I have this friend - an old friend, a dear friend - who, after she married a wingnut, started spouting much of the same stuff. They happily watch Fox News together and she thinks they have the answers to everything.
Anyway, I called her yesterday to tell her about my layoff and mentioned how hard it would be to get a job in this recession. I remind her it took me 18 months to find work after 9/11.
“I don’t believe there is one,” she said.
“What?” I said, not quite sure I was hearing her properly.
“I don’t believe there’s a recession,” she said. “There’s work for anybody who’s willing to work hard and is reasonably intelligent.” (In other words, if I can’t find work, I’m lazy and stupid.)
I sighed, because there’s no arguing with her. She’s repeating what her husband says, and he knows everything.
It won’t be a recession until she or hubby get laid off… shitheads.
Best wishes for finding work, Susie.
Sounds like my sister-in-law. She watches Fox news and thinks Obama is a secret Muslim.
Hope your job hunt goes well.
Well, to be really positive about it, the way to go at it, your MO should be that there is no recession. Why give yourself more difficulties than you have with being unemployed? Assume there isn’t one and look for a job with that in mind. Just saying.
The mark of true friendship: telling you to get off your lazy ass and find a job as if they’re sprouting up like daiseys. Sounds like she has truly swallowing the bootstrap line hook, line and sinker. I imagine her husband also thought the America was coming undone by his having to support all those welfare queens driving around white Caddies a while back. Good compassionate church goers are they?
The sad thing is I had a friend who, after she married her dear husband (whom I affectionately refer to as “the Jackass”), began spouting his political views. I’m not big on maintaining contact with people who are parrots, so we have drifted apart.
The shame of my life: my wife watches Fox and thinks Bill O’Reilly is even handed in his condemnation of both sides. When our friends find out, they look at me with pity.
Sometimes people just refuse to look at the heart of an issue and “re-arrange their realities” to make their daily life easier.
Who knows? Maybe that friend has had her reality-re-arranged that is.. . something in her personal life (which she doesn’t feel free to discuss) is bearing down on her and she is closed off to certain kinds of discussions. She may not really be buying into the whole FOX view of the world.
I don’t beat up on people like that ….there are seldom simple explanations for certain behaviours esp for women of a certain age.
I wonder if watching FOX drains one of empathy? It serves their ideological agenda to suggest that people’s problems are personal rather than political, and that the individual is in control of her fate. How sad that she couldn’t offer you any out of respect for your friendship or basic human kindness. Well, I hope she won’t be needing any empathy herself anytime soon.
Historiann…So sad that a supposed friend is unable to offer empathy. Some women don’t get the big picture…really. I have known women who have a certain kind of education , (ones who are pushing 60 or older, nurses, elementary school teachersand the like) who who are so clueless. I tell them you really need to take a women’s studies course…so helpful in framing this picture, in my opinion. Yet these women, for whatever reason, stumble though life, seemingly educated and high functioning unable to find their center. Why? Because their whole llives are centered on the men in their lives (esp in how they view the world of politics.) It drives me crazy…such a waste!
One of the items in your “what I learned from my last lay off” post was…
“I learned who my true friends were.”
This woman obviously is not one of your true friends.
Don’t call her again.
I got into a big discussion, maybe two years ago? with someone on a forum about the incoming real estate collapse. She couldn’t see it. She could look out her window and see all these buildings being built, so therefore I was a horrible person.
Whatever. You’ll do well.
Actually there is plenty of work. The day labourers at your local home store prove this. The help wanted signs in the fast food joints. The pressing need for busboys, waitresses, and WalGawd greeters is huge.
Plenty of low-wage, no-future, no-benefit, part-time employment. Quit complaining and get to work as Jenna BushSlut’s personal assistant/nanny. Or toil for Cindy McSame as a maid.
Ladies of a certain age (60+) who earned their degree really have no truck with the touchy-feely, whiney ‘popular-girl’ alleged feminism. It serves no purpose to rub their noses in the lack of opportunity they experienced on a personal level. Cripes, I can recall my athletic cousin being told she could only do two sports in high school. She was allowed this privilege as the school wanted to compete at states and they needed her.