Showing posts with label Labor Day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labor Day. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

T e s ate of lab r to ay


Labor Day -- that 24-hour period every year when we say kind words over the bloated corpse of organized labor in America -- is over.

Now it's back to reality for the Nebras A S Ate Education Ass Ciation and other similarly discombobulated labor unions. As they say, "reality bites." In fact, it even may have consumed education's rear end.

You know what else they say: "First they came for the teachers, but I wasn't a teacher. . . ." Well, I say we're all teachers now!

Ye who labor in America, stay strong! The ass you save may be your own.

Friday, September 02, 2011

3 Chords & the Truth: Workin' for a livin'


Everybody likes the day off, but nobody cares about why we have one.

That's the American approach to holidays -- and long weekends -- and its rise corresponds with our decline as a nation.

Boy, that just puts you in a cheery mood to listen to 3 Chords & the Truth, doesn't it? Sorry about that, Chief.

But it's true.

Let's go down the line, shall we? Christmas . . . uh, it's about a manger and wise men and Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer in the little town of Bethlehem, right? Now where's my presents?


EASTER . . . uh, bunnies laying eggs . . . ham for Sunday dinner . . . and, uh . . . bonnets?

Memorial Day . . . uh, baseball. Start of summer. Yeah, that's the ticket!

Labor Day . . . uh, the Jerry Lewis Telethon? Wait . . . Jerry's not doing it anymore. Oh! The end of summer! What else? We got nothin'.

That. my friends, is why the Big Show is here -- to clue you in on stuff. Well, that and play lots of great music.

This is Labor Day weekend. That would mean we're celebrating something having to do with . . . wait for it . . . labor? Not, not hours and hours of excruciating childbirth -- labor as in "workin' hard for the money."

Labor as in "labor union." Back when politicians and greedmeisters hadn't made "union" a dirty word yet. Back when people thought there was a certain dignity to labor, and that the dignity of workingmen (and women) ought to be protected.

Back when it was considered a good thing that an Average Joe could make enough money to take care of his family. Maybe even put the kids through college . . . upward mobility and all that stuff.

WE STILL believe in all that quaint stuff here at 3 Chords & the Truth, and this week, we're saluting labor for Labor Day. Our "work" set is tasty, indeed. Why not give it a listen, huh?

In other words, you don't have to check your brain -- or your conscience -- at the door to be well and properly entertained on the Big Show.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Thursday, August 04, 2011

And you'll always walk alone. . . .


Erasing the "Jerry" out of "Help Jerry's Kids" is a work in progress.

It took just a two-paragraph press release Wednesday evening to erase Jerry Lewis from both the Muscular Dystrophy Association and the
Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon, but it seems the MDA website is going to take a while.

The browser-window title on the MDA home page now is a simple "Welcome to MDA | Muscular Dystrophy Association." Click on a subject header, though, and the comedy great still has top billing -- "Welcome to MDA | Muscular Dystrophy Association Helping Jerry's Kids."

IT'S LIKE going to the Facebook page of a dead friend. What was still is, a memory so close you can almost touch it . . . trapped, still past perfect in electronic amber, defying the present just as our heart denies the new equation of loss. The MDA telethon without Jerry Lewis? How can this be?

Four and a half decades of Labor Day telethons --
more than 60 years with MDA -- ended in four sentences, without even the previously announced fond farewell come September? Really?

Then again, looking at last fall's tea leaves, it was pretty clear he was getting the ol' heave-ho even then, wasn't it? As John Katsilometes wrote last October in the
Las Vegas Sun . . .
Jerry Lewis’ name has been synonymous with the “MDA Labor Day Telethon” for 45 years. Can we agree on this?

We can, until we scan a news release issued last week by the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Unexpectedly, the MDA has lopped a good measure of the telethon – 21½ hours, total. As a result, the 2011 telethon will run just six hours, which is a lot like shaving a marathon down to a 7K run and still calling it “a marathon.”

Even more startling was the wording of the MDA news release sent to media members last Wednesday. The words “Jerry Lewis,” were not to be found until the third of four pages in the release, and only after we read several lively quotes from MDA President Gerald C. Weinberg. We happen upon Jerry Lewis just once, under the headline: “Rich MDA Telethon History.”


"RICH MDA telethon history," they said. As in, "You're history, Jerry!"

Either there's a hell of a story here, or loyalty is more of a one-way street than even I thought. And I'm a confirmed cynic.

It couldn't have had anything to do with Jerry telling a little too much truth about the state of television today, could it? About perhaps making the wrong corporate enemies? About scaredy-cat professional fundraisers getting nervous about what the old man might say on live television during his last rodeo . . . which he didn't want to be his last rodeo?

Most likely there's a hell of a story here about loyalty being a one-way street. And about how Jerry's kids suddenly became orphans.