I do not enjoy the digs against people who choose to enlist. Most can’t afford school and have few prospects at home. It’s the only large scale social employment program available and speaks well for most who do serve.
Maybe speak to the lack of programs rather than make jokes about their lack of fashion judgement.
In truth, I could see the armed forces getting shelved off in to for profit public-private partnerships with .com web addresses. It would make it a lot easier for the Invisible Hand of the Free Market to dip in to the pork barrel if they were on the board of directors.
I don’t see any “digs” in his post. The implication that people are gullible is pretty firmly established, tho. There is absolutely nothing wrong with folks who wish to join the military. For many, it becomes a great career and can lead to better civilian life.
“… to lure in hopeful candidates looking to work a job that never makes you think about what you should wear to work.”
It’s a shitty jab. There’s much more to people than that.
It’s a smarmy way to talk down about people that’s completely unnecessary to the context of the article. It presents the author is having bias against the enlisted. You can disagree with the practices or the institution rather than talking down about those captured by the system
Of course there is, and I don’t think the author was trying to imply otherwise, just making a minor joke about a relatively trivial aspect of the military. And I’ve heard that quip many times before, often from members of the military themselves. I note again that the article was sympathetic toward those who were taken in by this scam.
Welcome to BoingBoing, by the way. I hope you stick around long enough to see that there’s more to the folks here than one carelessly tossed-off line.
Thank you. I’ve enjoyed the site for a while and something about that one line just captured something that put me off. There really is a separation sometimes that people should think about. The class war is real and even slight disparagement against people who are put in a tough position will turn them off from any dialogue you hope to have.
You won’t get much argument around here. Comments by the regulars tend to the snarky and sarcastic, but there is very little punching down. I haven’t seen a lot of criticism of members of the military, but plenty of criticism of those who view them as pawns to be put in harm’s way for someone else’s agenda.
For it to be a “jab” surely there’d have to be something pejorative in the statement? I see zero insult or talking down in that phrasing. If they’d said, I dunno, “Looking for a job that lets them murder brown people with impunity,” or “Looking for a job that doesn’t require any of that pesky college schoolin’” or something, I could see your point.
But there’s nothing insulting about “looking to work a job that never makes you think about what you should wear to work.” They’re just highlighting an absurdly specific, silly, “perk” of the job. Like saying someone becomes a on-site researcher in the antarctic so they don’t have to worry about bathing suit season (which isn’t calling all scientists fat). Or saying someone moved into a houseboat so they don’t have to shovel the walk (which isn’t calling all boat-residents lazy). Or whatever.