Wednesday, August 31, 2011

A Fistful of Dollars

Yes, but [bullying is] even less physical in the workplace. The intermittent slap on the back of the head outside shop class is unheard of in the office.

-Prof Coldheart
Hey, you know, I'm not trying to bully yinz, but since thisahere blog is pretty whitedudey in the comments, I am going to bring some executive realness down on ya.  The above statement is just not fucking true.  In the words of Abby Adams, I desire that you would remember the ladies.  And the Gaze and the Minorities and the world of blue-collar work not to mention the fact that even the persistent threat of layoffs and pink slips in your comfy whitedude office jobs is a kind of physical threat since the reduction of means is the removal of livelihood is the precariousness of food and shelter.  But mostly I just want to remind you that while a prominent member of the global elite may not have actually raped your mouth recently and then gotten away with it because you, like all human creatures, are a terrible and irredeemable liar . . . well, you can see where I'm going here.

74 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, IOZ. The boys will not be pleased.

Paul Alexander said...

I've never met a man or woman who wasn't lying when they told me they didn't want to have sex with me. Of course, they go around telling everyone (human resources, the police, etc.) it was because I'm the boss, but I could see in their eyes how much they loved it. Wait, maybe I loved what I saw in their eyes.

Farwent said...

No, it's a good point, and one that occurred to this privileged white guy while commenting on the last post. I'm just still not sure whether the adult world really is built on bullying (in the same sense that kids are bullied) or whether bullying is just a useful tactic for getting what you want, and wouldn't still be if the state were magically dismantled.

I mean: If you don't feel bullied, are you being bullied? The "You're so acclimated to it, you don't even realize it's happening!" argument only goes so far. Can you be oppressed without being bullied? I kinda think so.

Professor Coldheart said...

since thisahere blog is pretty whitedudey in the comments

And in the management, brother!

I'm not really vested in the fine distinction between physical and psychological bullying, so I'll concede my privileged oversight. I stand by my earlier aside, though, that in my experience it's the well-educated white dudes who quietly suffer through bureaucratic abuse rather than hollering and swinging their purse. Though this might be more of a "Yes, And" than a "No, But."

Anyway.

Mr.Fundamental said...

I've had an arm around the back, hand on the shoulder for "re-assurance" here. . .as in: Big Boss felt he needed to be "re-assured" that I was listening and that I needed to be "re-assured" that I was paying attention to him. FUCKING PSYCHOPATH

Anonymous said...

For "hollering and swinging your purse" read: asks dudes kindly not to abuse and rape her. But, yeah. Uppity bitchez 4 tha win.

gamefaced said...

work in a warehouse chock full o rednecks, tis a turrible jungle.

President Gas said...

True.

Also, the anti-bullying stuff will play out as coded racist policy in many places. It will be another means of asserting the bogus reverse-racism argument.

Anonymous said...

Also, for "white dude suffering in quiet desperation," read: goes on shooting rampage 'cos darkies stole his job/women won't put out.

David Macharelli said...

Can you be oppressed without being bullied? I kinda think so.

Isn't oppression just institutional bullying?

David Macharelli said...

As for how it plays out, it will be used to ruin people who lack the connections to make the charge go away, rendering them unemployable non-people. You know, the way most laws work.

Farwent said...

@David: I dunno. I think there are certain connotations that go along with the word "bullying" -- that, more than anything else, it's active, rather than an automatic function of an organization. And that it's personal and targeted, rather than merely a consequence of being somewhere. Not that the twain never shall meet, but to stretch the accepted definition seems to weaken the term we use for a specific brand of oppression.

Paul Alexander said...

"Isn't oppression just institutional bullying?"

Bingo!

The State is an alien form having nothing to do with human characteristics. Of course if it's done away with ALL bullying goes away.

FlyingRodent said...

I've seen plenty of bullying of the bitching/name-calling/nasty prank variety in offices. I've also seen plenty of it in the constant harrassment/physical intimidation/putting shit in your lunch etc. type in boozers and on building sites. My old man has some fairly hair-raising stories about working in garages as a youngster, too.

So, yeah, bullying in the workplace. It's a slyer version of the playground form, no question.

mp said...

boss: it isn't required, exactly.

me: so it isn't required?

boss: no, but i can't give you that raise and evaluation if you don't do it.

Jack Crow said...

mp,

We went to seminars to learn how to speak that way. Companies pay a lot of money to make sure middle and upper management placeholders know how to talk with threat but without an vocalization of violence.

Peter Ward said...

