I nominate this NYT opinion piece for shittiest take of 2024!

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    299
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    18 hours ago

    0.0

    if

    Thompson “grew up in a working-class family in Jewell, Iowa,” a tiny farming community north of Des Moines, Amy Julia Harris and Ernesto Londoño report. “His mother was a beautician, according to family friends, and his father worked at a facility to store grain.” Thompson’s childhood was spent “going row by row through the fields to kill weeds with a knife, or working manual labor at turkey and hog farms.”

    is true… then he’s a class traitor; not a hero. he made his money fucking over the working class. that’s not heroic.

    • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      4 hours ago

      Yup. If any part of that bio is true, then that’s even more unforgivable. It means that unlike someone who was born into wealth and had asshole-ishness thrust upon them, he deliberately chose to be an asshole.

      • granolabar@kbin.melroy.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 hours ago

        Corporate offices are filled with bootlickers who are ready to join the club. They waste their entire life for a chance to be Brian Thompson the parasite.

        This is what success looks like to them, they will do anything for it crime, corruption, toxic work enviroment… It is unpleasant to be around them.

        Careers is a cancer of the working class. It ruins solidarity

    • hypnicjerk@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      88
      ·
      18 hours ago

      you really think someone would do that? just go on a once-respected publication and tell lies?

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        47
        ·
        18 hours ago

        “Just”… ? no. There’s a certain vetting process that makes sure they tell the right lies.

          • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            16
            ·
            16 hours ago

            I’m aware of the arthur reference, but it’s really important to realize these aren’t off-the-cuff lies.

            This is a planned, coordinated effort that has been going on since before I was even alive; and the journalistspropagandists have been very carefully selected- and have indeed worked very hard to get the job of fucking over americans.

          • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            17 hours ago

            There are two jobs where you can go on national TV, lie and not get fired. President and weather man.

        • hypnicjerk@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          17 hours ago

          the precipitous fall of print media over the past couple decades is something that would one day be written about in the history books if they weren’t also full of shit.

          • granolabar@kbin.melroy.org
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            17 hours ago

            Decentralized media like fedi is the only hope of the working class.

            Owners either own or control everything else government, fake news, TV, Hollywood, publishing, corporate socials.

            Wikipedia will be deposed in time, they are already mawing at the foundation

      • ShareMySims
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        edit-2
        17 hours ago

        But they’re not lying. It’s pretty reasonable to believe both that his parents were working class, and that him becoming a class traitor on such a level does make him a hero in capitalist eyes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          14 hours ago

          it is, though.

          The implication is that Brian Thompson should be/is a hero to working class people.

          he’s not.

          he’s an asshole who made millions fucking over people just trying to get medical care. many of whom have died as a result of his fucking them over, and that is especially true of those who actually work for a living- which he has not in a very long time.

        • hypnicjerk@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          17 hours ago

          i don’t think it’s lying, necessarily. i suspect that it’s embellishing, and it’s inarguably providing an incomplete, intentionally flattering picture.

    • makyo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      16 hours ago

      The irony being here that a ‘working class hero’ to Bret is someone who is no longer working class

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      edit-2
      14 hours ago

      They love these stories. They reinforce their delusions of libertarianism and that anyone who is truly able will be found and given their rightful position.

    • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      17 hours ago

      This is one of the problems with treating class as an inherent identity, not a person’s relation to the means of production. A person that begins as a direct wage laborer is working class, but if they ascend the ladder they become closer and closer to carrying out the functions of the owner class (i.e. becoming upper management) they lose proletarian character and gain bourgeois character. So the UHC CEO may have started out working class but obviously he became a bourgeois monster.

      There’s a similar pitfall, which is the uncritical moralization of the working class. The working class has a world historical role to play and is the class oppressed by the bourgeoisie, but it can easily have reactionary elements that should not be embraced, esoeciskky not as “working class values”. The working class exists in the society shaped by the bourgeoisie, with marginalizations baked in by the bourgeoisie that can become self-perpetuating (e.g. racism), so we must not simply accept whstever the majority opinion of the working class is, let alone some random guy that ended up facilitating death and pain for profit.

      • granolabar@kbin.melroy.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        17 hours ago

        Y’all really need modernize the delivery lol

        Solid msg tho

        Bootlickers are the biggest obstacle to basic reforms happening.

        Education of the working class should be the priority and that’s exactly what divisive politcs is doing.

        Luigi surely did a thing… People at least in US across left/right divide are talking and noticing how media and government is behaving.

        Beautiful

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      18 hours ago

      he made his money fucking over the working class. that’s not heroic

      I mean, of course it isn’t, but nobody told the NYT or their opinion writers who are currently tripping over each other trying to normalize Trump, Thompson, and other monsters…

    • Bizzle@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      12 hours ago

      When I went to IA State, I used to drive through Jewell on the way to see this girl I was dating. The only notable thing about the town was the fact that it harbored a puppy mill.

    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      16 hours ago

      Then he went on to get a job making it more difficult for everyone in his tiny farming community north of Des Moines to get health care.

      Weird how they forgot that part.

    • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      9
      ·
      14 hours ago

      Yeah, it’s super smart to make a class hero out of a prep school valedictorian and Ivy League grad, grandson of a wealthy real estate developer - definitely a class traitor himself but in a Good Way - and hey, he did suffer from back pain while doing his tech job remotely from Waikiki. So his struggle was real. Power to the people!