WASHINGTON — Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) is no fan of a proposal for the federal government to forbid employers from discriminating against the jobless based on their employment status…. “We’re adding in this bill a new protected class called ‘unemployed,’” Gohmert said on the floor of the House Tuesday. “I think this will help trial lawyers who are not having enough work. We heard from our friends across the aisle, 14 million people out of work — that’s 14 million new clients.”…. “So the good news is, if you’re unemployed and you go to apply for a job and you’re not hired for that job, see a lawyer — you may be able to file for a claim because you were discriminated against because you were unemployed.”
I’ve heard it said that ‘tis better to be thought a fool than to be Louie Gohmert open your mouth and remove all doubt. In Louie Gohmert’s case, that train has long since left the station. If there’s a biped haunting the halls of Congress with a lower IQ and sense of simple human decency, I can’t imagine who it might be. The only thing missing from Gohmert’s repertoire is a rant or two about space aliens in the White House. His latest dose of verbal vomit is as predictable as it is offensive. There’s a growing, legitimate, and well-documented trend of employers openly discriminating against the unemployed. When an employer can state openly that they won’t even consider those not currently working, what we in effect have is discrimination against a class of people, many of whom are unemployed through no fault of their own. Welcome to the creation of a permanent underclass. You can’t discriminate based on gender, skin color, religious faith, or sexual orientation…but it’s perfectly acceptable to discriminate against the unemployed?
In Gohmert’s world, of course, the unemployed find themselves sans employment though their own laziness and shiftlessness. If you can’t find a job, it’s because you don’t care and/or you’re just not trying hard enough. Never mind that job seekers still outnumber available jobs by a margin of more than 4-1. Never mind that some folks have been unemployed for a year…or two…or more. Never mind that if you’re unemployed and over 50, your odds of finding gainful employment are about the same as my becoming an NBA point guard. In Louie Gohmert’s world, the unemployed are in the predicament they find themselves in because they deserve it…says the man with a $174,000 per year sinecure and more perks than you can shake a stick at,
In Louie Gohmert’s world, the unemployed will turn things to their advantage by suing employers who don’t hire them. This, to his way of thinking, will supplant a job search as lazy, shiftless drains on the federal pocketbook look to strike it big with a large settlement or court judgment, which will set them for life so they never have to work again. The problem, of course, is that this attitude isn’t exclusive to Gohmert. There are far too many on the Right who feel as Gohmert does, that the unemployed are directionless, unmotivated losers too accustomed to sucking at the public teat to actually do something to improve their lot.
It’s easy to be so blithely judgmental when you have a secure, well-paying job. Casting aspersions is easy when you see yourself as being in no danger of losing your means of support. Were Gohmert and those who think like him to find themselves having to file for unemployment, I suspect they’d be singing a much different tune. I won’t deny that there are some among the unemployed who could be classified as “lazy” and/or “shiftless.” That truth hardly justifies tarring an entire class of people with the same brush, however. You can’t describe all unemployed Americans with a couple of smug, pat putdowns…any more than you could do the same with…oh, I don’t know…Republicans?
Gohmert’s insensitivity and lack of compassion is yet another indication that this recession and the post-9.11 era have turned Americans into a meaner, more divided, and far less compassionate than generations past. That a sitting member of Congress is actually OK with the idea of discriminating against an entire class of people is as reprehensible as it is indefensible. If we were talking about discrimination against Conservatives, you can bet that the weeping and gnashing of teeth and the peals of righteous indignation would be heard media outlet to shining media outlet. It’s easy to condone discrimination when you’re in no danger of being discriminated against yourself. It takes a functional moral compass to actually do the right thing. Sadly, I don’t know that one could ever expect to see “moral compass” and “Louie Gohmert” used in the same sentence- for any conceivable reason.
I suspect that there may well be at least a grain of truth in Gohmert’s concern. There probably are a few folks out there who will game the system, and thus provide Conservatives with their “gotcha!” moment. This hardly means that the good should be ignored because perfection is unachievable. Those who abuse the system should be dealt with, of course. Abuse only queers things for everyone…but that doesn’t mean that discrimination should be allowed to continue because of a few miscreants. If we applied the same logic to the GOP Caucus, why wasn’t every Republican shamed after Larry Craig decided to go shopping for man-meat in a men’s room at the Minneapolis airport?
Gohmert’s claim that the American Jobs Act is just a jobs bill for trial lawyers is a red herring. What it all really comes down to is two words- “Barack Obama.” The fact is that Republicans will do anything and go to any length to ensure that Obama is a one-term President. Anything even remotely positive that smacks of accruing benefit to the President in any shape, manner, or form is DOA as far as Republicans are concerned.
And millions of Americans continue to suffer because Gohmert and those who think like him are focused on one thing and one thing only: political power. That there are people outside the Beltway legitimately suffering is something that likely barely even registers with most Republicans. Let them eat cake….
WE DESERVE BETTER.
