When I opened to Page A-9 of The New York Times yesterday morning, I paused in mid-jog to penetratingly reflect in a mirror on the century-long admiration that sensible Americans have held toward labor unions.
Colorful labor leaders were the political heroes, the main social fabric of my parents’ generation. They taught a land weighted down with unschooled immigrants the purely American values of moderation, sensitivity and abiding concern for the welfare of others, especially the teeth-gritting poor.
Not an Umpire in Sight
Unions taught skeptical Americans the value of an honorable work stoppage, that standing for a moral principle that would benefit the many trumped the selfishness of continuing to work merely for one’s own advantage.
Unions rescued helpless, uneducated children from 12-hour workdays. By forming coalitions and strategizing, especially in blue collar-intensive states, unions were able to convert grimy, perilous workplaces into shiny safety zones, all while winning undreamed of pay raises for many simple-minded workmen.
Admittedly, strongarming tactics crept into a disturbing number of workplaces. This caused hypersensitive employees to develop goosebumps, and when they complained, they were told that in the world of realpolitik, tradeoffs — say, in exchange for nearly executive-level pay scales — were unavoidable.
Sudden Death Overtime
I remember a late July night in 1976 when my wife and I were at a casino in Las Vegas. News of the celebrity murder of the year sizzled through the crowd at Caesar’s Palace the same way people must have felt a few years earlier when they shockingly learned that first Dr. King, then two months later Bobby Kennedy, had been shot to death.
Chillbumps inflated my shirt when we heard that Jimmy Hoffa, the king of the Teamsters Union, had died prematurely when he accidentally intercepted several bullets. Even here, however, the traditional sensitivity of union leaders and their slightly more coarse underlings sprang to the fore.
Joining Underground Network
At Mr. Hoffa’s non-televised de-ritualized interment in a New York football stadium — where union leaders ordered the deceased to be entombed in cement rather than a flimsy coffin in deference to the brutality of East Coast weather —the gentleman, as a sop to his family, was buried in the home team’s end zone. All surviving Hoffas, known to be Giants’ fans, were said to be grateful. Being sensitive at a time of sudden death is a union hallmark.
Perhaps the grandest gift that labor unions have presented to American culture has been unrestrained rhetorical moderation in all undertakings.
In recent decades, this beautiful talent for intellectual discipline most commonly has manifested itself in the scrupulously measured public contract negotiations and soft-shoe legislative advocacy.
This restraint is practiced by such diverse unions as the National Education Assn., entertainment writers in Hollywood and two other painfully oppressed groups of lovely ladies, the California Nurses Assn., and the National Nurses Organizing Committee, many of whom are said to be former internal beauty queens.
Girls, It Is Time to Think
These hard-working girls probably denied their children a new set of toggings this winter in order to pay for yesterday’s possibly $60,000 full-page advertisement in The New York Times. In religious circles, this is known as making a bloody sacrifice for the betterment of womankind.
Following their marketing consultant’s advice, the union girls authorized a masterfully moderate message:
The full-pager opened with the blowup of a recent news story stripped across the top to attract the attention of less complicated readers:
“Cheney Treated in Hospital For an Irregular Heartbeat.”
Try the Peoria Telephone Directory
The guileless girls were advised to peg the ad to a random citizen. Sure enough, they dug into dusty newspaper archives and uncovered a report on a man from Wyoming. Who could be more random?
In three lines of slightly larger bold type just beneath the cut-out story, the lightweight ladies declared:
“If he were anyone else, he’d probably be dead by now.”
In a graphically compelling layout in the center of the page, the grimly determined girls, moderate broomsticks in hand, kvetch on about a previously unknown concept known as “CheneyCare.”
Tell Me a Story, Mommy
It seems the girls are trying to get House bill 676 passed. Under a strict fairness provision, this measure would grant instant healthcare coverage to every registered Democrat in America. The premium would be doubled for all registered Republicans, and Independents would be assessed a 38 percent increase.
Being simple girls, probably because they grew up in pioneer families on remote farms, they close their ad with an irresistible appeal, tactfully placed alongside the photo of a noticeably unattractive girl nurse no one could ignore:
“Send us your insurance horror story at www.cheneycare.org.”
As a lifetime purveyor of passion, I have admired and envied those whose head temperatures were 30 degrees cooler than mine, such as those delicate dollbabies over at the California Nurses Assn. and the National Nurses Organizing Committee.
These are authentic humanitarians.
They are the kind of sensitive, moderate-thinking babes you want guarding your back when the Deluge comes, when the Nearly Last Day of Global Warming arrives or the next Mike Moore documentary screens at an evangelical church on Overland.
