Who is oppressed, who the oppressor?

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This is a funny and damning video from the Daily Show. In it, a correspondent interviews a real-life union in Nevada that hires low-paid, non-union temp workers to stage protests against Walmart. It's always been shocking to me that the Daily Show, a comedy show, often offers more insightful political analysis than real news shows, but now it seems it's doing thoughtful, hard-hitting investigative journalism!

Anyway, this bit struck me because it is indicative of a problem that Wendell Berry often discusses, namely the mental compartmentalization often seen in civic and personal life in the US. I mean, how can a union demanding better working conditions for one group of people justify hiring other people under the same working conditions the union is protesting? The answer is that it can't, not in good conscience at least, and I think the Daily Show does us (and the union profiled) a favor by making this clear.

Sort of on the same topic is a New York Times article I saw yesterday. It is entitled "Coming out of Wall Street's Closet", so I expected it to be something really drastic and interesting, like a top Wall Street executive admitting that his sector is a sham, more often extracting wealth from others in a zero-sum game than actually financing productive enterprise.

But no, it was just about some Wall Street leech that happens to be gay. The article earnestly tried to explore the implications and ramifications of this, giving a brief history of discrimination against Jews, gays, and women in the world of high finance. Maybe part of the story, transpiring before the 1980s, might be interesting, because it seems that at some point in history Wall Street actually contributed to the US economy in a productive way. But given that Wall Street as we know it today is basically a Ponzi scheme, I have a hard time seeing the drama or the interest in the struggle of minority groups to claim their part of the fleecing of America. As an astute comment on the article puts it, "In 21st century America, anybody can grow up to be a blood-sucking parasite! I feel inspired."