Ganging Up on Barbara

The Post ran an article this morning on Barbara Ehrenreich and her new book. I'd had mixed feelings about her last one, Nickeled and Dimed, along the lines of "yes, but". Haven't read the new one, but was ready to fire off a blog article saying: " a 64-year old looks for a $50K job in PR while lying on her resume? Give me a break, there should be no reasonable expectation that she get a job."

Then I found that Tyler Cowen and Alan Wolfe in Slate were taking the same line, after having read the book (they try to uphold intellectual standards, I don't).

But consider this excerpt from the Post article (which is standard puff-the-writer stuff)--No Help Wanted, hitting a point Cowen and Wolfe haven't discussed yet:

"But in the end, what outraged her the most was the pervasive blame-the-victim ethos she encountered. Personal responsibility is a fine thing, she says, but it's not the same as omnipotence. Yet over and over, the newly unemployed were told: You totally control your own fate. At an 'executive boot camp,' the leader hammered the core message home:

'It's never about the external world,' he said. 'It's always between you and you.'"

I can understand how that might provoke outrage, but the reality in the situations is that it is all about "you". In today's environment, neither unions nor political action are a realistic route for the middle class job seeker. Controlling oneself is the only thing a person can control. So their alternatives are bleak: change oneself to be a more acceptable employee or endure. (Or perhaps, seek ease in religion.) (Can you see my inherited Calvinism emerging?)