A clothing store here in this fair city--Scoop, I believe--locked its warehouse workers in the basement overnight, en lieu of of renting hotel rooms, when they were setting up a new store location. So, yeah, examples of physical abuse of workers, to which us white boys are aloof, abound. Though direct physical violence as a putative measure has declined since the pioneering days of union-crushing.

On the other hand, slack in anti-union mercenary violence is made up for by the police, e.g. such as Mayor Nutter's recent ghetto clampdown (ostensibly in response to "flash mobs" terrorizing Downtown); routine stop and search or the frequent summary executions, typically ignored, as recently took place in London--a fact liberal do-gooder saviors of Iran and Libya really should have their eyes opened too (there's heaps of evidence in video form on youtube for those who care to look).

RedPhillip said...

@Anonymous, 3:20pm

"Uppity bitchez 4 tha win."

Uppity bitchez of all genders.

Happy Jack said...

When it's no longer economical for you to make refrigerators, they'll outsource your job. Sure, they'll retrain you by sending you to barber college. Next thing you know, they'll notice how much cheaper wages, and haircuts, are without all of that schooling. Not to worry, pity charity is just around the corner.

For some people, that water never stops swirling.

George Jones said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

"while a prominent member of the global elite may not have actually raped your mouth recently and then gotten away with it because you, like all human creatures, are a terrible and irredeemable liar . . . "

speak for yourself, i was just orally raped by some wall street types just last week...

Myles said...

And the Gaze and the Minorities and the world of blue-collar work

I think it's perhaps an apposite time to point out that in most high schools, the people doing the bullying are very often precisely the presumptive "blue-collar" types you speak of.

The high-school football player who is the son of a lawyer is much less likely to bully or otherwise oppress other members of the school community.

Jack Crow said...

You jest, Myles? Or are you the grown up version of the lawyer's footballer son?

Myles said...

than the high-school football player who isn't*

The veneration of the heartland American archetype is really stupid.

mp said...

the veneration of lawyers and their offspring isn't bright.

Jack Crow said...

Who wrote anything about the heartland, Myles?

You can't imagine the daughters and sons of swarthy Medi immigrants to clustered and cramped New England cities being working class?

Myles said...

the veneration of lawyers and their offspring isn't bright.

Nobody venerates lawyers, but plenty of people venerate and valorize, illogically and unreasonably it seems to me, the Norman Rockwell American. Even IOZ does it.

You can't imagine the daughters and sons of swarthy Medi immigrants to clustered and cramped New England cities being working class?

I don't see how the bullying situation is any better.

Look: bullying isn't some intrinsic where some people are intrinsically bullies. Bullying is a kind of transmogrified parochialism. Some environments are more conducive to parochialism than others; notice, for example, that there is barely any bullying in international schools or schools like Fieldston.

Jack Crow said...

Heh. I never went to Exeter. But, I dated a girl whose parents bought her four years of prep for Yale, there. Please, please don't try to sell the "international schools" are bully free zones shit, Myles. It may be subtler, more ruling class refined, and more likely to be concealed as honored tradition, but prep schools and international legacy mills are literally training academies for well mannered bullies.

Heh.

Your own legacy is showing.

Myles said...

Heh. I never went to Exeter.

For a good prep school, Exeter is by world standards pretty parochial. It's actually more insular than Eton or Harrow.

This is not to mention that the culture at Exeter is utterly vicious, and in a particularly insular manner. Try Groton or Cate at least.

Myles said...

And I think it's a pretty good bet that nobody has ever been actively bullied in say, the American School of London or Leysin American or something. It's a proposition I would be willing to bet money on.

Jack Crow said...

Yeah, that's it, Myles. People with good breeding and legacy money don't seem tin eared in their need to remind the capite censi that, removed from their petty little lives, the people who count just don't spoil their delicate days and nights with the finer pleasures of hieratic cruelty towards every gradation and rank of inferiors.

IOZ said...

I UNDERSTAND AT ETON AND HARROW THEY CALL IT SNOGGING.

Anonymous said...

No, IOZ, fagging.

Karl Franz Ochstradt said...

I think it's perhaps an apposite time to point out that in most high schools, the people doing the bullying are very often precisely the presumptive "blue-collar" types you speak of.

Must be a lot different where you grew up than where I grew up. The condescension and human manipulation exercises of the country clubbing kids of whiteycollar families sure know how to be abusive toward anyone they don't like, including blue collar kids and anyone who doesn't seem to be Square Joe/Jane-ing it straight down the middle of the road.

That's how it was where I went to school. Blue collar kids were not the most dangerous by any means, unless you merely tally verbal taunts. If verbal taunts are "bullying," I say it's time to eat the cyanide. Words have no more power than what you as hearer or reader give them.

