"Teach your children well," sang Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in a syrupy overplayed hippie anthem from 1970. (Not to worry, I won't link).
Teach them to say "screw you" to their community, Ed Schultz instructs the children now. While he waits and waits and waits for "The Ed Show" to make its transition from primetime to the penal colony that is MSNBC weekends, Schultz continues spewing his trademark buffoonery through his radio show. (audio clip after page break)
Broadcasting from the city that has no bones about asking eighth graders to come down to the facility and start making sandbags so the wealthy people don't have to pay for a dike. Good 'ol Fargo, Nort' Dakota. That's how they flood fight. It's called slave labor. Make 'em think they're really building character. In fact, they have to build character every spring! The college kids, I think, have figured it out. Screw you! So now they're picking on the eighth graders.
Got that? Requesting that adolescents sacrifice a few hours of time and sweat to help save their city from the ravages of flooding is "slave labor," according to Schultz, who can't tell the difference between volunteer work and that imposed by force with those doing the labor having no say in the matter.
Needless to say, Schultz wants all such work done by government employees, preferably those in public-sector unions providing generous and ultimately unsustainable health care and pension plans. Come to think of it, is there any work Schultz doesn't want done this way?
As far as he's concerned, we should teach children to be indifferent to their communities, reliant on government for every contingency large and small (recall how well this worked in New Orleans after Katrina hit), cynical to the core (what's in it for me?!) and resentful class warriors ever willing to milk the rich, regardless of what they've already paid.
