WHEN THE PUPPETEER IS ALSO THE VENTRILOQUIST

WHEN THE PUPPETEER IS ALSO THE VENTRILOQUIST

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 2006

Often I share with my email address book pieces of information or articles that I find relevant and stimulating. Eventually, they come to be articles on my blog.

Such was the case with Joseph Brown's column, "Rotten Oranges Show Our Work Ethic" (commentary section, The Tampa Tribune, Sunday, July 23, 2006). It dealt with the double standard of migrant workers being needed but yet not wanted, being employed often though illegal in order to remain competitive, and then the final ambiguity, not having workers to pick the oranges, in this instance, resulting in six million boxes of Florida oranges remaining on the trees to rot.

The same scenario is being repeated for tomato farmers in the midwest and apple growers in the northeast. Brown also alludes to the fact that shuckers of oysters in New Orleans can make $12 to $15 an hour but most Americans don’t want the work because it is too hard and too smelly. So, thus you have the conundrum: migrant workers, you can’t live without them and you don’t want to live with them.

Brown was simply stating something that is happening, but which obviously no two people see alike and thus the double bind of migrant workers especially illegals.

I have no problem with original opinions. I have a problem with opinions that sound too much like the promulgated doublespeak of our times presented by corpocracy from the government on down. It is as if a giant puppeteer is acting as ventriloquist to us as obliging dummies, and not for the first time.

I can remember well when seven CEOs addressed congress several years ago, and to a man, because they were all men, claimed cigarettes were absolutely no danger to our health. They said this with straight faces when they had ample research in their respective companies that indicated that smoking was, indeed, dangerous to health. It is one of the major reasons health insurance costs are so high, that along with excessive drinking and eating. Lifestyle is the culprit and lifestyle supports a booming economy so no one wants to in anyway derail it, good health notwithstanding.

My premise is that the things we are programmed to hide behind are not necessarily of our making, but invariably serve our puppeteers. I wrote in my memoir as a novel IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE (2003) that as a boy I was shocked when I learned of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I went into a deep depression, mainly because no one else did, no one else thought it was terrible, killing all those innocent civilians. But my parents told me that it was war and it saved Americans lives. For some reason that gave me little solace and still doesn't. I guess I've not changed too much.

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In reaction to several comments regarding Brown’s column, I wrote an update to a piece that has appeared on my blog (www.fisherofideas.com): “Walking Back the Dog and the Question of Immigration,” sharing further thoughts with columnist Joseph Brown.

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Joseph

I wrote that piece ("Walking Back the Dog and the Question of Immigration") because of the response I got to sharing your column with people on my email address book.

I've only about thirty sum names on the list now, but they are spread out all over the world. That list is extended, however, because one of the emailers has a network of some 300 or 400, which was apparently sent on to some of them.

I am always surprised when people of some education have so little tolerance for the less advantaged. Education and tolerance should be mutually supportive because they suggest understanding, and understanding should imply connection.

Call me naive, but some of my correspondents have insinuated that "you are a liar," or "uninformed," or worse, if you can imagine.

I got a sense of how brave you are to write as you do without rancor presenting the facts as you see them.

What I find uncanny is that these respondents bring up such things as "damage to social security," which most of them don't actually need, and other terrible things being done to our economy, such as hospitals and schools being forced to close because of these migrant nontax paying workers. These workers, like everyone else pays many other taxes hidden in sales tax, gasoline tax and so on. Nor is there any mention that their employers don't withhold the FICA tax on them, and then there is the matter of health insurance.

Many years ago when I was a young executive living in Louisville in a community called "Anchorage," which still retained the pastoral splendor of the antebellum days, I had an African American maid. I paid her $5 an hour more than others in this uppity neighborhood, but also for transportation to and from her home in the city some 30 miles on the other side of the county, which then amounted to an additional $5 a day.

Word got around that I was paying this young lady above the going rate "by an astronomical sum" with one gentleman, the chief engineer of a television station, threatening to take me to court, on what charge, I do not know. My neighbors were medical doctors, psychiatrists, even a COO of a Kentucky distillery, Brown Forman.

Of course, when it comes to migrant workers there is always the language thing, seeing no one is an American that doesn't speak American English. I know how these people feel because I encountered it living in Europe where Europeans, especially the French who resented that I did not learn their language.

So, I can see their point. But I come back with why have we not emphasized language skills in our schools? It astounds me when a tourist guide in Brugge, Belgium can speak four languages as he takes us on a boat trip through the canal streets of this picturesque medieval town, and I am limited to American English. How did I allow this to happen? I don't feel proud. I feel ashamed.

Your reference to shucking oysters at $10 an hour rankled some, as there are apparently tons of Americans that would jump at the chance of such a job difficult and smelly work that it is.

Then those who are contractors or builders or architects they also come in for their two-cents about how they are forced to hire these workers as carpenters and other tradesmen, taking more good jobs away from Americans. Again, this twisted reasoning amazes me. They resent that these migrants (illegals) become able craftsmen, which they are then forced to hire to remain competitive but at the jeopardy of their licenses. Enterprise is what drives America and it is a catching condition. I am not suggesting that we turn a blind eye, but we can't have it both ways, hire them and then blame them for our deceit when caught.

Again and again, I saw in their remarks the face of corpocracy, the face that I know so well, the face that has succeeded in programming moral ambiguity into them which has resulted in ambivalent moral authority across the board in our culture fed no doubt by greed and justified by "survival."

They are not bad people but they do hide behind the flag, God, the president, the military and of course American business, as they know it. Many of them came out of the same dirt as I did, who once were subjugated as my family was to the "corporate good" at all expense, but somehow they have forgotten. I have not.

Now, I know why I have no audience. I don't write hagiographies for corpocracy and I don't write empathetic soliloquies for the middle class to ease their conscience.

As I have attempted to point out in my writing, words are not a substitute for actions, and actions cannot be justified with words.

We have many gurus and talking heads that speak with moral clarity from the president to the secretary of state to such people as Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition to Mel Gibson and his docudrama of the blessed Jesus, but none of them with moral authority because their actions do not support their words.

Leadership is the consistent marriage of moral clarity with moral authority. One without the other is leaderless leadership.

Time magazine (July 31, 2006) has a featured article on Reed's blinding ambition and being in bed with the corrupt Abramoff, Safavian and Ney, and then there is Gibson who featured a film of Jesus in Aramaic then confesses he's a drunk and then while in custody by the police reveals his strong anti-Semitic sentiments.

Executive Excellence, a leadership journal, that has featured my writing for years and years, is going to come out with an article of mine on Andrew Jackson. I liked Jackson's muscular leadership because his moral authority backed up his moral clarity.

That doesn't mean Jackson was a perfect leader. He wasn't. It doesn't mean that everything he did was in the best interest of the country. It wasn't. It certainly wasn't when he removed the Indians from their homelands in the "Trail of Tears."

Jackson, however, fought corpocracy tooth and nail, and he was consistent, and those are my reasons for celebrating him. In "Walking Back the Dog," I see always the corporate face, and it appears that I, alone, do.

But there you have it. I enjoy the liberty to express this observation if no one else subscribes to it, and in that I am lucky to be an American.

One of the amazing freedoms I have always enjoyed is that I understand the wisdom of insecurity. I don't fear anyone taking anything from me because everything I have has little to do with what and who I am. Fear is the corporate game, and when what you are is determined by what you have it will always own you.

Be always well and keep up your consistently good work,

Jim