Anonymous said...

The Motorcycle Boy Reigns

Freddie said...

As I get older I learn, it's like the turtles, man, it's fucking coercion all the way down.

Myles said...

Yeah, that's it, Myles. People with good breeding and legacy money don't seem tin eared in their need to remind the capite censi that, removed from their petty little lives, the people who count just don't spoil their delicate days and nights with the finer pleasures of hieratic cruelty towards every gradation and rank of inferiors.

That can easily mean the difference between an absolutely miserable and reasonably tolerable time in high school. Getting kicked in the shins by some dimwit kid in the locker room is pretty different from not getting so kicked in the shins. Physical violence is violence.

And the Gaze and the Minorities and the world of blue-collar work

It's apposite to remember that the KKK was predominantly proletarian in its demographics, and that the greatest amount of gay-bashing in postwar society came precisely from the working classes.

I UNDERSTAND AT ETON AND HARROW THEY CALL IT SNOGGING.

British boarding schools have fairly specific pathologies. It's not a problem shared by international schools overseas, which are models of comity.

Myles said...

Must be a lot different where you grew up than where I grew up.

Depends on the degree of insularity and parochialism, I guess. The local rich in Cleveland or wherever is going to be like, I mean, whatever. Some of the worst kids I've ever known are parochial rich assholes from Orange County.

Jack Crow said...

I got mouthy with this kid who was bigger than me when we were eleven or twelve years old, Myles. He kicked my ass, after school. Later that year, through a combination of underhanded fighting and sheer luck, I kicked his ass back.

We became fast friends for the next decade.

The physical pain was momentary.

It was nothing like the torment experienced by the children who were relentlessly tormented by the normalized, well bred, socialized sons of lawyers and doctors, or what my cousins (who grew up in the Andover Projects, and who endured routine hazing and cruelty from the Andover kids who slummed it by the Stadium) experienced.

Anyway, it's fun to interact with a Eques who knows he is one, relishes it, prides himself on his legacy and breeding, and doesn't have any more cultivated compunctions against talking down to the head count and the help...

weaver said...

It's apposite to remember that the KKK was predominantly proletarian in its demographics

Given that the KKK was predominantly petit-bourgeois in its demographics, remembering the above would be an impressive intellectual feat.

Jack Crow said...

weaver,

You are not supposed to spoil the fun. Villagers with the bad fortune not to be born to lawyers who can ship them off to Groton are the persecutors of wealthy, civilized white boys and, also, barbarians at the gates.

Anonymous said...

Before any of you post another comment, take a deep breath and ask yourself what Ambrose Bierce would make of the host's posts and the comments thereon.

It is an interesting question - whether or not he would "get it" as an updated version of his shticks, or simply be appalled at what passes for humor among the intelligent these days.

Jack Crow said...

Ooh..

...that's easy:

Misericorde: n. A dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by the foot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.

~ Ambrose Bierce

Myles said...

Given that the KKK was predominantly petit-bourgeois in its demographics

Makes one recall this comment: "when the KKK marches, look at their shoes." The foundational core of most far-right movements have generally been petit-bourgeois (take Poujade), but I think KKK was an exception.

tormented by the normalized, well bred, socialized sons of lawyers and doctors

You sound like someone who has never been on the receiving end of bullying and torment by local businessmen's sons.

The whole idea of modern American populism is absurd: agitation by eggheads on behalf of the people who used to kick them in the shins back in high school locker rooms, in the irrational belief that what they are doing is the precise opposite.

Anonymous said...

So, Jack@11:35 ... you're saying AB would "get it"?

Happy Jack said...

Anyone with good breeding would join the White Citizens' Council.

Meritocracy never sleeps.

weaver said...

I think KKK was an exception.

Well, thinkin's fine. Or you could, y'know, look it up.

Cüneyt said...

Well, McNamara was working class that jumped into the intellectual elite. Shall we blame his education or his ruffian heritage? WHAT A DILEMMA

Anonymous said...

Since Myles enjoys his extended and none too convincing trollspree, I would like him to define the gaze to which Msr. is referring, as he's repeated it at least twice.

Enron said...

All Fry ever wanted was his anchovies back.

demize! said...

Just an fyi. There are "white" working class folks. And sometimes eye iz scurd.

Myles said...

Just an fyi. There are "white" working class folks.

And?

demize! said...

And, I was not referring to you. And sometimes I prefer to post in non sequitur. And this time I'll make an exception. If you read the comments and not be so absorbed in your own persona than you would have noticed that the assumption I was addressing was espoused on several posts.

Myles said...

