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Presidents and Janitors

by: Dean Barker

Tue Jan 17, 2012 at 19:10:15 PM EST
In 2007, Joe Biden, who was running for President, did this:
In 2011, Newt Gingrich, who is running for president, said this:
50 years ago another President had an encounter with a janitor:
There is a famous story about President John F. Kennedy's first visit to NASA's headquarters back in 1961. While touring the facility, the President's entourage reportedly came upon a man mopping the floor in one of the hallways. The President stopped to chat with the man, shook his hand, and asked what he did at NASA. The janitor proudly addressed the young President by saying, "Sir, I'm helping to put a man on the moon!"
That last one may or may not be apocryphal.

But the point remains: all work that helps a woman or man put food in the table, no matter how menial, has a measure of dignity and purpose.

Those born into wealth (Kennedy) and those who weren't (Biden) have the capacity to understand that.

A grifter like Newt Gingrich, who has skimmed his cream from a career of demonizing poor Americans with big words, doesn't.

(find me > 140 on birch paper; on Twitter < 140)
Dean Barker :: Presidents and Janitors
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Presidents and Janitors | 3 comments
On MLK day, no less, ... (4.00 / 1)
Gingrich had the gall to say what he said. And the crowd cheered??!!

Chris Matthews closed tonight asking his Beltway audience to get up early tomorrow, 6 or so, and drive through the poorer neighborhoods. You'll see people, many African-American, waiting at bus stops, on their way in to work in DC.

The last time Gingrich brought up the school kid janitors and the poor needing to "learn the value of money" one blogger/commentator left me with an indelible image of the Newt.

Mashed potatoes in a suit.

JillSH

Not just putting food on his table (4.00 / 2)
That's dignified, yes. But whatever job someone does within an organization contributes to the mission of that organization, as the janitor said. If everyone in an organization doesn't feel vested in and important to that mission, the leadership has failed.  

 "The future is not something to be predicted, it's something to be achieved,"  unattributed aphorism



And Gingrich (4.00 / 3)
is definitely in the class of "leaders" who have failed.
[ Parent ]
Presidents and Janitors | 3 comments

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