Virg Bernero, Mayor of Lansing, Michigan, pushes back on a clueless Fox News anchor-bot pushing right-wing, anti-worker talking points:
Two points:
First, Bernero, believe it or not, let this guy off easy. The substance of the Fox talking head’s argument is pure poppycock. Consider his pushing the tired old right-wing “union auto workers make $70/hour” canard, for example, which has been so thoroughly discredited that anyone who raises it with a straight face ought to be laughed out of the public eye.
See, the thing is, Fox Guy is comparing the total labor costs — wages, health benefits, retirement plan, etc. — of all workers covered under Big Three labor agreements, including retirees, to just the wages of current workers at Japanese plants. An apples-to-apples comparison shows how Detroit’s problems have little to do with what they pay their workers.
Second, the style of the Fox guy is worth paying attention to too. As Glenn Greenwald observes perceptively in Salon this morning:
Even more notable is the dripping condescension directed at him by the Fox personality at the end of the interview for having committed the sin of exhibiting genuine passion and anger over something as trivial as the disappearing middle class and the massive and growing rich-poor gap. That’s the crime of Shrillness, one of the prime hallmarks of Unseriousness — failing/refusing to suppress one’s anger towards our political and financial establishment.
Indeed. If I were the mayor of Lansing and I saw blowhards like this Fox guy screeching that my constituents have to give up their shot at the American Dream while saying nothing about executives who ran enormous banks into the ground granting themselves bonuses from bailout money, I’d be pretty angry too.
I guess that would get me labeled “shrill” as well. But if that put me in the same category as Mayor Bernero, I’d consider that pretty good company.
(Want to send Bernero a thank-you note? You can do that through the City of Lansing’s Web site.)