“Larry the Cable Guy” seemed appropriate somehow…

As someone who knows the value of a good headline zinging across the globe via Twitter, I can appreciate why middle-aged, well-off Caucasian Forbes contributor Gene Marks would title his well-meaning essay/advice, “If I Were A Poor Black Kid.” As every blogger knows, with controversy comes increased traffic, some feigned outrage from bloggers both left and right (which brings in even more traffic) and parody. Even ridicule brings in more traffic (it’s a fuel that the Internet and reality TV runs on). I don’t want to give the impression that I found Marks’ essay offensive—I didn’t and he makes several good points—but then again, he completely misses out on the biggest elephant (of many) in the room:

Are there going to be ANY decent jobs—let alone careers—for much of the next generation in this hollowed out American economy, whether they are educated or not?

I was told this morning that 10% of the HDTV panels that are 40 inches or larger are manufactured by just fifteen workers at the Panasonic plant in Osaka, Japan. If that’s even close to accurate, it’s staggering. What opportunities will there be in the US where we hardly make anything of real value anymore?

However silly Gene Marks’ title is, at least it inspired one of the funniest things I’ve read in some time, Vanity Fair contributing editor Jim Windolf’s “If I Were a Middle-Aged White Guy,” published this morning at The Atlantic Wire. Here’s an excerpt:

If I happened to be making a quick stop at the 7-11, I would ease into the handicapped spot, because eighty percent of those people are faking it. This one guy I heard about had asthma. That’s how he got the handicapped plate. I would leave the engine running, partly so it wouldn’t get cold, and partly so that, if some actual, no-kidding-around handicapped person were to pull up in their specially made handicap-mobile, they would figure I was coming back shortly.

If I were a middle-aged white guy, I would work hard at my job. No one likes a lazy person. And I would smile at my coworkers, because no one likes a sourpuss. I would also be sure to ask my colleagues how their day was going, and I would talk about TV shows and football games with them, and I would perhaps mention that I hadn’t seen them in church lately, which is a funny thing to say nowadays, when there are so many people who haven’t accepted the Lord Jesus as our savior.

If I were to see a coworker slacking off, I might remark, in jest, “Some of us have work to do.” And if they told me to fuck off, I would call human resources and report them, because middle-aged white guys should not have to be subjected to such abusive talk. I would also discuss the incident with my immediate boss, and if he were to tell me, “You just need to worry about your own work and let me take care of the rest of the floor,” I would probably say, “It’s funny how you asshole liberals are always talking about ‘it takes a village,’ but the minute someone steps up to point out that one of the ‘villagers’ is slacking off, you get nothing but shit for it.” And if he were to reply, “Are we done here?”, I would probably just say something like, “Yeah, I guess we are. I guess nothing’s ever going to change around here,” and then I would walk back to my desk, muttering to myself. For a little office humor I would make sure a coworker or two heard me use the word “shotgun.”

If I were a middle-aged white guy, and my children were doing poorly in school, I would smash things in their rooms, the lamps and vacation souvenirs and such, and I would inform them that the stuff I had just broken to bits had been gained in exchange for a certain thing known as money, and you get money in this world because you have skills, like computer programming, and you acquire those skills only after you earn halfway decent grades in school, and then you offer those skills to an employer who will pay you for your services, even if they never take it seriously when you make the slightest remark about how you’re the main guy pulling his weight.

“If I Were a Middle-Aged White Guy” (The Atlantic Wire)

Below, a minisode of Harry Shearer and Martin Mull’s HBO mockumentary series, The History of White People in America