LEARN TO SHORT BEANS, OR HOW TO DRILL AND TAP.

No, I'm not referring to cashing in on your humanities degree by working at Starbucks or the local sports bar (assuming your blue-city dictators let you serve beer.)  Rather, I'm noting a lament by Inside Higher Ed contributor (and longtime AAUP shill) John Warner about how wokeness on the masthead often covers Dickensian working conditions in the office.

There’s no doubt that the employees of The New Yorker and the faculty who populate higher education are overwhelmingly liberal in their voting patterns.

But these attitudes mean very little in the context of the structure of the institutions. Academia has consciously created an immiserated class of worker to protect the privilege of an elect group, kind of like serfdom, I guess. The management at The New Yorker and Condé Nast are fighting unionization with all the fervor of the robber barons of yore. Thankfully the tools they can use have been limited by the law. We’re not going to see head-cracking Pinkertons dispatched to the Queens two-bedroom being shared by four New York publishing editorial workers.

I’m rooting for the New Yorker staffers. I don’t have much power to aid them except for my Twitter feed, this blog and a willingness to cancel my subscription, but maybe if enough people pay attention, some good will result.

And maybe we can reflect on what bad end is coming for all institutions when we allow our labor to be devalued and disrespected by the system.

That's rich, since the snob appeal of the coastal opinion magazines, and the name universities, is precisely in conferring the credentials to devalue and disrespect precisely those people who don't hold the credentials.

It probably came to this years ago, when the Ruling Class's enablers first in the academy, later in journalism, and finally in entertainment, figured out that they could dress up their hectoring, condescending, and deplorable-shaming as Respectable Opinion. No sooner did the humorless, joyless, and grim Hillary Clinton concede the presidential election than did all of her fans on social media decide it wasn't enough to be upset, no, they started scolding or otherwise being nasty to anybody who wasn't fully in on the wake.

At various times, the Credentialed Elite have gone after farmers and commodities traders; or perhaps it's miners and operating engineers.  May they be damned.