Thursday, February 02, 2006

Anderson, Indiana

This paragraph from Tobias Wolff's story in this week's New Yorker really could have been written to describe my sort-of hometown:

Burke knew the story—he’d bet the farm on it. Unions broken, or bought off. Salaries and benefits steadily cut under threat of layoffs that happened anyway as the work went to foreign wage slaves, the owners meanwhile conjuring up jolly visions of the corporate “family” and better days to come, before selling out just in time to duck the fines for a century of fouling the river; then the new owners, vultures with M.B.A.s, gliding in to sack the pension fund before declaring bankruptcy. Burke knew the whole story and it disgusted him, especially the workers who’d let the owners screw them like this while patting them on the head, congratulating them for being the backbone of the country, salt of the earth, the true Americans. Jesus! And still they ate it up, and voted like robbers instead of the robbed. Served them right.

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