If you read the comments and not be so absorbed in your own persona than you would have noticed that the assumption I was addressing was espoused on several posts.

Non comprendre. I really don't see what race has got to do with this at all. I'm genuinely confused. It's not like white people are any more or less likely to be bullies.

almostinfamous said...

Enron FTW

IOZ said...

I once gave a Lithuanian a blowjob in a bathroom at St. Stephen's in Rome. I am pretty sure it wasn't Mylez, though.

Abonilox said...

Bullying is part of corporate culture. White collar executive fuckers working the rumor mill, slandering defenseless co-workers, and so on. It's part of the "game" that gives these fuckers meaning to their miserable lives. Getting beaten up in high school or middle school, or suffering verbal taunts and so on... well, that shit can be overcome. The playground is brutal, but you know what you're up against. Politics is bullying as fine art. It is sanctioned and supported. It is done by stealth and rewarded with bonuses. Schools are designed to train people to be weak, to take the abuse they get and go back for more. The redneck fucks that pushed this short geeky kid around thirty-some years ago did a hell of a lot less damage than their corporate equivalent decades later...

Myles said...

Getting beaten up in high school or middle school, or suffering verbal taunts and so on... well, that shit can be overcome.

Not it can't. The psychological damage can be permanent.

Getting constantly kicked in the shins and shoved in lockers by redneck fucks has an effect on you.

This is not any less excusable than any other kind of bullying, which I am so unsympathetic the whole "oh-look-at-the-helpless-redneck-fuck" stuff. They were the bullies. Getting a taste of their own medicine doesn't seem completely unjustified to me.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Coercion said...

I was bullied at the School of the Americas.

gamefaced said...

The psychological damage can be permanent.

meh. nothing is permanent.

IOZ said...

YOU MEAN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY COOPERATION, don't you? BULLY!

Anonymous said...

hey myles, while a concerted effort is made to educate away a rich kid's urge to physical violence (unless of course you're talking about violence against women, which you are not talking about), no such effort is made to subdue the budding asshole's urge to cruelty. this is significant, and completely lost on you.

anyway, rich kids do rape a lot of women, and so do football playing dudes. maybe that's not "bullying" per se, but it would seem to discount, or at least outweigh, your wholly invented anecdote about the lawyer's son who plays sports and never bothered no one.

Myles said...

anyway, rich kids do rape a lot of women, and so do football playing dudes. maybe that's not "bullying" per se, but it would seem to discount, or at least outweigh, your wholly invented anecdote about the lawyer's son who plays sports and never bothered no one.

My point is that the whole emotive bullshit thing about Heartland American (TM) is just retarded, because the Heartland American (TM) redneck fucks were very often the bullies. They weren't the bullied; they were the bullies. No rich kid ever shoved a redneck fuck into a locker.

That point stands.

gamefaced said...

never say ever.

Paul Alexander said...

It's empirical! Myles is right, I can't find any instances of rich-on-redneck bullying anywhere in the historical record. Well, there goes my whole theory. Fuck the Heartland. I think that should probably the new Ground Zero in the War on Terror.

Brian M said...

Drone strikes on Iowa! That tractor driver's son was mean to me!

In my high school, at least, it was the rich fucks who did the bullying, not the rednecks or poor kids. What is your point, Myles? Nobody here worships any mythical "Heartland" anyway.

demize! said...

Yeah furreal. I'm from noo yawk. To me the heartland is noo jersey.

demize! said...

We should also discuss the nexus between, and distinction if any of violence and humiliation.

gamefaced said...

what is, pride?

davidly said...

If there's one thing I hate about redneck fucks, it's how they never ever get bullied by the richies.

Paul Alexander said...

HAHAHAHA!!! It's just not right!

Myles said...

Nobody here worships any mythical "Heartland" anyway.

How do you think IOZ came up with his labour theory of value schtick?

Anonymous said...

"No rich kid ever shoved a redneck fuck into a locker."

No, they just use 'em as cannon fodder for their little landgrabs. No biggie.

Anonymous said...

"redneck fucks were very often the bullies. They weren't the bullied; they were the bullies. No rich kid ever shoved a redneck fuck into a locker."

you think you're taking a brave stand, but you're actually advancing the same normative classist bullshit they teach in all expensive schools. that's why you've been so roundly mocked: not because the commentariat believes in the "myth" of poor people who don't live in cities and aren't out to get you, but because your me-against-the-world pose couldn't be sillier given that you're advocating a belief that is culturally DOMINANT!

also, you still won't talk about women, and the pervasive culture of violent misogyny among "rich kids". you actually responded to the prompt by insulting poor people. old habits?