors made in their career.
