How Do Ya Like Them (Florida) Oranges?

Hey Steve,

Thanks a lot for taking the time to email me. As ever you offer your views with commendable verve. I certainly do hope to hear from you when you disagree with the blog in future. I’m amused by the implication that harrassment is somehow more welcome than criticism! Mind you, I’ve always seen you as the kind of guy who thinks ‘harrass’ is two words. [This joke only works in an American accent, and it is only a joke – Steve’s NOT like that.]

In terms of the first quotation from my blog, I added the word ‘nutty’ not simply to burnish the term ‘religious fundmentalist’, but to be specific. I don’t think all religious fundamentalists are nutty, for the record. My point was that some free marketeers are irrational and dogmatic. No insult was intended. If I wanted to insult you I’d tell you that I am inclined to believe you fellate horses for money, and let middle-aged men film you on a webcam. For example.

‘Hello comrade’? Just because I believe there should be a MINIMAL redistribution of wealth?! Phew – that’s pretty hardcore. Maybe you want to live in a society with no welfare payments whatsoever. But I’d be incredulous even if someone vastly more selfish than you took that stance – just think of the impact that would have on the quality of life for the rest of us. Crime and disease would soar for a start. I hardly think I’m a Commie for wanting to live in a civilised society.

The last piece you picked out from my blog, and the Neal Boortz quotation that you juxtapose it against, interested me the most. As I said in my original post, I’m not sure what I think about actually legislating to limit working hours. All I’ll say for now is that I commend the state of not being sure to you – it’s something we should all experience occasionally. Those of who never do tend to round millions of people up for slaughter.

Mr Boortz (I increasingly believe that the last two letters of his surname are superfluous), is of the view that anyone who works less than 40 hours a week is a ‘loser’, and that ‘winners drive home in the dark’. OH NO THEY DON’T.

Winners get home in time to play with their kids. Winners play football twice a week with their friends. Winners take a succession of beautiful women out to dinner, then marry one of them, and have those kids that they then make time to play with. Winners take languid three week holidays on the beach. Winners take their elderly next door neighbour to the hospital appointment that they have been dreading for a fortnight. Winners learn a foreign language at night school. Winners play in a band. Winners take their Mum shopping.

Winners don’t sit bolt upright in bed at the age of 45, realise that half their life is over, and wonder why on Earth they pissed away the first half in a shit middle management job for which no-one ever thanked them and for which they received a pay packet that could never compensate them for all that they have lost. And it is these losses that makes the sort of person Mr Boor admires a L-O-S-E-R.

Anyway, anyone who was that much of a ‘winner’ - as Neal Boortz defines the term - wouldn't drive home in the dark. They’d have a chauffeur. And they wouldn’t be shuffling paper around a desk at 9 pm when they could be out doing something – i.e. pretty much anything – more enjoyable, rewarding and worthwhile.