TODAY'S ROBBER BARONS | 2006-05-16
When I see "professional journalists" sitting about bitching about the Internet I am reminded of Big Businessmen a hundred years ago bitching about demands for an eight-hour work day.
A hundred years ago all the money was theirs, and they were very upset about workers getting a piece of it.
Not that long ago all information belonged to the "professional journalists." Now everybody can get his own and spread his own.
IO wish more people than Bob would look at how exactly today's rulers are like the Robber Barons. By ignoring this, we continue the illusion that there is something new about today's exploiters.
There isn't.
In my book thirty years ago I began my discussion of busing by talking about the 1900 cartoon that had a fat, silk-hatted businessman standing there watching a poor, thin child slaving away at a machine.
The caption read:
"They grow rich by stealing children's playtime."
Then I gave an example from the present day, one which I knew well because I had been on the streets in the anti-busing movement. A white child in Louisville was waiting in the freezing dark before dawn for a bus that would take two hours to get him into the ghetto. After school he would get on a bus for another two hour ride.
When he finally got home he was so exhausted that all he could do would be to go to bed. Or do his homework and then go to bed.
When he arrived home it would be freezing and dark again.
I have known of many judges who have ordered this obscenity. I have never heard of one who did not have his own grandchildren in private schools.
They gained their appointments by stealing childrens' playtime.
No one but me ever mentioned this.