THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

LABOR VERSUS THE WORKING MAN | 2004-02-07

For McCain and the liberals who love him, the ideal "labor leadership" was in place in the Labor Party in Britain before Tony Blair took over the Party. Back then, at Labor Party conventions, whoever owned the union cast all his member's votes for them.

So who owns the unions? Often organized crime does. Organized labor is one of its staple sources of income. The point here is not that labor is still controlled by organized crime. The point is that the so-called "labor leaders" can be puppets on a string and the media will still refer to them as "labor."

"Labor" has no use whatsoever for the opinion of a bunch of working stiffs. They are straight liberal, and supporting the political left is their only real purpose. Like all large organizations, they do as little for their clients, in this case working people, as they can. They have other priorities.

As always, the capitalized word is nothing like the real thing. When the media speak of Labor, this has little to do with labor. When the Inquisition spoke of Mercy, it meant the opposite of mere mercy, which meant not torturing people. To the Inquisition, True Mercy was saving the soul from Hell. That required a slow burning at the stake. That gave the sinner a chance to feel the fire and repent. That was Mercy. There was no room for mercy.

Think about it. If Mercy meant mercy, you wouldn't capitalize it. If Labor meant labor, you wouldn't capitalize it, but Labor is implicitly capitalized in Mediaspeak.

Yes, Labor is taking a beating in the political arena today. But that is doing labor a lot of good.